Page 106 of The Quiet Tenant

Fuck.

Someone’s here.

Shut the door. Open it again, just a crack. Just enough to peer.

It’s her.

Goddamn it, Emily. God fucking damn it.

She’s snooping. Of course she is.

The gun weighs heavily against your waistband. You can feel it leaving indents in your abdomen, metal carving itself into flesh.

If she’s snooping, then she’s bound to leave soon. People who snoop can’t afford to linger.

She runs her fingers against the back of the couch. Lifts a paperback from the coffee table and puts it back. She’s all glossy hair and reddening cheeks, getting warm, you assume, in her white down coat.

Finally, she steps in the direction of the bathroom.

Just as she’s about to disappear, the front door opens. Shit. Shit.Shit.

Your mind leaps to the boxes downstairs, to the magazines you left behind. To your unloaded gun. Is it too late to go back for bullets?

A pulse in your throat. Your hands, damp. Slippery. You can’t do this with slippery hands. Maybe you can’t do this at all.

A gust of cold air. A breath held and released.

It’s Cecilia.

Emily jumps. Cecilia, too. They’ve startled each other, just like they’ve startled you. All three of you in places you’re not supposed to be.

“Oh,” Cecilia says. “Hi.”

Emily says hi back. “I was just going to the bathroom,” she says, the tone of an apology.

Cecilia nods. “Cool. I…” She hesitates. “I just needed a break.”

This is good for you. You didn’t expect her to slip away from the party so soon. You were going to wait, back in the bedroom, gun in hand. But now. Now she’s here. Now you can proceed.

There is the thump of Cecilia’s steps as she goes upstairs, then nothing. You listen more, an undetected silhouette through a cracked door, a ghost in a haunted house.

Inside, silence. Outside, the muffled echo of voices, the thrum of a pop song.

Time to come out.

You shut the door but do not lock it. It is an act of faith, sowing the seed of disturbance in his world. A reckoning, too: You do not need to leave his things how you found them. You are not coming back, no matter how this ends.

One, two, three steps, then a force—a burning regret, an invisible elastic pulling you back to the basement, making you wish you’d never stepped from behind the door.

You have made a mistake. You miscalculated. You misheard. You messed up. She’s still here, in the living room. Illicit and alive and pretty, with two eyes that land on you and widen slightly.

“Oh. Hey,” she says.

You give her a “Hey” back, because what else is there to say?

“I was just looking for the bathroom,” she tells you.

You point at the door behind her.

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