Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
DOWN TO THE STUDS
HUDSON
All the paperwork was submitted for both of us, pretty soon after we said I do.
We checked that off the list, immediately.
I’m the only one keeping the list. She has access to the shared note that I keep in my phone of all the items we need to satisfy, but I doubt she’s ever opened it.
I’d even synced her calendar to mine, which was a bold and useless move considering she viewed the concept of ‘time’ as a loose suggestion rather than a linear reality.
Looking back, I’m lucky she showed up for our wedding.
The only clock she’s aware of now, the countdown doomsday divorce clock, that she’ll occasionally ask about.
Curious what’s next on the list of requirements, and how much longer we stay together.
She stays here every night, which has been helpful more than once when Mr. Ambrose knocked on the door first thing in the morning, which you can’t convince me wasn’t a tactic. Though now, I think he just likes coming by for tea. Which they do twice a week.
This morning she’s dressed like she’s going to court or a funeral, she does that.
To her, they might feel like the same thing.
She dresses like she thinks she is supposed to, consulting Paola often, as someone she thinks knows the ropes.
As Louisa is trying to play a part she hasn’t quite rehearsed in a costume that doesn’t fit.
Sometimes it’s endearing, like how a kitten trying to roar is endearing, but in every other way, it makes my chest ache with aggravation.
This morning I grabbed a patchwork cardigan on our way out the door, just so there could be some of her, even in the most drab of situations.
We step back into the apartment, our trip to Immigration this morning to submit some additional paperwork.
Nothing substantial, but I wasn’t going to send her alone.
Not a chance in hell. We sat there in the waiting room, she said hi to Deborah, who processed our papers last time.
Despite the women’s effort to not remember anything or anyone about this job, she did wave to Louisa.
We got in and out quickly, got an official agent assigned.
We weren't gone long, but the entry hall still smells like her when we get back.
The perfume and shampoo combination of fresh fruit and baked goods.
Lingering from when she left just hours before, waiting for her to return.
Who am I kidding, waiting to fucking haunt me.
“Well,” I say, checking my watch because one of us has to acknowledge it’s the middle of the day and time is very real. “I need to get back to the office.” She makes a face at that, disappointed in a way I wasn’t expecting. “What?”
“Nothing, I just was thinking.” She purses her lips to keep them from transforming her face into a smile. And I am a fucking sucker for it.
“I like thinking,” I say. What I really mean is I like hearing what you’ve been thinking, which sometimes she does without me asking.
She releases some of the tension in her mouth, letting the happiness that bubbles out of her escape.
She’s balancing to take off her black buckled heel, so I offer my hand for stability.
Which she takes without any caution. Just naturally slips her hand into mine.
Even though she doesn’t say anything, there’s a peace offering in it, as we’ve found in many small things recently.
I think she’s beginning to realize just how much I’m willing to do to stabilize any part of her life she needs.
“You should play hooky from work,” she says, like it's an entirely viable option.
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t,” she presses. “I met your boss, and he loovveeeed me, I bet he’d be okay if you said you needed to spend the day with your wife.
” She emphasizes the word, and she’s not wrong.
Arthur was enchanted by her and has made more than one comment about how he’d like to see more of her.
I do have things to get to, work to do. But I can always do that tonight in bed when I am stuck staring in a game of ‘don’t blink’ with the ceiling, unable to sleep.
She sees my hesitation, that I’m thinking about it, and uses this as the final strike.
“You’re not that important, Hudson. The world won’t stop spinning if you're offline for a few hours.”
“What did you have in mind,” I concede.
“Well, you know what’s at stake for me, husband,” she stresses comically, like it will help her make her point.
“How about you show me yours?” She can see the look on my face, as her cheeks bloom pink, flushed.
“What you plan to do with the apartment upstairs,. After all, it will be our home,” she clarifies, not to imply anything more.
It’s strange for someone to express interest in me, besides Grams and Lucas that is.
But she does, always has. Asking questions with such genuine curiosity of knowing someone.
Be it the doorman, whose name I learned is Oscar, or to the fruit-stand man, Ramon, she tells hello whenever she walks down the street.
And now, just by knowing her, they say hello to me, too.
“Fine,” I say in a deep, resigned register. “But if I get fired, or the world stops spinning, we’re going to have to downsize.”
“Deal,” she chirps. “We’ve got a perfectly good one-bedroom right next door.” I can’t believe she would mean it, we might be living together, but we don’t even share a bathroom. She keeps herself sequestered to the other side of the apartment, we just meet in the middle for dinner or details.
She kicks off the second heel and stands a few inches shorter, looking up at me with that terrifyingly bright curiosity. “Finally,” she says, slipping her feet into a pair of Birkenstocks that were by the door instead.
We take the elevator up to the eighth floor and walk down the identical hallway, right to apartment 8A. It has a lockbox on it, but I know the code, unlocking the door, and pushing it open into a shell of a space with the smell of drywall and dust.
Right now, it’s a hollowed-out ribcage, just a skeleton of wood framing and studs, waiting for me to build its heart.
Louisa wastes no time as she drifts through the open floor plan like she’s already haunting the place, something I know she will do long after this is all done.
But there is something giddy about the way she moves through, imaginary.
“What’s this going to be?” she says as she stands in what used to be an office. There is still some framing of the former walls, a pair of French doors standing where they once served a purpose, but she’s standing in what I’m planning to be the new primary bedroom.
“Well, from here.” I take steps towards her, grabbing her hand to drag her with me towards the large arched windows at the opposite end of the room. “To about here,” I say, “will become the main bedroom.”
Light floods the space and washes over her, casting our shadows long against the unfinished floors. Shadows of us that stretch and appear closer than we could be. Maybe in the alternate universe they exist in, they find happiness in each other more than we do. Or at least, it’s reciprocated.
“Wow,” she says. She seems to realize her hand is still in mine, slowly pulling it away as she opens the window and leans her head down. I reach out and bunch the fabric at her back in my hand, holding her in with my feet planted firmly in this future I plan to build.
She drifts back into the center of the main room, spinning slowly, looking perfectly ironic against the unfinished industrial grit.
“This could be a library wall,” she says, her voice echoing through the empty space.
She traces a finger along a support beam as if she could already see the mahogany shelves that would be there.
“It could have one of those rolling ladders, I think I’d spend half my life just sliding back and forth. ”
She can see beyond the layout of the rooms, but as she looks around, she’s able to see more than even I can.
She does this with most things, most people.
I watch her with my hands shoved deep in my pockets.
“Ladders are dangerous, you’d probably break your neck trying to reach for something.
” Doing what she did, and not calling attention to the reality that by the time the bookshelves are built, the ink on our divorce will be long dry.
“Ladders are fineee,” she stresses, like I’m dismantling her dream.
“Fine, then you are the danger.” I know how true it is.
She rolls her eyes, as if our first encounter isn’t confirmation of her clumsiness.
No doubt our dynamic has shifted, almost uncomfortably, in a way that leaves us both unsure of the roles we are supposed to fill.
Besides husband and wife. But this is a moment where we both are seeing flickers of that same friction coming through.
Igniting something familiar, and comfortable for each of us.
She spins on her heel, and in doing so, catches it on the unfinished floor and nearly goes down. I jump forward to grab her hand, to stop her from falling.
“You had to be right, didn’t you,” she says with sarcasm.
“You had to prove my point,” I reply.
“It’s the shoes,” she says as she kicks the sandals off her feet, off to the side where she will surely forget them.
“Louisa, don’t. You could step on something.”
“Why are you such a grumpy old bugger?”
“Would you look at that, the Brit has made an appearance,” I say with a laugh, and she smiles at it, as she hops off to another area definitely riddled with old nails, dust, and chips of plaster.
I don’t know what’s on the floor up here, but I know her bare feet shouldn’t find out.
“Seriously,” I say. As I pick up her shoes from where she had kicked them off.
“When was the last time you even had a tetanus shot?”