Page 4 of Antihero
She gives me a soft smile, a flash of large grey-blue eyes, and her cheeks pink again. I leave. Her jacket is hanging outside. I glance back through the door as she sets her bucket down. Her back is to me. Her honey-coloured hair has frizzed around her face with the humidity, and she wipes at her brow with the back of a gloved hand, blue and shiny with bubbling detergent.
I don't know why I do it. Force of habit, maybe. Sticky fingers are hard to keep clean.
I slip my hand into the pocket of her blue polyurethane jacket, which has 'Property of Eternal Light' stamped on the inside. I come out with a ring crowded with a dozen keys, and remove one of three identical ones. It would surprise you how many people keep their 'spare' keys with their mains, and I assume it’s the same case here.
I figure it can’t hurt to have a key to the asylum. Not for anything untoward.
Just in case.
***
I see the cleaner more after that day. Like she's always been there, and I just wasn’t looking until now.
It’s not even just her looks; although she seems prettier each time I catch sight of her. There's just something about her, like an aura, even when she's doing something as simple as dustingcobwebs. I can't put my finger on it, and I certainly shouldn't put a finger, or anything else,anywhereon her.
We exchange looks and smiles over the next week or two. I know I'd be an idiot to take it any further than that. I do nothing as contrived as being shirtless when I know she’s coming—even if I long to hear her make that noise again, to give myself just that bit of satisfaction. To take something for later, when I'm feeling cooped up, and exercise isn't diminishing my frustration.
When I go to leave my room and let her clean, two weeks from the day she started haunting my waking hours, she asks what I'm reading. I turn back in the doorway. "Uh, just something from the town library." I flip the book to check the cover. “‘One Hundred Years of Solitude'.”
She smiles, ducking her gaze. Her hair is thick and wavy, and pulled back into a taut braid, though the walk up here seems to have tugged frizzy strands free. "The library. I've read every book there. I'm afraid if you stay here long enough, you'll find they don't get new books often. But that’s a good one."
The book is old and worn. Maybe by her. "Well," I smile. "I suppose I ought to read slower and savour it."
She laughs, looking at the floor as she does. I finger the pages, not sure what to say, how to speak to her for longer, and why I want to. She seems much too innocent, too pure, for something like me.
"I'm Paige, by the way," she says. I already knew that, had spied it on her name badge pinned to the shapeless white shirt.Paige M.
I open my mouth, but a noise in the corridor that I’m half backed out into draws my attention.
The main security guard for this ward—a tall guy named Declan—who should be doing the circuit patrol, is instead standing in the my neighbour's doorway. He seems to tower over the small, skittish woman named Beth. He's casual, leaning onher doorframe, arms crossed like he's got nowhere in the world to be. Beth has pressed herself as far back as she can into the opposite side of the frame. Her hands clutched white-knuckled over what looks to be some sewing.
"Come on. Why don't you knit me some socks or somethin’, huh? A littlethank youfor keeping this place so safe."
She clears her throat, but her voice still doesn’t strengthen. "I can’t… "
The psychiatrist, in her neat black pencil skirt and a binder under her arm, appears at the nearer end of the corridor, her small heels clacking on the tile floor. Beth's eyes widen in something like relief as Charlotte comes level with her and gestures her ahead for their appointment.
“…John, isn't it?”
Coming back to myself, I realise I've been staring off into space while Paige stood there waiting.
“Uh, yeah.” I clear my throat, stepping back out of the room, more conscious than ever of not crowding her like some predator. “I'll leave you it.”
Turning away, I leave with the impression that she wanted to say more.
Chapter three
The Wraith of White Rock struck again last night.
Fred Whitloc—another man in his late fifties—found garrotted in his bed. This news circulates, even to the asylum, since Whitloc used to be deputy mayor of the island some two decades ago. The Wraith sure seems interested in high-profile types. I shove any interest in the story deep, deep down. This isn’t for me. I’d thought to isolate myself from all of this. But, as it turns out, there are killers everywhere you go.
Once I find myself lingering in the dining hall after dinner, ear tuned to conversations floating around about the attack—how he was naked, the window was open, a possible forced entry but no clear sign of him trying to get away—I realise I need to remove myself.
I throw on a pair of sweatpants and a singlet, and go for a run. No clear direction in mind. I end up in Kidswal anyway, huffing and soaked from a mixture of sweat and the wet-air feel of the low cloud hanging over the island. But at least I’m no longer thinking about the damned Wraith.
When I spot Paige, the self-preserving part of me nearly does an about-face before she sees me. However all the other, less-preserving parts make me approach her as she lingers outside a shop window. Since I’ve never seen her in anything but bleached cleaning whites, I falter at the sight of her now. Her hair is down, glossy and wavy, almost to her waist, cascading over the turned-down hood of her oversized jacket. The first thing my mind does is imagine what it would be like to run my fingers through that hair, or grab it just a little too roughly. I push that image away, cursing myself.
The things I'm feeling for her are definitelynotjust some weird fetish I didn't know I had for cleaners then. How problematic.
