Page 8 of Price of Angels

“I really should–”

“Go home, is what you should do. Go, shoo.” She made a waving motion that left Holly smiling.

“Thank you.” Holly was exhausted, if she let herself think about it. Maybe that’s why Michael’s refusal was so devastating: she was just too tired to handle it right now.

On impulse, she pulled the other girl into a fast hug. “Thank you,” she repeated. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Carly snorted, like she knew. As Holly went to punch out, Carly called after her. “And don’t you waste one tear on that weirdo loser. There’s a million other guys better than him. You deserve better.”

When her back was turned, Holly felt her mouth twist in a wry grimace.Carly, if only you knew, she thought.I don’t deserve anyone.

The owner, Jeff, wasn’t in tonight, so there was no one to protest her punching out early and stowing her apron in her cubby. Her jacket was one she’d bought at a secondhand store here in Knoxville, her first week in town, with a crumpled wad of cash. It was brown leather, with zippered pockets and feminine darts at the waist, a collar that snapped across her throat if she chose to fasten it there. Very appropriate for a waitress trying to make friends with a biker, she thought. But it was hopelessly little protection against this December cold snap; the wind cut right through it. She pulled it on and zipped it up, as she stood in the break room, because that was all she had. At Target, she’d bought a child-size pair of cheap red cotton gloves, and she tugged them on too, along with her five dollar matching red scarf, which she knotted tightly under her chin.

She left Bell Bar via the rear door, the one that fed into the alley, and the coldness outside snatched the breath from her lungs, squeezed tight at her sinuses and gave her an instant headache.

The alley was narrow and more than a little slimy. The one good thing about the cold was that it had pushed back the normally strong stench of the dumpsters. The overhead security lamp offered precious little in the way of light, and the shadows lay thick across the asphalt, most of them human-shaped and misleading.

Holly was glad she hadn’t walked to work. In the small grubby lot behind Bell Bar, her car waited.

It wasn’t hers, per se, but she’d been slick enough to swipe it, the day she left home. Her old home. And she’d had the thoughtfulness to have it repainted. She didn’t like to dwell on that particular transaction, was just glad for the halfway decent coat of new black paint on the old, formerly red Chevelle.

Her keys made the familiar jangle as she unlocked the door. She scanned the shadows of the lot, the spots of deep dark between the other cars as she opened the door and slid inside. Thump – she locked the door the second it was shut. The engine turned over with a conspicuous growl that was too loud. Nothing to be done for it. The thing was a classic – 1967 – and it was a deep-throated, proud machine.

It was a short drive to her apartment, and an even shorter walk to the door. She rented a room on the third floor of an old converted Victorian estate, the manse carved up into four units, plus her attic loft. The driveway was a wide circular pass that went all the way around the house, passing in front of the carriage house where she had a storage locker, and out on the other side, leaving plenty of parking room for the five tenants.

Holly clutched her purse to her chest, keys clenched tight in her fist as she skirted the heavy shade trees and power walked up to the front porch. It was so dark. Shadows everywhere: between the shrubs, under the thick oak limbs, in the corners of the wraparound porch, lurking in the eaves, with their contrasting black trim on the gingerbread. She hated nighttime, hated everything about it. She felt small, vulnerable, and exposed. For all that it hid the demons of her imagination, it seemed to put her on display, her footfalls too loud, her breath pluming like smoke. She waited, every night, for the life she’d fled to catch up to her, to literally spring from the shadows and dig claws into her.

That didn’t happen tonight, though. Tonight, she made it to the door, unlocked it, slipped inside. The main floor of the house smelled like burnt cookies: old Mrs. Chalmers baking again. She heard the dim thump of music: Eric putting together another demo album for his band.

The front hall ran straight back to the sun porch, the first floor units branching off to the side, light shining dimly through the glazed glass transoms and door insets. Holly took a moment to breathe in the musty scents of the old mansion, the tang of beeswax, the dry smell of dust, letting her pulse slow. Then she started up the staircase, hand on the smooth waxed bannister, the steps creaking and groaning beneath her work sneakers.

The second staircase was narrower, tucked away in a corner of the second floor hallway. Formerly used by the servants that lived in the attic, it gave Holly private access to her loft. She let herself in, welcomed by the lamps she’d left on, and set about the business of engaging all her locks.

She’d gone to Home Depot the day she’d moved in, and bought an assortment of locks and security chains. Eric the bass player downstairs had helped her install them, more than a little curious as to her reasoning.

“I want to feel safe,” she’d explained, and left it at that.

She didn’t feel safe, even with them, but it was better than not having them.

Only once she was all locked in could she release a deep breath and let herself slump back against the door, enjoying the sight of this, her first place that was hers and hers alone. A place that she’d decorated. A place where she slept with the foreign and wonderful knowledge that no one would wake her roughly in the night. A place lived-in and loved. She’d told herself not to fall in love, because she had no idea how long she could stay here, but it had happened anyway. She loved these walls, and this space.

There were five windows, Gothic dormers that projected out along the roof, creating deep ledges, one of which she’d filled with a tiny fake Christmas tree, draped with colored lights. The ceiling was sloped, angling down in the four corners from a central ridge. It created a cozy, cave-like loft, full of charm.

Her furniture had come with the place: the iron framed bed under one eave; the sun-faded, but clean peach sofa and loveseat; the patchwork chair and footstool, the rug with its brown and cream swirls and loops. There was a dated, but serviceable TV, hooked up to the satellite that fed the whole house. A shabby-chic wall of corrugated tin provided sliding barn door access to the bathroom in one corner. There was a bookcase loaded with dusty old volumes, left by the various tenants over the years, Mrs. Chalmers had explained. The kitchenette boasted a narrow fridge, sink, oven with cooktop, one small counter and three cabinets. Original knotted pine floors ran the length of the apartment, smooth and scalloped from years’ worth of tread.

Holly unwound her scarf and gloves, left them on the pegs by the door with her jacket, and went first to the Christmas tree that filled the window and half the apartment with the multicolored glow of the cheery lights. She turned on the TV, found a channel running sitcom reruns. Walked to the bed and sat down on its edge, on the faded peach and mint green quilt.

Her legs were covered in chill bumps and vaguely blue thanks to the silk boxing shorts she had to wear to work. Some nights she folded up a pair of jeans to take in her purse, but other nights she didn’t bother.

She chafed her shins with her hands, bringing the circulation back to them, letting the Christmas lights and the happy murmur of the TV soothe her, warm her shaking cold insides. Usually, just those small things were enough to push the shadows back, such small comforts she’d never known before.

But tonight, her heart was heavy, and it would take more than small comforts to assuage its hurts.

She clicked on the bedside lamp and then reached for the snaps of the leather cuff on her left wrist. She had vague tan lines, from September, when she’d first found them at a thrift store and started wearing the bracelets. The skin they covered was milky white by contrast, and the old rope scar had been angered by the cold night air, red and raw-looking under the lamp. She massaged it, though it didn’t hurt; willed it away, though she knew it would stay forever. Off came the other cuff and she set them aside, on the nightstand. Her shields against all the questions she never wanted to try and answer.

Her journal was in the top drawer, and she withdrew it now, the small notebook with the red leather cover. It was the kind with silk ribbon ties, which she always knotted carefully after each use. A symbolic way to keep the words safe, hidden. God help her if anyone ever found this book, but she had to keep it. She had to put her observationssomewhere, or go completely mad at last.

She unknotted the ribbon, turned to the most recent page, reached for the pen in the bottom of the drawer.

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