Page 12 of When He Calls

Bean presses closer against my legs. My eyes close. Sleep comes faster than it has any night this October, and the last thing in my head isn't the skeleton or the mask or the basement from years ago. It's his voice saying yeah, Milo, same time tomorrow, and the way tomorrow sounded like a promise.

Chapter Four: Brantley

Anders's kid's ear infection got worse, so he swapped another shift and gave me the rest of his rotation. It means I basically work non-stop for the next two weeks, but I don’t mind. I don’t have family, pets or the like so work is what fills my time.

It sounds fucking pathetic when I say it like that, but it’s true. I enjoy my job more than I enjoy being home alone.

My headset goes on at 11:52. Pat called in sick, Mark at the middle station again, Gina at the far end. The floor hums its usual hum and nobody asks why the schedule changed.

Before my shift, I drove to his building. Third time in three days. Not the same spot, because the same spot is a pattern and patterns are how people get noticed. Tonight I parked in the grocery store lot two blocks north and walked.

The walk changes things. In the car there's glass and distance, a dashboard and a steering wheel. Walking strips all of that away. My feet on the same sidewalk his feet touch. My breath in the same air. The same cracked pavement, the same lamplight, the same October evening pressing down. Without the car, the proximity is real.

His building from the sidewalk looks different. Through the glass: mailboxes on the left wall, a hallway, a staircase going up. The floor is linoleum, scuffed, a building that does the minimum.

I went in.

The lobby stunk like old carpet and the cleaning solution that cheap buildings use, lemon-chemical, but off smelling, maintenance performed at the lowest possible cost. The mailboxes have small locks and nameplates, some typed, some handwritten. Second floor, unit 204: M. ASHFORD in block letters on a label maker strip.

The staircase turns at a landing. From the landing, the second-floor hallway is visible, four doors, and 204 is the end unit. A blue welcome mat. Plain. No Halloween decorations, no seasonal wreath, no pumpkin. Nothing. The absence of October on his doorstep is as loud as everything Ellis put in his yard.

Ten feet from his door.

My hand was on the staircase railing. The metal was cold and my grip was tight and I stood on that landing for ninety seconds, breathing through my nose, listening. Behind one of the doors, a TV murmuring. Behind another, the clatter of dishes. Behind 204, nothing. Or almost nothing. The small sound of claws on hardwood. The dog, moving through the apartment, nails clicking. The sound of a tiny animal going about its evening in the home of a man who was probably on the couch, or at the kitchen table, or sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, knees up, making himself small enough to survive another hour of October.

I couldn’t stop myself from moving closer, until I was standing directly in front of his door. I could have knocked. My knuckles were already curled. One knock and the dog would bark, the footsteps would come, the deadbolt would turn, and the voice would have a face. The face from the headshot, the eyes that would go black in low light, the hand that grips.

My palm went flat against the door instead. Not a knock. Just contact. The wood was cool and I could feel the hollow core of it, the thinness, the nothing between my hand and his apartment. Somewhere on the other side of that door he was breathing. Doing whatever he does in the hours between dusk and the call.

The dog's nails clicked closer, then stopped. A sniff at the base of the door, loud in the quiet hallway. The wet sound of a nose pressed to the gap between door and frame. She could smell me. The dog with her nose against the crack, smelling a stranger who shouldn't be there, and if she barked the whole thing would collapse. My hand lifted off the wood. The dog sniffed twice more. Didn't bark. Her nails clicked away, back into the apartment, back to whatever corner she sleeps in while he waits to call me.

Me.

Not the center.

Specifically me.

I didn't knock. The timing is wrong. A knock now is a question he'd ask about, a stranger at the door. The knock happens when the answer exists. When the distance closes on its own.

I went back down the stairs and out the lobby door and back to the grocery store lot and sat in my car for forty minutes, writing in the notebook.

Lobby: unlocked. Mailboxes left wall. Staircase with landing. Second floor, 4 units. 204 = end unit, blue welcome mat, no decorations. Nameplate: M. ASHFORD (label maker). Heard the dog's nails on the floor through the door. No TV, no music. Quiet unit.

Stood at his door. Palm on the wood. Could hear the dog. Could hear nothing else. Standard interior door, hollow core probably. Handle lock looks standard. Deadbolt is a Kwikset. Two different locks, two different keys. He locks both. Handle, deadbolt, handle. He mentioned the sequence on the second call. A ritual. A wall between him and everything outside. I was standing on the other side of it.

Next time I won't stop at the door.

At home, the notebook open on the kitchen counter, I read it back. My hand doesn't shake.

That was six hours ago. The headset is on and the shift is running. The notebook is at home, because I forgot it while my head was still in the clouds, but the entries are in my head. Every detail, the lemon-chemical smell, the scuffed linoleum, the sound of the dog's nails.

The wondering, and the yearning.

1:08 and the line rings.

"Harbor Crisis Center, this is Brantley."

The breathing comes through first, same count, same rhythm. The recognition is instant, animal, my body knowing before my brain confirms. Sheets rustle on the other end. Phone on a pillow. He's in bed this time, not on a floor. The audio is closer and lower, a voice lying down in the dark with the phone against his skin.