You are running.
The shirt is not yours. The blood on the shirt is not yours. The shirt is his. The blood is — you do not know yet whose.
Washington Square, 3:47. The fountain is off. Your feet are loud. You stop being loud. Left at the arch — three streets, he has to pick one, he does not know these blocks.
Keep your face still.
The survival voice. The one that has been with you since before you were seven.
You are holding a key in your fist so tight your knuckles have gone white. You do not remember picking it up. It is not your key.
Forty minutes earlier.
His apartment is on Perry. His wife is in Connecticut until Sunday, in the house she kept after her mother died. You knew this before you came. He knew you knew. Neither of you has said the sentence.
He kisses you in the hallway. Not the door. The hallway. There is a rug. You feel the rug through your left heel. He is taller than you and smells of the same soap he has smelled of for eleven weeks and the smell is not unpleasant and it is not your mother's soap and those are the two things you can still tell.
"I shouldn't —"
"Shut up, Vera."
He says it kind. He means it.
The bedroom has a window that faces a brick wall and the brick wall is so close you could touch it from the bed, and you have touched it from the bed, last Tuesday, your palm flat against the brick at the exact moment he — anyway.
He takes your jacket off slow. Your jeans he does not. You came here for the part of the night where thinking stops.
His mouth is at your throat. The heat goes down your ribs before his hand does.
His hand under the shirt, flat against your ribs, stops.
His finger finds the tattoo. Не я. He likes it. He does not know he does not know. His finger does not find what is beneath. I want to tell him. My mouth is opening.
The knock is not a knock.
It is a sound that is announcing itself as not-a-knock. A shoulder. A boot.
He sits up fast. "Stay."
You do not stay.
You are pulling your shirt down when the door goes. Not the bedroom door. The front door. Wood giving in one long split.
"Vera — stay."
You do not stay.
He is small. That kills him. His knife is small. He says something in Russian, low, the word devochka in it, and his breath comes at you over the TA's shoulder — cigarettes, and under the cigarettes a sweetness, fruit going, or a wound under cloth.
The TA is trying to put himself between you and the knife. The man goes past him fast. The knife goes in the TA's side the way a key goes in a lock.
The TA makes a sound.
Then the TA says a name.
A woman's name. Not yours. Not his wife's.
The man with the knife turns to you.
You are holding a thing. A lamp. Heavy at the base. Glass.
You swing.
You swing with your whole weight. The thing you grew legs for. Walking New York since eighteen.
The base connects above the ear and the sound is not what you expected, it is smaller and wetter, and he goes down sideways against the wall and slides, and the knife is on the floor and his arm is under him and he is not moving and the TA is on the floor and he is making the sound.
Keep your face still.
The bag. The bag is on the chair. You get the bag.
The document is in the bag.
The TA says — he says another word. You do not recognize it. He is looking at the man on the floor. The man on the floor is not moving.
You step over the knife. You do not pick up the knife.
You pick up the man's key. His key. The one you do not remember picking up. It is in your hand now. You do not know why you took it.
You are in the hall.
The stairwell.
You take the stairs three at a time. A woman is coming up.
She is wearing a coat you own.
The exact coat. The one you left on the bedroom chair of your apartment. Grey wool, black buttons, a tear at the left cuff you sewed wrong. She is carrying a grocery bag. A loaf of bread. A carton of eggs.
She does not look at you.
You do not stop.
Two floors down you know you imagined it.
Perry Street. You run.
Washington Square. The arch. Left.
Footsteps behind you. Not his. Someone else's. Someone came with him. You did not know. You should have known. You know now.
The park lamps throw yellow rooms. You cross. Less visible in each. The key is still in your fist. You do not drop it.
A man is standing under the lamp on the south side of the fountain. Not running. Standing. His hands are in his pockets. He is wearing something that does not belong to this weather. He looks at you and he looks at the footsteps behind you and he looks at you again.
He is looking at you the way someone stands in a photograph — already finished.
Something in his right hand, inside the pocket, has the shape of something you would recognize. You do not see it.
He does not help. He does not hinder. His mouth moves around something he does not say.
You pass him.
The footsteps change rhythm. They have stopped. You do not turn to see why.
East toward Mercer because Mercer has the block-through doorways and the cameras on Greene are new and you have walked these blocks at two a.m. every shift for three years. You turn at the next. You turn again. You are making the shape of a fish hook badly. You are still losing the tail.
A shop window on Mercer. You see your own reflection. Behind your reflection, in the glass, walking ahead of you in the direction you are running from, is the man from the fountain. You turn to look at the street. The street is empty.
You do not stop.
You run.
A doorway on Bleecker, two blocks from the restaurant. Your restaurant. You do not go in. It is closed. You crouch against the door.
You are wet. The shirt. Your hands. The cut on your palm from the lamp glass — you had not noticed. You notice. It is deep enough to hurt but not deep enough to be a problem. You hold the cut closed with the other hand. The other hand is shaking.
Your phone. The phone is in the apron pocket. The apron is at the restaurant. The apron is at home. You cannot remember. You check. The phone is in your jeans pocket. You took it off the chair with the bag. You do not remember. Your hand remembered.
Three missed calls from a number you do not know.
You put the phone back.
I am holding a key I did not pick up. I am wearing a shirt I did not put on.
You hold the cut closed.
You listen.
Nothing.
A taxi on Sixth.
A man two blocks south coughing, and then saying, to no one, half a sentence he is remembering.
You get up.
East Seventh. The stairs are worn in the same places they have been worn for five generations. The lock takes two hands. The cut makes the two hands hard. You get it open.
You do not turn the hall light on.
In the bedroom you take the shirt off. The shirt goes in the tub. The water comes pink. You do not look at it. You stand in the bathroom in your jeans and no shirt and your hand held in your other hand and you watch the water and you do not look at it.
The drawer is in the bedroom. The drawer is the bottom drawer. The drawer has one thing in it that you look at and one thing in it that you don't.
Tonight you open the drawer.
Charlotte's drawings are on top. The one with the horse. Green. Six legs. From last month. You counted them the first time and you counted them wrong and you counted them again and this is the count that stuck.
Under the drawings, a small thing. Cold through the paper when you put the drawings back. You have finally stopped flinching at it.
You do not take it out tonight.
You put the drawings back on top of it.
You close the drawer.
The shower. The water is too hot. You do not adjust it.
You rinse.
You look down.
On the inside of your right thigh, high, where you have not looked, there is a bruise the shape of a hand. Four fingers. A thumb. It is yellow at the edges already. It is hours old. You did not feel it put there. You do not know whose hand.
You stand under the water and look at it and the water is still too hot and you do not adjust it.
You lie on the bed in your jeans. The cut is still bleeding, a little, through the washcloth you have wrapped around it. The blood on the washcloth is yours. You are sure. You check. You are sure.
The song from Carmen's bar last week is in your head. One line of it. You catch yourself humming. You stop.
Your phone is on the counter. It rings. You do not answer.
It stops.
It rings again.
You get up. You look at the screen. Not the unknown number. A name.
Carmen.
You answer.
"You're supposed to be home."
"I am home."
"You're supposed to be asleep."
"I will be."
Carmen does not say anything for a second.
"Vera."
"Yeah."
"Who are you talking to when you talk to yourself."
The question arrives the way it has been waiting to arrive. You do not know how she knows to ask it tonight. You will not know. She will not say.
You do not answer.
She does not wait.
The line goes.
You put the phone face down.
You lie back on the bed.
Keep your face still.
You did something tonight that cannot be undone.
Outside, east of the apartment, on Avenue A, the neon of the bodega on the corner hums the way it has hummed since before you moved here, the way it hums over whoever is next.
You sleep.
The bruise keeps darkening while you do.
⁂