No One Knows Us Here(77)

Wendy shook her head, bewildered.

“I told you I could have saved you,” I prompted in a placating tone. “I should have saved you all those years ago, but I didn’t, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but I’m going to make it up to you.”

“What are you talking about?” she whispered.

“Remember—about your dad? How I could have stopped him? Everything would be different now. He wouldn’t have hurt you. Mom would still be alive.” Her face crumpled in confusion. I reached out and smoothed her hair with my hand. “Don’t you worry, Windy-girl. I’m going to take care of everything.”



In the landing outside my apartment, I checked the door, making sure it was locked. Sam was leaving his place at the same time. He was wearing his tuxedo and carrying his instrument case. “Rosemary—” he started, but I silenced him by widening my eyes and shaking my head. My eyes roved up and fixated on the Glasseye perched over the elevator.

Sam followed my gaze, and when he saw the Glasseye, his expression hardened. “Give me your shoe,” he said, setting down his viola case.

I didn’t question it. I slipped off one of my high-heeled shoes. Sam aimed at the Glasseye and threw the shoe, and both came down, bouncing once or twice on the floor. I scrambled over to my shoe and put it back on. The Glasseye rolled on the carpet before stopping with its pupil trained on the ceiling. Sam stood over it, frowning. Then he leaned down and waved. “Bye-bye, Leo,” he said, right before smashing his heel down hard. I heard it crunch. A sickening sound, like a car crash.

He looked back up at me as if nothing had happened. “I found Wendy last night,” he said. “We ran into each other in the lobby.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The line between his eyes deepened. “Rosemary,” he said. “I did.”

“What?”

His face clouded over in concern. “I woke you up. We talked for maybe five minutes.”

I had no memory of this.

He studied me carefully, registering the ivory dress, the hair, the lipstick. “What’s going on?”

“One last dinner, and then it’s over.”

I could tell he wanted to grip me by the arms, shake some sense into me, but he didn’t touch me. “You can’t go back to him,” he said. “You know that.”

“I’m not. I’m ending it. Just like we discussed.”

“You can end it on the phone.”

“I destroyed my phone.”

“You know what I mean.”

“He came to my apartment,” I said. I brushed past him and headed down the stairs. Sam’s footsteps followed close behind.

“What—when?”

“This morning,” I said over my shoulder as I descended the stairs. “Wendy let him in. I told him I’d meet him tonight. It was the only way to get him out.”

“So don’t show up. What’s he going to do?”

I no longer heard Sam’s footsteps. I stopped, on the landing between floors, and turned around to find him right behind me.

“Don’t go,” he said. “I don’t want you to go.”

We stood like that, frozen in the stairwell, until someone brushed past us, two residents, teenage boys in jogging gear. They stomped down the stairs, continuing the conversation they’d been having, their dialogue punctuated with “dudes” and “whoas.”

I had to move in closer to Sam when they whizzed by, and he circled his arms around me. After the two guys had clambered all the way down and exited the building, his arms were still around me, holding me tightly. “Don’t go,” he repeated.

I brushed his hair with my hand, and then I tilted up my chin and kissed him—a long, sad kiss. Like a goodbye.

A lump formed in my throat, and my nose began to tingle. I pulled away and started back down the stairs ahead of him, so he wouldn’t see me cry. He called my name, but I kept going, running out of the building and onto the street.



I was calm all the way over to Leo’s. I walked, just like I did that first night with Sebastian St. Doug. That night had been warm, unseasonably warm. Tonight was different. Cool, the air heavy and smelling of salt and ozone. Storm clouds billowed overhead, but it wasn’t raining. I walked from my apartment to Leo’s, my high-heeled shoes clicking on the sidewalk.

I walked with my back straight, like I was being watched, like I was a character in a movie, the main character. The beautiful woman who knows exactly what she wants and exactly how she’s going to get it. My hair swished across my back.

I walked down dark streets, past people huddled in tents they’d pitched on the sidewalks, over tattered plastic bags and abandoned shoes. Past all the beautiful downtown stores with headless mannequins in the windows, mannequins wearing designer clothes and dangling $4,000 handbags on the crooks of their arms. Store windows with displays of wool blankets in Native American designs, thick leather boots with steel toes, something a logger might wear at the end of the nineteenth century. The stores were all closed, the windows only partially lit. Everything looked different now, in the night.

By the time I got to Leo’s place, my feet were killing me. I’d forgotten this part, how I’d walked and walked, how my feet had swollen up, rubbed the skin from the sides of my toes. It was only right, though, to do everything exactly the same way, as if I needed to follow these steps carefully, not making any mistakes, in order to reverse the spell.