Page 82 of Antihero

He was over at the window leaning on the sill, dried paint razoring his palms, the draft lifting his hair, cooling the sweat on his forehead. What was this darkness he felt roosting in his own chest, a shadow of anguish caught like an infection?

The bedroom door clicked and he spun around.

Candy emerged. A flush touched her cheekbones and she looked uncharacteristically rumpled, wrinkles wadding her shirt in whorls, wet splotches darkening her chest, her shoulder.

She returned to her spot on the couch and sat, elbows on knees, staring at the union of her hands. She breathed evenly, steadily.

Evan walked over to her, stood a moment in silence. “Does she need medical?”

Candy shook her head, the curved points of her long bangs brushing her chin.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“I held her.”

“You.” His voice was flat with a not unkind disbelief. “Held her.”

“Yes. I’m not a fucking animal.” Her eyes flicked up and she must have seen the words knife into him because her face softened. “Oh,” she said. “You’re in mission mode. If you weren’t, you would’ve known to do it, too.”

No, he thought. I wouldn’t have.

Instead, he said, “You good?”

“No,” Candy said. “I want to be held and comforted.”

“Really?”

Her lips twitched. “No.”

A squeak of hinges. Anca filled the doorway, her face pallid, lips and eyelids raw and rouged pink. She wore a sweater and a winter coat and a pair of boots with thick laces.

“I need…” Her voice cracked. She reset herself. “I need to go to the store.”

“I’ll go with you,” Evan said.

“No,” she said. “Thank you. I must start to be in the world myself. I want to go alone.”

She started for the door, hesitated with her hand on the knob. Then she turned.

“I saw hell,” she said. “I was there.” A quick intake of air jerked her chest, the aftermath of sobbing. “Tată used to say that hell is locked from the inside. And we all have the key. You two? Helped me find the key.”

She dipped her head, a demure gesture of gratitude. And then she left.

Candy and Evan did not look at each other. They had no idea what to say.

He started for the door.

“Don’t,” Candy said. “She asked you not to.”

He hesitated.

And then continued out.

At the end of the hall, the elevator door had just closed behind Anca.

He jogged to the stairs and took them down in great bounds, not young-man parkouring but six steps a leap, landing squarely a boot at a time. He felt no twinge in his back, no complaint of the quadratus lumborum he’d wisely worked out before the mission.

Blowing through the lobby, he shot out through the spitting rain and across four lanes of sparse traffic, joining a current of pedestrians on the sidewalk. Umbrellas were in abundance, a surveillance advantage. A mustached vendor stood outside a newsstand, hocking his wares like a carnival barker: “Ponchos, ’brellas, coffee!”