Dear Wife(25)

Wake up! I pinch the skin of my arms, smack myself on the cheeks. But my legs, tangled in the sheets, are like lead. They won’t move.

Suddenly, you’re here, stomping down the hallway at Morgan House. The hollow thud of your footsteps trembles the floor, the walls, the lining around my heart. The noise stops in front of my door, and I am frozen with fear, with pure terror.

My doorknob rattles, then goes still.

I hold my breath, wait for the gun to go off.

The door explodes, wood splinters showering down on me like a million deadly spikes. The hallway sconces light you up from behind, glowing underneath your skin like blood.

I scream.

You grin and aim the gun.

  I shoot upright in my bed, the scream ringing in my ears. I clamp a hand over my mouth and stare into the dark room, trying to get my bearings. My room, my bed at Morgan House. I’m safe. You’re not here. It was only a dream.

And yet... Was it? The back of my throat burns in a way that tells me the scream might have been real, but the ache could also be from the sobbing. My cheeks are slick, the hair at my temples damp with sweat or tears.

I mop my face with the sheet and take several deep breaths, willing my hammering heart to slow. I check the time on my cell phone: 4:00 a.m.

Somewhere above me, a male body is snoring loud enough to rattle the floorboards, and I wonder what this says about my housemates. That they are either deaf or sleep like the dead... Or maybe they are immune to a stranger’s scream ripping through their slumber. Miss Sally runs a tight ship, but this place is an oasis in a questionable neighborhood, one where the houses sport bars on the windows. This doesn’t bode well for me if my nightmare turns to reality. What will they do if you find me here? Sleep through the screams? Hide behind the locked doors of their bedrooms?

Suddenly, the room is too hot, the four walls shrinking around me. I kick off the twisted sheets and reach for my shorts, in a wadded pile on the floor. I need a glass of water, or maybe a cup of tea if I can swipe a tea bag from somebody’s supply. Mostly, I need to get out of this room. I strap my money belt around my waist, pluck my keys and phone from the nightstand, and creep into the hall, locking the door behind me.

The hallway is dark, lit only at the far end by a streetlamp somewhere outside the window. I move, breathless and on tiptoe toward its golden gleam, the pads of my bare feet silent on the polyester runner. The stairs are trickier, sagging and creaky in the middle. I hug the side instead, my fingertips skimming the walls, following them to the kitchen.

A single bulb above the stove casts faint light on the scuffed linoleum floor, but otherwise the room is a black hole. I power on my cell, use the light of the screen to guide the way to the cabinets on the far wall.

The first one is dinnerware, neat stacks of plates and bowls and plastic cups. I shut it and move down the line. Cleaning supplies, pots and pans, but not a single crumb of food, no box of dusty tea bags.

“You must be the new girl,” a female voice says from behind me.

A grenade erupts in my chest, and I whirl around, searching for her face in the darkness.

The shadows shift, and the ceiling lamp buzzes to life, blinding me with sudden light. I cover my eyes, squinting through my fingers at the woman sitting cross-legged atop the kitchen table. Caramel skin and big brown eyes and the body of a fifties film star, petite but curvy.

She watches me with barefaced curiosity. “What are you looking for? Maybe I can help you find it.”

She’s as pretty as her accent, a South American cadence slowed with a Southern drawl. Two silver discs hang on delicate chains from her neck, each of them engraved with something I can’t quite make out from this distance. Names, I’m guessing.

I wasn’t expecting to find anyone here, not when the money belt hanging from my middle is about as subtle as a third breast. I pull on my too-tight T-shirt, fold my arms across my waist. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Was that you upstairs?” She pauses. “I heard somebody scream just now. Was that you?”

Shit. So that part wasn’t a dream.

My face goes hot, thinking of all the sleeping bodies upstairs. “Sorry. Did I wake you?” How many others did I rouse from their slumber?

“No. My room is right next to Ned’s.” She points to the ceiling, the boards above our head rumbling like a faraway train. Ned, I assume. “Anyway, tell me what you came down here looking for, and I’ll tell you where you can find it. Though I will warn you—Miss Sally keeps the good stuff locked in the pantry.”

“Oh.” Miss Sally’s warnings ring in my ear—her honor code, and the hidden cameras everywhere. But surely a tea bag doesn’t count as stealing, especially if I replace it first thing tomorrow. “I was hoping to borrow a tea bag, actually.”

“Well, that’s easy enough.” She hops off the table and pads on bare feet across the room. Her shorts are the kind a cheerleader would wear, skintight and Daisy Duke short. “I’ve got a box of Lipton—hope that’s okay.”

You once hurled a full cup of piping hot tea at my head because it was Lipton. You said if you’d wanted a cup of hot piss, you would have asked for some.

I smile. “Lipton is perfect, thank you.”

She pulls a yellow box from a drawer by the microwave, flips on the electric kettle, drops the bags in two mugs she finds in a cabinet.

“So, what were you doing down here?” I say, gesturing to the table. “Why were you sitting here in the dark?”