Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(43)

It was funny, though—Mr. Reiss never paid him under a table, the way Emily said. He paid Jerry wherever he happened to see him, like in the hall, or out in front of the building, or in the boiler room. He would just reach into his pocket and he would count out some bills into Jerry’s hand.

“You don’t need money,” Mama told him when he started working. “You don’t even know how to buy things.”

She was right, so every time Mr. Reiss gave him his pay, Jerry gave the cash right to her. She saved it all up, and that’s how they moved into this building.

Now, he puts the cash into a drawer so that Jamie can use it.

Jerry takes out his key ring. It’s heavy. On it are keys to the building where he lives, and to all the buildings where he works, and to some of the apartments, too, in those buildings.

Mr. Reiss said he doesn’t have to carry all those keys around with him all the time, but he likes to. It makes him feel good, knowing that he can unlock things whenever he wants to.

He just wishes he could use it to unlock the front door of his building sometime. It’s supposed to be locked, but it never is. Jamie says the lock is broken. Jerry would fix it if he worked here, but he doesn’t.

He walks through the unlocked door and is glad, as always, that he gets to use a key to open the metal box for the mail.

There are bills with Mama’s name on them. Jamie takes care of the bills now that she’s gone. Jamie takes care of everything.

Jerry walks to the elevator bank and presses the button, anxious to get inside and take off his shoes. His feet hurt from all the walking, and his head is starting to hurt again, too.

On his floor, Jerry unlocks the door and starts to tiptoe inside. Then he remembers. She’s gone. He doesn’t have to sneak in anymore, hoping she won’t hear him and yell at him—or worse—for something he did or didn’t do.

This apartment has two bedrooms—tiny, but Jerry has his own private space.

In the old apartment, there was only one bedroom, and it was Mama’s. There was nowhere for Jerry to go to get away from her, nowhere to hide.

In that apartment, he slept in the living room, on a pullout couch with big hard lumps in it and a bar that hurt his back. There were bugs, too, a lot more bugs than there are here. Sometimes he felt them crawl over his skin in the dark.

That terrified him. He hates bugs, all kinds of bugs—bugs that fly and bugs that crawl and even bugs that Jamie says aren’t really bugs, like worms and spiders.

Some nights, when Jerry was young and living in the old apartment, he was too uncomfortable to sleep at all, and so he lay awake, afraid, until the morning light chased away the shadows and the bugs.

“I was there with you—don’t you remember?” Jamie asks sometimes, but Jerry doesn’t remember that.

Jamie tells him about things that happened to him in the old apartment. Usually, the things Jamie tells him aren’t nice at all, and Jerry is glad he doesn’t remember.

He likes to remember nice things—like Mama making cake. Mama made the best cake. Most of the time, she didn’t let Jerry have a piece, but once in a while, she did. Sometimes, when she was sleeping, he even snuck some out of the kitchen. Just a little bit, so that she wouldn’t know it was missing. He was careful not to drop any crumbs, not just because Mama would know, but because he knows now that bugs and rats like the smell of rotting food.

Mr. Reiss taught him that. He taught Jerry a lot of things, but not as much as Jamie taught him.

“Do you miss Mama?” Jamie asks sometimes, and Jerry wonders what would happen if he said yes. Would she come back?

He doesn’t miss Mama. Mostly, he was afraid of her.

“I was, too,” Jamie said. “I was always afraid of her.”

“Did she hurt you, too?”

“Yes, but mostly, it was you.”

“She still does. She hurts me a lot.”

“No, Jerry. That’s over. That’s not going to happen anymore. She went away, remember? And now I’m here, and nothing will ever hurt you again.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I won’t let it. Just like when you were a kid, Jerry, and I would try to make sure Mama didn’t hurt you. Don’t you remember that at all?”

Jerry didn’t. So Jamie told him all about it, about protecting Jerry when things got bad, and how one night, Mama hurt Jerry so badly that his head was smashed open, and Jerry started to remember.

“Is that why it always hurts me now?” Jerry asked, and Jamie told him that it might be.

“I went away after she did that,” Jamie said, “because I was afraid she would do the same thing to me if she ever found me.”

“Did she?”

“No. Never. But I found her,” Jamie said darkly.

“And me.”

“And you.”

“Don’t ever leave me again, Jamie.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

“And if Mama ever comes back, you can make sure she doesn’t hurt me.”

“She won’t be coming back, Jerry. I promise you that, too.”

“But what if she—”

“Trust me. She won’t.”

Jerry hopes not. He really does.

Now, as is his new habit upon coming home, he walks over to her bedroom door.