Page 7 of The Quiet Tenant

Aidan Thomas looked up as if he had just noticed my presence. I wanted to catch my words, still hanging in the air between us, and swallow them back. You learn to hate the sound of your own voice at an early age, when you’re a girl.

I waited for him to give me a distracted nod and hurry back to the kitchen, to humor me as most adults did. But Aidan Thomas wasn’t like other adults. He wasn’t like anyone.

Aidan Thomas smiled. He winked. And he said in a low, gravellyvoice that hit me somewhere deep, a part of my body I hadn’t known existed until that moment: “You’re very welcome.”

It was nothing and it was everything. It was basic politeness and it was endless kindness. A halo of light landing on a hidden girl, plucking her out of the shadows, allowing her to be seen.

The thing I needed the most. Something it hadn’t even occurred to me to crave.

—

NOW I WATCHas Aidan Thomas is frozen mid-sip, gazing at me through his glass. I am no longer the hidden girl, waiting for men to cast a light on her. I am a woman who has just walked into a halo of her own making.

He reaches over. Something shifts. A disturbance in the world, tectonic plates bumping against each other, miles below the Hudson River. His fingers brush against mine and his thumb grazes the inside of my wrist, and my heart—my heart, it’s not even pounding at this point, it’s just gone gone gone gone gone, can’t handle it.

“Thank you,” he says. “This was very…Thank you.” A squeeze, a jolt of something indecipherable and priceless, from him to me.

He lets go of my hand, tilts his head back to empty his drink. His neck, his whole body lean, muscular, a smooth confidence.

“How much do I owe you?”

I take the empty glass and rinse it behind the bar. Keep my hands occupied so he can’t see them shake.

“You know what? Don’t worry about it. This one’s on the house.”

He takes out his wallet. “Come on.”

“It’s fine. I promise. You can…”

You can buy me one soon and we’ll call it evenis what I’d say if his wife hadn’t died like five minutes ago. Instead, I unfold a clean bar mop and begin shining his glass.

“Next time.”

He smiles and returns the wallet to his pocket, then gets up to put on his parka. I turn to set the glass on the shelf behind me. My arm stops halfway. Yes, I am jittery and my face is burning, but something just happened. I took a chance and it worked. I spoke and no disaster ensued.

Maybe I dare, just a little bit more.

I turn around, lean against the counter, pretend to tighten the lid on a jar of pickled onions.

“Where are you headed next?” I ask, as if small talk were a staple of our shared vocabulary.

Aidan Thomas zips up his parka, puts the trapper hat back on, and picks up his duffel bag. It settles against his hip with a metallic clink.

“Just somewhere I can get some thinking done.”

CHAPTER 5

The woman in the shed

You wait for dinner, for splashes of tepid water. For anything. Even the groan of zippers being pulled up and down.

He doesn’t show.

You picture the shed, hidden in the trees. It has to be fall by now. He took away the fan and brought in the heater a couple of weeks ago. You close your eyes. What you remember of this time of the year: short days, the sun setting at six o’clock. Naked branches against the turning sky. What you picture: In the distance, hidden from you, his house. Yellow squares of light at the windows, orange leaves scattered across the yard. Maybe hot tea. Maybe apple cider doughnuts.

In the distance, the purr of his truck. He is here, on the property. Living his life. Tending to his needs. Not yours, though. You wait and you wait and still he doesn’t come.

You try to meditate the hunger pangs away. You flip through the books he brought you, taken to the shed in no particular order. Stephen King’sIt.A tired paperback ofA Tree Grows in Brooklyn.Mary Higgins Clark’sLoves Music, Loves to Dance.The books came used. Dog-eared pages, notes in the margins. You asked him one day, a long time ago, if they were his. He shook his head. More trinkets, you figured. Things he took from the ones who weren’t as lucky as you.

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