Page 104 of The Quiet Tenant
And so we’ve been staying outside. All of us except him.
He thinks he’s being discreet, but I’ve noticed.
In addition to the short breaks, to the pinched temples, he has slipped inside twice already. He locked the door each time he came back out. I wouldn’t have paid it much attention if he had done, well, anything. If he had returned with a stack of paper cups or a pile of napkins. Maybe a sweater to lend a guest.
But I saw through a window, that little gap between the glass and the shade. He went in, and he just stood there. Still, at the bottom of the staircase. Head tilted toward the upper floor. Listening.
For what?
I think about his house and the people who inhabit it. About his cousin who’s not his cousin. About this woman who is currently nowhere to be seen.
I wait until the judge drags him into a conversation with a couple he married last summer. No one’s watching.
I walk to the house. He hasn’t made good on his plan to find a new hiding place for his spare key. Not yet.
Like he’s not afraid of me. Like he’s not worried about what I might do with this knowledge.
I let myself in.
CHAPTER 72
The woman in the house
Every step is improv. Every step is a question mark, heavy with the possibility of a momentous fuckup.
Tonight is the party. He came earlier, handcuffed you to the radiator, put the key in his pocket like Cinderella’s stepmother the night of the ball.
“Remember what we discussed,” he said.
“Yep,” you told him. “Got it.”
He thought for a brief moment. “There will be music. Outside. People will be socializing. Talking and eating, that kind of stuff. They’ll be busy.”
I know,you wanted to say.You don’t have to tell me that no one’s coming to get me.
You wait for the sounds of cars down the road. For voices and greetings. For music. You wait for guests with expectant eyes and bleeding hearts, ready to shower him and his daughter with their affection.
First, there’s the safety pin. Retrieved from the chest of drawers in the afternoon while he was away, and hidden in the padding of your sports bra. For years, you rolled your eyes at padded bras, and look at you now.
You always thought when the moment came you’d know for sure.
Tonight, there are things you know with certainty. What he’s done, and to whom. Where he keeps his spare gun.
You know, and he doesn’t, that his daughter came to you. That she gave you pads and a pin.
What he doesn’t realize: That you know, now, that the world isn’t just a place where things happen to you. That you can happen to the world too.
You haven’t heard him come inside, but you have to assume it’s a possibility. You have to work cautiously, confidently.
On the handcuffs, there are two locks. You only need to open one. The one closest to you. The one keeping one end of the cuffs tethered to your wrist.
Insert the pin into the lock.
Conjure up the spirits you need. Matt. The YouTube man. Everything they taught you about locks. Everything you remembered while working on the door under the stairs.
This is a different kind of lock. But there is a universality to these mechanisms: pieces of metal that interlock to trap people places. You know all about those.
Wedge your handcuffed wrist against the wall for a better grip.
