Welcome to Fear City, page 15
“Is the front door still broken? I’ll come up—”
Another pop and fizzle from the speaker. “Hold on! I’m coming down.”
Another couple seconds and she heard someone thunder down the stairs. Ilan came through the vestibule, opened the door and, instead of letting her in, came outside.
“Let’s get outta here,” he said instead of hello.
“Uh—yeah. Okay.”
Ilan nodded. He smiled at her (his stupid beautiful smile), but it lasted only a second and Sylvie noticed one eye looked a little bloodshot. The scent of cigarette smoke rose off him. He hopped down the stoop, casting glances up and down the block as though looking for car traffic on the sidewalk, then kept going east. He didn’t take her hand or even look at her. When he kept going, crossing Fifth Avenue, Sylvie frowned.
“You don’t wanna go back to my place?”
“I need a walk,” he said, at least finally looking at her and realizing she was a good three feet behind him. She couldn’t figure out his expression—it wasn’t sad, but it lived within spitting distance of it. He stopped for a second to let her catch up, but he still hadn’t taken her hand and she began to worry she had misjudged everything between them, somehow, or that maybe he’d come to realize it was a bad idea. Maybe he was worried about their friendship, or maybe he thought she was too weird or too high school. They were only a year apart, but college was the majors, and she was out here in the bush league. The last thing she wanted was to be so white bread that Ed Sullivan would have thought she was cool.
That crush had been a lot more fun the week before.
Then, just like that, he slung his arm over her shoulders, and she breathed out. She didn’t even mind how wet the armpit of his shirt was as it settled on her bare skin, though she wondered how he was already this damp after only a couple blocks. His apartment was stuffy, but this was like he’d gone running.
Well, she supposed, she wasn’t any less gross herself.
Tentatively, because she couldn’t really gauge him, Sylvie slipped her arm around his waist. It was a natural movement, made it easier to walk with the weight of his arm on her. She hooked her thumb into a worn belt loop as though to keep him from drifting off.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They didn’t really have a plan, they just wandered. The more blocks they covered, the easier Ilan stepped and the more he began to sound like his old self. When they reached Broadway, he took her hand and pulled her over to the Strand to look at the carts of used books. She tried to find the strangest titles, the weirdest topics, and he laughed again and held her gaze and she could see, in the sun, that it really didn’t look like he’d slept in days. He tucked her hair behind her ear. His fingers were tobacco-stained.
“You wanna go in?” she asked him.
“Sure.”
She grabbed his waist and pushed him toward the door, sinking her hands into his back pockets to guide him into the store.
Through the displays they walked, parting and reuniting. Sometimes he found something and actually stopped to look. “I already read the book I brought,” he said.
She leaned around him, feeling the warmth of his back against her chest, putting her hand around his waist again as she moved to stand next to him instead. There were some kids in here—she couldn’t be completely rude.
“You only brought one book?”
“I thought I’d be able to watch the tube and listen to music.”
“You need to stay with us. I’m serious. We’ve got a TV, a few stereos, and plenty of books,” she said. She felt the muscles in his back shift with his shrug, and he looked down at her as he put the book away, took her hand, and tugged her along to another aisle.
“Your parents don’t need all that,” he said.
“Well, two of the stereos are mine and Gary’s.”
Ilan laughed. He kept slipping his fingers through her long hair, gathering it loosely in his fist and letting it go, then gathering it again as he looked at titles and read the cover copy. The motion almost stopped her talking, but it was also making her more determined to get him to safety.
“Come on. They won’t care. Seriously. They’ll help you find somewhere else, if you really can’t stand the thought of staying with us.”
“You know that’s not it.”
“I don’t know that, actually.”
“Okay, well, it’s not.”
As Ilan took interest in another book on another shelf, she swept by him again, dragging her hand over his back, hitching her fingers into his shirt. He paused with the book in his hand, and she smiled a little.
“Prove it’s not, then.” She leaned against the shelves, some of the spines shifting beneath her weight, and he put his book away and leaned over her, resting his hands on the shelf behind her shoulder. He searched her face and she tried to hold his gaze, to hold it and keep holding it. She hooked two fingers into his belt loops.
But, damn, his eyes really were red. His lips looked chapped, though she stared at them, anyway.
“Please?” she said, softer and more serious than she meant to. “You look tired.”
Ilan sighed and stepped away from her, heading down the rest of the aisle.
Fucking good job, Sylvie. Way to kill the moment.
But wait—why was she mad at herself? She was genuinely concerned and offering him an out!
“What?” she asked him. “What’s the problem?”
“There’s no problem,” he said, but he no longer touched her hair or her back when she came up beside him. Instead, he walked away.
“It’s safer with us, isn’t it? Why are you torturing yourself?”
He didn’t answer her. He walked around another display, now making his way to the doors. Sylvie wanted to push people over to follow him, but then she stopped. No, she wasn’t going to be some kind of kicked puppy or lovesick child. If Ilan insisted on living in a place that bothered him even when she gave him an escape, that was his problem.
She just couldn’t fucking stand how he kept holding her hand and taking it back.
When he locked eyes on some collection of poetry, Sylvie gave up. “Whatever. I’m going home. Come or don’t.”
She was surprised, then, that he actually followed. They didn’t talk the entire way back, and she kept her hands on her duffel and her step ahead of him, regretting that she ever thought it was worth breaking open the crush for this. This was exactly what had once scared her off. Fantasy and reality gone at once, and for what? In the old worst-case scenario, she at least got one hook-up before their friendship was dashed on the rocks.
When she got home, Sylvie was too angry to care if Deirdre called. Her parents looked at her a little oddly when she walked in the door with Ilan behind her, but they said nothing incriminating.
“How was class?” asked her dad. He was in the kitchen, looking at a recipe clipped from Good Housekeeping. Her mom was on the sofa watching the news, glass of white wine in hand.
“Fine. I need to practice,” she said through almost gritted teeth.
“Don’t go dancing near my stuff, honey. I’ve got the drying rack out,” said her mom. Then, “Hey, Ilan.”
“Stay for dinner?” asked Bernard.
“Sounds good,” said Ilan.
Gary looked far more suspicious than her parents. After giving Ilan a brief hug hello, he gave Sylvie a look, eyebrow raised and head nodding in Ilan’s direction. She shook her head at him, thought of throwing her whole bag at him.
Ilan went with Gary into the living room. Gary sat down in the old rocker and dropped his leg over the arm. “Mom, do we have to watch the news?”
“It’s important to watch the news.”
“Just let my brain rot. I want to be happy and ignorant this summer. Ilan, go change it.”
“I don’t think Zoom’s on right now,” said Ilan.
As Sylvie shut the door behind her, she heard the muffled impact of a thrown pillow.
She hurried downstairs even before the echo of the slamming door had faded and slid into the studio. Light poured in at both ends of the floor, but especially at the front. It was muggy and the heat had warmed up the old paint and her mom’s clay and made everything smell like art supplies, so Sylvie cranked one of the windows as far as it could budge.
Everyone else’s windows were open, too. There was music coming from some—dance studios and music studios and just general enjoyment. The warm weather brought her neighbors out and into her mind as she turned on the radio.
She kicked off her sneakers and pulled on her softshoes. She didn’t let herself have any time to think a single thought, though dozens were threatening to spill out.
After changing the music, Sylvie ran through a series of half-hearted stretches and drills and launched into her reel.
She didn’t feel comfortable, and she couldn’t let her thoughts go, but she danced. She expertly dodged the columns and the most uneven, damaged spots, but her body felt stiff and heavy. So she stopped and went to the stereo to pick up the needle. And she stood there for as long as it took her to pick up a hardshoe and throw it at the wall. It hit with a resounding crack and left a dent in the drywall. Then she sat down, folding her legs beneath her.
Deirdre would call. Deirdre would cut her from the team.
Her parents would think she was having problems and take her to the shrink again.
Rynn would still be there. Whatever lurked in that building would be waiting.
And there was a strange black dog that kept Ilan so petrified he wouldn’t even do anything to fix his situation. Or maybe it was just an excuse to get away from her. Or maybe Gary had warned him off.
And everywhere Sylvie went, someone would start staring at her as though hypnotized.
Sylvie heard footsteps on the stairs. Someone passed by her floor and continued on, down to the street level. It was probably Ilan, she supposed, and she rubbed her temples and stood up to grab her hardshoe back from where it had fallen onto a stack of manila folders.
When she turned around, Ilan was standing in the doorway. She hadn’t even heard the door open, and her heart leapt right into her mouth.
“Jesus Christ. Ever hear of knocking?” she said, so frightened that it only made her more annoyed.
Ilan stepped inside and let the door gently shut behind him. “Look, Sylvie …”
“Please don’t,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re going to say, but don’t say it. It doesn’t matter. Sorry for inviting you over. Apparently you hate it here.”
“I don’t hate it here,” he said.
“Coulda fooled me. Why aren’t you upstairs with Gary?”
“Your mom made him go to the supermarket for something,” he said, walking not to Sylvie but over to the window, beneath which (like upstairs) was the radiator. But unlike upstairs, which had been closed in and turned into a bookshelf for plants, this wall was raw and bare.
Ilan sat in the open sill and the breeze stirred his hair. He pulled a crushed pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket.
Sylvie didn’t know what to say to him, though she knew what she’d like to say. What’s the real reason you won’t stay with us? Why’d you flirt with me if you won’t follow through?
But all she could do was stand there, watching him smoke out the window.
She went back to the stereo and switched records just to have something to do with herself. She couldn’t practice now. Her heart and her brain weren’t interested.
“I’m sorry, Sylvie,” he said. “I know I’m being an ass.”
Sylvie turned around again, mostly unmoved. “Then stop. Because it’s really annoying.”
“Look. You’re right. I need to move.”
Damn his stupid roughened voice and his stupid blonde waves. Damn how vulnerable he seemed. She walked over to him, lowered herself onto the windowsill beside him.
“You’re smoking too much,” she said.
“Yeah. I know.”
God, how she wanted to ask him what was happening, why he was obviously still so scared, but it was clearly the last thing he needed or wanted, and as long as she could get him out of that place, the rest could wait until a time when they could laugh at everything again.
So she dropped her legs onto his like she would have done in the old days, and she was relieved when he dropped his hand onto her bare knee. They didn’t say anything for a while. She watched the people down below them, listened to the last of the trucks roll through.
Though Ilan was tired, though he was preparing to smoke himself out, he held the cigarette between two fingers and regarded her like she was a sign to read.
“Yeah. I’ll move out,” he said. “I’m done there. This week, I’m gone.”
“I’ll help you pack.”
“Send your brother. I’ll carry one box and he can carry the other.”
Sylvie laughed a little, the knot of anger in her chest almost free.
“I’m serious. I’m gone. Hell, forget waiting a week. I’ll come back tonight.”
“You swear?” asked Sylvie.
“I swear, Sylvie. On my life.”
“That’s too dramatic.” But she felt better. Nothing had changed yet, but she felt better. There was a gentle breeze and she looked out over the fire escape, over the street, when she felt Ilan’s hand slide past her knee, just a little. She could see him shift at the corner of her vision, so she turned to face him, and to slide her legs off him so she could move her whole body closer, instead—because there was that wanting, not-going-back kind of look on his face, in his eyes and his slightly parted lips. She knew that look but it had never felt this good before. She didn’t even care if anyone saw them—someone would, and it might even be Gary.
Ilan put the cigarette out on the dusty sill without even looking away from her, which for some reason was the hottest thing Sylvie had ever seen in her life, and just like that, he was delicate inches from her, tucking her hair behind her ear again, then sliding his hand to her jaw. But just as she felt the brief graze of his mouth—a gentle spark of static—the speakers popped and the needle fell with a walloping scratch. She would have ignored it if Ilan hadn’t frozen there, all the rising color in his neck and jaw leaving with a rapidity that seemed impossible. And then the music started to play backward.
Sylvie leapt up and ran for the stereo.
“Fucking stop!” she yelled at it, pulling the whole plug from the wall.
“Sylvie—” Something passed in front of the windows and Ilan jumped up and stumbled back inside.
Outside, the music and ambient noise suddenly seemed muffled and distant. Despite every kind of common sense telling her not to, Sylvie walked over to the windows. Tall and old and in desperate need of better glass, Sylvie had always loved them. Hundreds of people had looked through them, hundreds of reflections had stared back. She was one of them, a part of their history, and she liked that.
“Sylvie, wait,” said Ilan. “Don’t go over there.”
Across the street, she could see one of her neighbors lost in painting a giant canvas. Another neighbor was talking to someone, his back to her, sitting on the sill. Another was dancing, just as she had been, but in a different, whole-bodied way.
There was nothing strange out there, but she still wound the window shut.
Behind her, Ilan made a strange sound—not a groan, not a cry, but something strangled in his throat.
“I gotta get outta here.” His voice was strained, clipped, stressed beyond capacity despite how quietly he spoke.
“Wait—Ilan!”
Sylvie was quick on his heels, but he had already thrown open the door. She could hear his echoing footsteps as they took the stairs at almost a run. She hurried onto the landing. “Ilan!”
The knot was back, tighter than before, as she rushed back into the studio and grabbed her dance bag.
Syyyylvieee …
Sylvie froze.
She could hear scratching. It filled the room with sound—terrible sound. Like the creaking of a jaw or the scraping of teeth. It emanated from the back of the studio, in the shadows of her mother’s drying racks. But Sylvie didn’t wait to see what it was. She ran.
She slammed the door behind her and didn’t take the time to lock it. In the stairwell, the air felt cold, like a wind had curled up from below and above, and Sylvie ran upstairs for home.
When she burst into the kitchen and locked the door behind her, her parents stared at her in alarm.
“Can we go out to eat tonight?” she said, breathless.
“You weren’t down there very long,” said her mom, who was standing in the kitchen while her dad held open the fridge. “Where’s Ilan?”
“Is Gary back yet?” Sylvie asked, knowing he wasn’t because she hadn’t heard anyone come in.
“He went to the Grand Union for me,” said her mom. “Hey, Sylvie, I just got a call from Deirdre.”
Cripes. Fucking cripes.
“Can we go out to eat, though? Anywhere? Like, can we go?”
Her parents exchanged a look as Sylvie walked deeper into the loft, almost weaving a figure eight between two of the columns. She was sweating. The fan wasn’t fast enough. The air was stagnant.
“Hey, come over here,” said her mom, who had now moved into the living room. “Calm down. What’s the matter? Did something happen just now?”
No, she couldn’t sit. She needed to keep moving. Maybe they could run up on the roof. Was the fire escape still secure? Had anyone checked it recently? “No! Nothing!”
“Deirdre said you’ve missed two classes these past two weeks. That’s news to us,” said her dad.
“Deirdre and I already talked about—”
“She’s concerned about you. She says you’ve been going to class distracted and unfocused. What’s going on?” asked Geneva.
All these weeks (or years), and Sylvie had no excuse. She hoped it would never come to this. “Nothing!”
Nothing? Her parents weren’t stupid. Sylvie was sweating and pale and couldn’t stop looking out the window, at the door.
“Are you on something right now? Did something happen between you and Ilan?”
Oh, no. “No!” Calmer. “No. No, I’m not. Nothing happened! Ilan just had to go home.”
