Mirrors (5.b)
I leave the club just before 2AM after making sure Grace is safely in a cab – on my dollar – and I catch the train out of Hudson Yards. Alcohol is my best friend tonight. I love how soft it makes me feel. I adore the wobble in my step as I climb out of the earth at Bleeker Street and weave my way home. Everyone is my friend, even the little old lady walking her Chihuahua who gives me a dirty look as I stagger past.
My three-bedroom, fifth-floor apartment’s recently been gutted and rebuilt on the inside, which is why I chose it. It’s clean and modern and bright, which was important, it looks east over Alphabet City, and the building has both a doorman and a rooftop garden. It didn’t come cheap, which is why I have a roommate to share the space and the rent.
I chose my roommate like I chose the apartment – he’s clean, modern, and bright. He’s also the craziest person I know, and that’s saying a lot.
Our night doorman’s called Gabriel. He grins at me as he lets me into the lobby.
“Good night, Hemingway?”
“The best,” I promise, and waltz my way into the elevator. It’s got carpet on the floor and mirrors on the wall. I used to hate mirrors, used to close my eyes when I brushed my teeth, squint when I put on mascara and lipstick. The woman in the reflection wasn’t me and when I wasn’t afraid of her I wished her dead. Now I can handle mirrors a little peek at a time, especially when I’m sauced.
I stand in the elevator as it rises, rocking slightly on my heels, whistling Pink Jones and stealing glances at the guy whistling back from the elevator walls. He’s not bad looking, despite the sweater and the sandals. I like his eyes: they’re kind. I like his hair and the sparse stubble on his cheeks and the wider shoulders above the mostly narrow waist.
I pass okay. Mostly no one ever looks twice. That girl from Twin Falls is gone but not dead and I don’t close my eyes when I brush my teeth any more.
I drop my keys in front of 534 twice. Third try at the lock and I’ve almost got it when Tom yanks open the door. I fall across the threshold, catch myself on the wall, and laugh like a loon. Tom backs up. He’s a doesn’t like to touch people; he’s afraid of germs.
“Jesus, Hemingway,” he complains. “You’ll wake Ms. Harcourt.”
“I won’t.” Tom’s always promising but nothing ever wakes our downstairs neighbor. Ms. Harcourt sleeps like a rock. “How’s The Project?”
It’s my standard greeting because it’s the one Tom responds to best. Say ‘hello’ or ‘good morning’ or ‘what’s for dinner?’ and he tunes you out. Ask him about the web of string and paper tacked to our living room wall and he livens right up.
“Nothing tonight,” he reports as I shut and lock the door. The apartment smells like Chinese, which means he’s ordered in. My stomach growls hopefully. “Things have been mostly quiet.”
He means the police scanner he keeps on our kitchen counter. Tom’s forensics at the NYPD, their young rising star. He’s good at what he does because it’s all he does, even at 2AM on a Friday morning. The crime scene wall above our foldout sofa is his private project. Like me and The Photo, The Project defines Tom, makes him who he is whether he likes it or not.
It’s been ‘mostly quiet’ for three weeks, now, which is apparently a long time in serial killer land.
“Maybe he’s done and quit,” I offer as I always do when things are slow. I root out a plate from our mostly empty cabinets and dump leftover Chinese out of a carton. The world’s still slightly off kilter and I’m very pleased with myself for no reason other than I’ve found greasy food. I’d give Tom a hug, but that sort of close contact would probably give him a heart attack.
“Nope,” Tom replies, glum. “Fifteen murders. That I know of. He’s not the sort that quits.”
“Maybe he’s dead,” I suggest, pleased with the idea. I take my plate over to the sofa, collapse, and pick out bits of chicken from rice with my fork, one small morsel at a time. If I chew each bite 100 times, I’ll feel less hungry when it’s over. “Maybe he’s gone and fallen into the Hudson. Maybe his latest prey turned out to be some sort of lady bodybuilder who fought back and broke his neck and dumped him in the nearest garden park.”
“Shut up.” The sofa bounces when Tom sits down a safe 24 inches distant. He’s a tall guy, all planes and angles. At thirty he’s greying prematurely and no one in his old money, bankers-lot family will talk to him because he prefers murder puzzles to normal things like dating or cocaine. “You’re stupid when you’re drunk.”
I grunt agreement. He’s not wrong.
We sit together and stare out the window at the rain. Tom’s a good guy. We do okay together. He doesn’t care that I’m still finding my wings as a phoenix out of the ashes and I don’t care that he’s obsessed with a man who’s strangled and dismembered 15 prostitutes.
I eat until my stomach stops growling and then head for bed. Tom doesn’t notice when I leave the living room for my studio. I have a key for that door, too. I had a lock put in. It’s my private place and not even my affable roommate is allowed in.
It’s by far the best room in the apartment, 12 by 12 with ten-foot ceilings and southern exposure. There’s a mattress on the floor for sleeping, one of those roll away portable hanging bars for my clothes, a bin for shoes, three more for paint. Canvases stacked everywhere on the floor, most of them virginal. The ones on the wall are finished; cityscapes and studies of birds and trees and people in the park. When Tom goes rambling about the city on his off hours, I sometimes accompany him, sketchbook and pencils in hand. He’s looking for murder clues. I’m looking at the way afternoon light falls across a person’s face as they stare out across a sea of yellow cabs, or the dimples on a sycamore trunk, bark like grey silk where it doesn’t fold over into darker lumps.
Painting’s different than inking flesh. Not better, or even harder. Just different. No one but Tom knows I dabble, and he never says a word. Tom and I, we both have our secrets.
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