Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Victor
She comes out of the building with her phone in her hand and her jacket half-buttoned against the November cold, recognizing the car at the curb.
My car, with Maksim behind the wheel, her eyes finally landing on me, and I can see her doing the calculations internally. The one she runs on everything.
Then she gets in without a word because it is cold and she is practical above almost everything else. She also knows I’m not going to give up that easily. Maksim doesn't comment. He is very good at not commenting.
"She's fine," Alex says, to the window, to no one in particular.
"You said that last night," I say.
"I'm reminding myself." She has her hands in her jacket pockets, and she's watching the street go past absently. She looks tired. "You didn't have to come down."
"I know."
"Or wait."
"I know that too."
She looks at me then, sideways, the particular look she gives me when she's trying to determine what I want and coming up short on answers. I prefer her to be uncertain about me. Certainty creates distance, and I am done with distance where she is concerned.
"Why did you?" she asks.
"Because you were alone," I say. "And she called in a panic and you went, and I wasn't going to stand in your hallway while you handled it by yourself."
She looks at the window again.
"That's not your job," she says.
"No," I agree. "It isn't."
She doesn't say anything else. Maksim turns the corner onto the block where the school building is and pulls to the curb. Alex is out of the car before it fully stops. I get out, lean against the car, and wait.
She's back in four minutes with Evie beside her, the girl's overnight bag on her shoulder, her dark hair loose and her face scrubbed and her eyes sharp even at this hour in the way they always are. She sees me and stops walking. Then she looks at Alex.
"You called him?" she says.
"No, he was already there," Alex says, in a tone that says she is not going to be explaining this further.
Evie looks at me again, and then something in her face shifts warmly.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi," I say with what I hope is a pleasant smile. "How's Lily?"
"Fine," she says. "Her and the others played games, and gossiped about boys through the whole thing." She says it like she's still slightly offended by how unbothered Lily was. "I was the only one who heard it, or got bothered."
"You were listening for things," I say. "That's different."
She considers that. "That's a good way to put it.”
Alex watches this exchange with an expression I have learned to recognize — the particular combination of gratitude and alarm that crosses her face when Evie accepts something, someone, before Alex has finished deciding whether it's safe to be accepted.
She is always three steps behind Evie on these things.
She doesn't know that yet. I open the car door for her.
She gets in without arguing, which I count.
Maksim drives us back, and Alex thanks him, even calling him by name, which surprises him enough that he glances in the rearview mirror before catching himself.
I file that tidbit away — she notices people, she remembers names, she treats the man driving the car with the same respect she treats everyone else.
Evie falls asleep against the window somewhere on the block between buildings, which reveals how exhausted she is. But it also reveals that she feels safe, even with me present. The car is quiet and dark, and Alex is beside me, close enough that I am aware of every breath she takes.
"Alex," I say quietly, so Evie doesn't stir.
"Don't," she says.
"I'm going to."
She looks at the back of Maksim's headrest. "Victor."
"I want more of you," I say. Simply. "I want more than an alley and a hallway and conversations that get interrupted. I want—" I stop. Consider.
She turns to watch me as I search for words. I can feel it.
"I want to know who you are," I say. "All of it. The parts you've shown me and the parts you haven't."
"That's not something I give people," she says. “It isn’t safe.”
"I know you think that," I say. "But I’m asking you to give it to me anyway."
She is quiet for a moment. “Why? What do you want from me? Not just my name, not who I am, what do you truly want Victor?”
"I want everything," I say. "The rest is just logistics. I want you."
She stares at me. Then she makes a sound that is almost a laugh and turns back to the window. I let her have the silence because we are pulling up to the building. Evie stirs against the glass as the car slows.
Mr. Roberts is in the lobby when we enter.
This does not surprise me. Mr. Roberts is always in the lobby, which suggests either very good instincts or a comprehensive lack of anything else to do, or both.
He sees Evie first, and his face lights up; he offers Alex a similar expression, and then he sees me behind her, and his face does something else entirely, which is the particular delight of a man watching something he predicted arriving right on schedule.
"There she is," he says to Evie. "All in one piece."
"I’m fine," Evie confirms, dropping her bag on the lobby floor to hug him. "I wasn't scared."
"Course not," he says, over her head, winking at Alex, who gives him a look.
"Victor." He extends his hand to me. "Glad you were around tonight."
"So am I," I say.
"Funny how that works," he says, "Alex — since the power's back on — I made some food. Plenty for four."
"Mr. Roberts—"
"I'll get the bowls," he says, already moving toward his apartment. "Victor, you'll stay. Evie, come help an old man with the bread."
Evie looks at Alex. Alex looks at me. I look at neither of them and follow Mr. Roberts because the invitation has already been given, the food already exists, and some forces in the world are simply more efficient than resistance.
Alex follows. She sits across from me at Mr. Roberts's small kitchen table with her soup and her wariness and her jaw set in the way it sets when she has decided to endure something, and Evie sits between us and talks to Mr. Roberts about the friend's building and the transformer sound and the specific quality of Lily's sleeping face, and I eat and listen and watch Alex.
"Victor," Evie says, turning to me with the directness she applies to most things. "Did you know our building has a loose step on the third floor landing?"
"Fourth one from the top," I say. "I've been meaning to tell Mr. Roberts."
She blinks. "You counted them."
"I count a lot of things,” I say with a shrug. “It’s a habit."
She looks at me for a moment, still surprised.
"Me too," she says. Then she goes back to eating her food, satisfied that she isn’t the only one to do such things.
Mr. Roberts catches my eye across the table and raises his eyebrows approximately two millimeters, which is the most expressive thing I have seen him do. I look at my bowl and say nothing.
Evie brings it up on Sunday. I hear it through the remaining device — I removed two of the three, my compromise to Alex’s request, the kitchen and the living room, but the one behind the bookshelf I left.
I hear her voice from the kitchen while Alex is making coffee, the particular energy of a child who has been building toward a request and has decided now is the perfect moment to pounce.
"I want to go to Navy Pier," she says. "Before it gets too cold. This week."
"This week is work," Alex says.
"You have Tuesday off."
A pause. "How do you know I have Tuesday off?"
"You put it on the fridge calendar," Evie says. "In green. Green means you have the day off."
Another pause, longer.
"Fine," Alex says. "Tuesday. Navy Pier."
"Can we go on the Ferris wheel?"
"We can go on the Ferris wheel."
I close the laptop, noting the plans on my own calendar beside my desk.
On Tuesday, I find them at Navy Pier at two in the afternoon. Not by accident, of course, and judging by the look Alex gives me, she knows it.
"Victor." Evie says my name like it's a fact she's pleased about. "Did you follow us here?"
"I was already here," I say, which is technically true in the sense that I arrived before them.
She considers me for a moment. Then she holds out the chocolate thing in her hand. "Do you want some?"
"No, thank you."
"It's really good."
"I'll take your word for it."
Alex has turned around by now. She is looking at me with an expression I have seen before — anger mixed with curiosity.
She is wearing a red scarf that I have not seen before, and her hair is down.
I note the way that the cold has put color in her cheeks, and realize I could truly look at her for a long time and not get tired of looking.
"You're not here by accident," she accuses, “are you?”
"I'm here," I say, avoiding the question. "Does the reason matter?"
She looks at me for a long moment. Behind her, the lake is gray and cold and enormous, and the pier is busy with people who have decided the November cold is not a reason to stay home, and Evie is eating her chocolate thing and watching us with the patient attention of a scientist observing an experiment she has a hypothesis about.
"Evie," Alex says, without taking her eyes off me. "Go look at the thing you wanted to look at."
"The lights display," Evie says.
"The lights display."
"You'll come find me?"
"In ten minutes," Alex says.
Before she can take more than two steps, Alex’s hand closes lightly around the back of her coat.
“Wait.”
Evie stops, turning back to look at her. “Alex, I’ll be fine.”
“I know,” Alex says. “Humor me.”
Her eyes move past Evie, scanning the pier and our surroundings with the reflexive precision of a woman who doesn’t trust open spaces easily.
I follow her gaze and find Maksim exactly where I anticipated he would be, leaning near one of the closed kiosks with his hands in his pockets, watching the crowd, looking as casual as possible.