‘Ren, it’s almost two a.m.’
‘Exactly,’ said Ren. ‘It’s very late to be hanging around—’
‘Ren? Ren, listen to me: do not call your neighbors. I’ll be fine.’
‘OK,’ said Ren. ‘See you in ten.’
Janine was waiting on the steps outside the apartment.
‘There she is!’ said Ren. ‘Safe!’ She jumped out of the car, with the key already in her hand. ‘Here.’
‘I’m so sorry about this,’ said Janine.
‘It’s fine!’ said Ren. ‘Don’t worry. Will you be OK?’
‘No,’ said Janine.
‘What?’ said Ren.
‘No,’ said Janine. ‘Come with me. I need to talk to you about something. It’s important.’
Nowww? Ren glanced over at JD. He was a blur standing by his car. The streetlights were glowing, everything was glowing. Ren turned back to Janine, struggling to focus.
‘OK,’ said Ren. ‘OK.’ She ran back down the steps. ‘Thank you, JD! But I’m going to stay, now that I’m here.’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thanks for the ride.’
‘Aw, that’s a shame,’ said JD. ‘Are you sure? I just got a text from one of the guys – party at his place.’
‘Sounds good,’ said Ren, ‘but I better not. I don’t want to leave Janine.’
JD looked up at Janine with an expression that said killjoy.
Inside the apartment, Ren went looking for vodka, Janine went looking for water and Vitamin C tablets.
‘Here,’ she said, putting them down in front of Ren.
‘What is this?’ said Ren. ‘The drinking is not over yet. What would you like?’
‘I’m good, thank you,’ said Janine.
‘So,’ said Ren, ‘what do you need to talk about? Are you OK?’
‘Yes,’ said Janine. ‘I … just wanted you to stop what you were doing.’
Um, what?
‘I know you said you were fine,’ said Janine, ‘but I was afraid you were going to do something you would regret.’
‘Like what?’ said Ren.
‘Come on,’ said Janine. ‘JD, he’s a good-looking guy. You two were flirting.’
‘Jesus Christ, why does everyone think I’m flirting when I’m just having fun?’
‘It seemed like more than that to me,’ said Janine, ‘and definitely to him. Why else would he offer you a ride home? A guy wouldn’t do that unless he wanted something in return.’
‘Cynic!’ said Ren. ‘And I think you over-estimate my attractiveness.’
Janine shook her head. ‘I don’t. I’ve seen it enough times. When you focus on people you focus on them, it’s so lovely, it really is, but you know men … they want the world to revolve around them, and you make it so.’
Oh, God, I’ve heard that before. ‘I was just having fun!’ I don’t have a dial to regulate the attention I pay.
‘I know,’ said Janine, ‘but I know that it wouldn’t be fun at all if you cheated on Ben. You’d never forgive yourself. I wasn’t sure you were in control of all that tonight, and I didn’t want to wake up to an empty apartment or – worse – have you wake up to a different man to the one who loves you. The one you love.’
Damn it. ‘I wouldn’t have done anything.’
‘Another drink might have changed all that,’ said Janine. ‘I had a bad vibe.’
‘Well,’ said Ren. ‘Thanks for caring.’
Janine laughed. ‘Once more with feeling.’
Ren got into bed and texted Ben. Love you. XX
Ren woke at eight thirty the next morning. Oooh. Where am I? Oh, I’m home. Thank God. Alone. Phew. OK. Janine stayed here. How did I get here? Cab. OK. No – a guy called JD. Nice guy. Nothing happened. That’s a positive. There’s hope for me.
Hope. Victims should never be called Hope. What happened to you, Hope Coulson? Did you get drunk in a bar, take a ride home with a stranger?
Ren got up and stuck her head into the living room.
No Janine. Why didn’t she call me? She hates me. I’m a liability on nights out.
Ren turned on the radio and went into the bathroom. She stepped onto the scales: one hundred and nineteen pounds. Thank you. Don’t ever change. She went to the toilet, washed her hands, dried them, then stepped on the scales again: still one hundred and nineteen pounds. So, I didn’t drink that much.
I’m high-larious.
She looked in the mirror. Ooh: not a good look, though a familiar one. I like the cheekbones, though.
She jumped in the shower and used every energizing product and scrub she could find to startle her awake. She dressed in gray, high-waisted straight-leg pants, a starched white shirt, a pale gold necklace with two pendants: one shaped like a crescent moon, the other shaped like a star. She did a quick makeup job, left her hair wet, and ran.
Fifteen minutes later, she parked outside the Livestock Exchange Building. She began to jog up the steps, but her pounding head slowed her march. She walked through the doors, her footsteps echoing across the polished marble floor. She headed for the wide central staircase instead of the elevator. The staircase led onto a landing, then left or right for more steps to the next floor, and the same all the way to the top. She could hear a man above loudly announce, ‘This is not safe!’
Ren looked up. He was rattling a clearly unstable guardrail along the second floor balcony.
And who the fuck might you be?
‘Is this even forty-two inches high, I have to wonder,’ he was saying.
Really? Do you?
He made his way up to the fourth floor.
The Safe Streets floor.
Ren recognized the woman rushing up the stairs behind him as Valerie, the real estate agent – giving him a tour. There were four office spaces to rent in the building.
On other floors.
Oh – Valerie! She might help me and Misty find a home!
Ren continued up the stairs. ‘Sir, this is not the floor with the vacant space,’ Valerie was saying. She looked down at Ren, exasperated.
‘That’s not the point!’ said the man. ‘How well maintained is this building is what I’m thinking.’ He tried to rattle the guardrail on the fourth floor, but it held firm. He looked disappointed.
Ren smiled at him as she passed by to walk through the door into Safe Streets. He was standing about four feet to her right. She paused. ‘We don’t walk out around there,’ said Ren, pointing down to the second floor balcony. ‘No one does, so, we’ve never noticed the problem. That’s a dummy door at the end. The elevator bank is down the other way. However, I’m sure we can get the guardrail that you will never use fixed for you in