Chapter 22 #2
“I got one when I was a child, I’ll be fine,” she says as if it's that simple. She just tiptoes herself farther away from me, almost dancer-like to music she has playing in her brain. With her Birkenstocks in hand, I follow her into the next room, or what will be the next room when there are walls.
“Well, you’re supposed to get them every ten years, so be careful,” I stress.
“Who says?!” she turns to face me, as if I’m making it up for my own health.
“I don’t know, medical professionals?” She just shrugs it off, unbothered by the fear of lockjaw from stepping on a rusty nail. Do I know if that’s a legitimate concern? No. But it's categorized as one of those fear-mongering things Grams told me as a boy, that now I think about more than I should.
She pivots her direction, and the conversation, to an area that would be ideal for a large closet.
But she has other ideas. “And this,” she raises her arms above her head, making a gesture and swirling the air around her.
“This will be my recording studio. I can actually have one with a window so I don’t get claustrophobic, but it would be a proper one, actually soundproof.
You. Are. Welcome,” she points her finger at me with each word.
The sound that lands at her feet is not a laugh as much as a loud, disbelieving ‘Ha!’ I lean against a stack of drywall, and try to look bored while my pulse hammers in my chest to a rhythm that is becoming increasingly hard to ignore. One I don’t really want to ignore.
“Closet not cutting it?” I ask smoothly, pretending entirely I have not heard her paint herself into every corner of this space.
“Well,” she begins with her hand perched on her hip. The ruby sitting on her finger catches my attention every time she moves. “I’d like not to have any more noise complaints filed against me.”
My shoulders drop the smallest amount. I did do that, more than once. Each time the complaints were dismissed, likely because while I only have enemies on the co-op board, in her short time living here, she made actual friends.
“I haven’t made one since you moved in, and you know it.
” Which is true. In the beginning I thought staying away and just having someone else handle it was the best option.
Until it turned into this challenge between us.
This warring dynamic that had us nose to nose once a week.
“Why was recording at a reasonable hour never an option?” I prompt, knowing full well that if that were the case, we likely wouldn’t be here.
I wouldn’t have, well, I wouldn’t have done a lot.
“I was still working at The Double Shot,” she begins. And I see her shift her face, knowing that since her visa, she is in limbo in more ways than one. “I also work better at night sometimes, because some scenes are just night scenes, ya know?”
“I really don’t, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”
“Like, a meet cute, sure, that can be recorded sun up. But when he’s got her on her knees and is slamming himself into the back of her throat, that’s just not a daytime scene…”
I choke on air, or my thoughts, or whatever the fuck it was that she just said like it was a completely normal string of words in casual conversation. “You okay over there?” She cocks her head to the side as she crosses her arms in mockery.
“No,” I say, and I don’t think she realizes how honest I’m being. “What do other voice actors do, torture their neighbors like you do?”
“Believe it or not, my goal was never to torture you. At least not in the beginning. But in my current place, or—” She pauses, realizing she doesn’t actually live in her ‘current place.’ “Well, in 7A, the closet is the only space that actually deadens the echoes. Ideally, an actual booth is the way to go. But that’s a big purchase, and I didn’t think I had the space without totally rearranging my furniture, so I’ve made due with a bunch of heavy fabric and a prayer.
” I look at the raw space, imagining her tucked away in a corner of my life.
“I’d say you’ve more than made due, because I’ve heard every ‘oh god’ you’ve prayed since you’ve moved in.” She takes steps towards me, still on her toes, because in her mind it's less surface area of risk for stepping on a nail.
“And I’ve heard every one of yours.” Her tone is harsh as she meets my gaze.
“Did you think that wall was one-way? It’s not just your late-night vacuuming I can hear, Hudson.
” The warmth she’d brought into this room, the light she’d poured into the conversation with her, imagining a future we both know we are on a countdown to conclude, dims. I don’t respond.
“Right” is all she says. Her smile turns brittle, and I watch it crack into the disdain that I can still elicit.
“God forbid I disturb the activities of your bedsheets, the way you enjoy interrupting my actual job.”
The air is stripped, the draft in this open space becomes the harsh reality of who we are.
She grabs her shoes from my hand, and stomps off towards the door.
Sawdust and silence left in her wake, and the incredibly painful fucking irony that once again, I am the successful author of my own demise, watching her breathe in the dust of a home that will never be ours.
Some people are their own worst enemy, she is when it comes to managing anything that requires her opening a mailbox.
But me? I am the consistent conductor of my own contempt in a way far worse.
Managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of a genuine moment between us. Every. Single. Time.
I watch her as she walks away, each step purposeful and strong, moving her farther and farther from me, with an angry stride probably running through the list of ways I’m the asshole she believes I am. No amount of fake interior design, hell even a fake marriage, can change her mind.
It’s the tiniest, microscopic stutter in her next step that has me narrowing my eyes to focus more closely. Her rhythmic, steady pace turned to a lopsided shuffle, not putting pressure on her left foot as she hurries out the door, and I behind her.
“Louisa,” I call after her. But she tosses a wave over her shoulder at me as I follow her out the door in a few long steps.
She’s pressing the ‘DOWN’ button ferociously, trying to call the elevator more quickly, but that's not how it works. The black dress she’s wearing is a shroud to the pleasant afternoon we just killed. I killed.
When the elevator doesn’t arrive with the speed she had willed, she turns to march down the hall towards the stairs. Just one flight down, under normal circumstances, would be no big deal. In this case? Still fucking barefoot? Absolutely not.
Her hand is on the doorknob to the stairwell, but I stop her. I see the way she is shifting her weight. She's uncomfortable. “Would you slow down,” I say. It’s not a question because I don’t want her answer. “You’re limping.”
“Fine, okay? I stepped on something. Do you need to be right about everything?”
“Yes,” I say. Which isn’t actually true, but in this case, had she just listened to me and not traipsed around without shoes on in a literal construction zone, this wouldn't have happened.
“Congratulations. You win. You were right.”
“Show me,” I command, putting my hand on her waist and spinning her to face the wall.
I reach down and grab her by the ankle, she bends her knee and exposes the bottom of her foot to me.
We’re in the hallway of the eighth floor, and if anyone were to see this, I wouldn’t hurt our ‘we’re a real couple’ story. But it also wouldn’t make sense.
With her foot in my hand as she balances like a flamingo, I see it, the splinter that looks to be about a half-inch deep into her skin. I press my thumbnail into the base of it, to see if I can push it to the top of the skin, but it’s really in there.
“Can you walk?” I ask as I lower her foot back to the ground.
“I was walking just fine before you stopped me,” she snaps.
“Liar.”
She moves to take a step, a determined, painful step, and I see the wince she tries to swallow.
There’s no blood, but it’s deep and could get infected if she doesn’t get it out.
No matter how much she wants to pretend not to be bothered, the way she curls her toes and pinches her face tells me everything.
“Come on,” I say, scooping her into my arms. It might seem dramatic for a splinter, but pain is pain, and having her this close, tucked against the steady, betraying beat of my heart, it’s clear I have agreed to a different kind of pain entirely.
As I carry her a handful of steps to the elevator, I can feel her body relax the smallest amount, but I don’t let myself imagine it’s comfort.
I’m staring at my own reflection in the mirror of the elevator door, the reflection a mockery of who we are, as she softens in my hold.
My face remains a mask of stoic indifference, even with the urge to drop my lips to her temple, just once, just to see if she tastes like the sunlight in the life she imagined for us upstairs.
The door retracts with a soft ding, revealing Mrs. Saraceno, staring at us, a gargoyle clutching a grocery bag, a small fluff of a yapping dog at her feet, and a look like she’s been waiting for a reason to be offended. Which from our history, I usually give her.
“Newlyweds,” she mutters under her breath.
It sounds more like a curse than a congratulations, and the sick, twisted truth is how accurate it feels.
I have been bewitched, and in this brass lined box, lowering us just the one floor, it's the jolt of genuine terror that I never want to be released from this spell.