Page 28 of Ruthless Daddy
I did not unpack. I went to the bathroom. The tile was cold on my feet. I stripped down, folded my clothes on the counter. I turned on the shower and let the water run until it steamed the mirror. Then I stepped in and stood under it for a long time, hands at my sides, eyes closed, feeling the hot water erase the last two days from my skin.
Forty minutes, maybe. Long enough that the water ran cold, then back to tepid, then cold again. I did not turn it off until I was sure I had nothing left to scrub away.
I dried off. There was a stack of towels in the linen closet, all white, all new. A toothbrush in packaging on the sink. He had stocked the place for someone to stay. I put on the shirt he’d left on the bed. It was black cotton, soft, hung down to my mid-thigh. It smelled like nothing, or maybe a little like the detergent from the towels, which was faint and nice and expensive.
I crawled into the bed. The sheets were white and the comforter was heavy, the kind that you could hide under and feel the weight of it press all the noise out of your head. The pillow was cool. I did not remember closing my eyes.
I slept, but once in the night, I woke up. There was a sound—not a loud one, but present. I lay very still, heart going quick, eyes wide open in the dark.
It was his breathing. Through the open door. Slow, even, like he was lying on the other side of the wall, awake. I listened for a long time. The city was still silent, the glass making the room feel like it was underwater, but the sound of him, the evidence that he was real and close, did something to my chest. It didn’t feel dangerous. It felt like fire, like magic.
I closed my eyes and let myself drift in it.
I slept again.
*
I woke at three in the afternoon, unsure at first if it was morning or night. The apartment was silent, except for the lighthum of the fridge and the faint whine of the river wind against the glass. The world outside was winter grey, the kind of grey that had no beginning and no end.
I stayed in bed for a minute, just breathing. The room was cold, but the bed was warm, and I let myself melt into it a little before I remembered that I was in a stranger’s house and the stranger was probably awake already, watching me through the wall.
When I finally got up, the hall was empty. No sound from the living room. I padded barefoot to the kitchen, the shirt hanging off my frame, and poured myself a glass of water from the tap. There was coffee in a thermos on the counter. Next to it, a note:
eat something. — P.
In the fridge was a tray of food. Chicken and rice, roasted vegetables, a strip of cold steak. Nothing fancy, but it looked like someone had cooked it themselves, not ordered it in. I took out the tray and ate standing at the counter, drinking cold black coffee from the thermos. The food was good, and I realized halfway through the plate that I was starving.
When I finished, I washed the plate and set it upside down in the drying rack. I wiped the counter with a clean towel. I caught myself doing it and stopped, but not before I had gotten every crumb.
I walked the apartment. I did it the way you walked a new rental: slow, methodical, taking in every detail, every possible exit, every sightline from window to street. There were cameras above both doors. The closets were empty except for a row of hangers, all facing the same way. In the bathroom was a new bar of soap, still in the wrapper. In the bedroom closet, on the top shelf, was a stack of folded t-shirts and sweats in three different sizes, tags still on.
I ended up back at the soft room.
It was exactly as it had been the night before. The sheepskin rug, the rocking chair, the upright piano with the lid closed. The room was warm, somehow warmer than the rest of the apartment, maybe from the radiator under the window, maybe from something else. There was a low shelf of paperbacks—Agatha Christie, some old thrillers, a couple of modern ones with spines I recognized from airport bookstores. Below that, a shelf of children’s books. Picture books, Dr. Seuss, a battered edition of The Little Prince.
I went to the piano and ran my fingers over the closed lid. It was polished, heavy, real wood, not a toy. A basket of soft toys sat by the chair. I did not touch them, but I looked at them for a long time, picking out the animals: a lamb, a rabbit, a dog with one ear flopped over.
On the small table by the chair was a wooden box. Inside, a set of paints and brushes, some paper, a box of colored pencils sharp as needles. The smell of the box was like the smell of the art room in elementary school—wood shavings, pigment, the sharpness of tin.
Whatever you need it to be, he’d said.
I did not know what I needed.
I left the door open. I went back to the kitchen and made myself another coffee, the taste better than I remembered. The city outside was starting to glow with the first fake sunset, lights coming up along the river, headlights doubling on the water.
At five, the buzzer sounded. I froze.
Then a voice on the intercom: “Angela?”
It was not Pietro’s voice. It was higher, lighter, and behind it, a background chaos of someone negotiating an overexcited animal.
I pressed the button. “Yes?”
“Tonio—Pietro’s brother. With food. And Olimpo. We are coming up.”
Before I could answer, the elevator dinged and they were there. The door opened on a man about my age, maybe a year older, with a face built for smiling and a body built for soccer. He wore a tracksuit and carried a casserole dish with a kitchen towel wrapped around it. Behind him was a mass of shaggy orange fur with paws like a lion’s and eyes the color of honey.
Olimpo was a dog. A very, very large dog.
