Page 28 of When He Calls

2:55 a.m. The trazodone has peaked. His body is in the deepest phase of sedated sleep, the muscles slack, the respiratory rate slow, the threshold for waking raised high enough that a door opening, a floorboard creaking, a body moving through his apartment won't register in whatever's left of his consciousness.

I'm parked on the side street behind his building. Not Ridgeway. The alley. The one he walks through every morning on the way back from the loop, the one that faces dumpsters, recycling bins, the practical ugly parts of living. No decorations back here. No cameras either. I checked. The building has six units and a landlord who lives in Tacoma and manages the property through a company that hasn't updated the security since the building was converted from a duplex in 2011.

The back entrance has a four-digit keypad. The code is 7734. I watched a tenant punch it in from the alley three days ago, a woman with grocery bags who didn't look behind her because nobody looks behind them when they're carrying groceries. The code got her through the back door into the ground-floor hallway. His apartment is up one flight, second door on the left. The door has a deadbolt and a handle lock. The deadbolt is a Kwikset. I bought the same model two days ago from a hardware store on the other side of town. Practiced the pick until I could do it in under forty seconds. The handle lock is a standard pin tumbler that opens with a tension wrench and a rake in under ten.

The lube is in my jacket pocket. Water-based. I bought it at a pharmacy fifteen miles from here, cash, no loyalty card, hat pulled low. I didn’t have to be so sketchy about it, lube is sold and bought everyday, but holding the knowledge of what I was about to do made me even more cautious. The receipt is in a dumpster behind the pharmacy. The condom is in the other pocket. I won't use it. The condom is a contingency. What I want is skin.

I get out of the car. The alley is dark. The dumpsters smell like cardboard and food waste. My shoes are soft-soled, the pair I bought for this, black, rubber tread, the kind of shoe that doesn't announce itself on tile or hardwood. My jacket is dark. My jeans are dark. The only light comes from a streetlamp at the end of the alley and it doesn't reach the back entrance.

The keypad glows green when I punch in the code. The back door opens. The hallway smells like laundry detergent and something cooking, garlic, probably from the ground-floor unit where the woman with the grocery bags lives. The stairs are carpeted. My feet make no sound.

Second floor. Second door on the left. His door. The one I pressed my palm against two nights ago, feeling the hollow core vibrate with Bean's breathing on the other side.

I kneel. The deadbolt first. The pick set is in my back pocket, six tools in a leather fold. The tension wrench goes in at the bottom of the keyway. The pick goes in above it. I feel for the pins. Five pins, standard configuration. The first three set quickly. The fourth resists. I adjust the tension, lighten the pressure, and the fourth pin sets. The fifth follows. The deadbolt turns.

The handle lock takes eight seconds.

I stand. My hand is on the knob. My heartbeat is in my wrists, my throat, the space behind my ears. Not from fear. From proximity. His body is fifteen feet from my hand. Fifteen feet and a door that is no longer locked.

I turn the knob. I push the door open three inches. The hinge doesn't make a sound.

The apartment is dark. The candle on the kitchen table has burned out. The smell of cedar and sage is still in the air, faint, mixing with the warmth of a closed apartment and the specific scent of his skin, which I know from standing in this doorway before, but which hits differently tonight because tonight I'm not stopping at the threshold.

Bean lifts her head from the couch.

My body stills, every muscle locked. The dog's eyes catch the light from the hallway, two bright points in the dark. Her ears are forward. Her tail is flat. She's deciding. The decision will take between one and three seconds and the outcome depends on whether her nose recognizes me from the coffee shop nine hours ago, the man whose boots she sniffed, whose chair legs she investigated, whose scent she filed in whatever part of a terrier's brain stores the catalog of known smells.

One second. Her nostrils flare.

Two seconds. Her tail lifts.

Three seconds. She puts her head back down.

She recognized me, which means my coffee shop visit worked.

The breath leaves my body in a slow, controlled stream. I step inside. I close the door behind me. I don't lock it. The sound of the deadbolt turning could wake him even through the trazodone. I leave it unlocked. I'll lock it on the way out.

The apartment is small. Kitchen to the right, living room straight ahead, bedroom through the doorway on the left. The layout is the one I memorized from the building's floor plan, which I pulled from the county assessor's website, which lists the unit configurations for tax purposes. 640 square feet. One bedroom, one bath. The bedroom door is open.

I move through the living room. Bean watches me from the couch. Her tail wags once, a single sweep, and then she settles. My shoes are silent on the hardwood. The bedroom doorway is four steps from the couch. I take them slowly, savoring the sweet tension that builds inside me the closer I get. Each step placed heel to toe, the weight transferred gradually, the floorboard tested before it's loaded.

He's on his back. The sheet is at his waist, in a white t-shirt that's ridden up in sleep, exposing a strip of stomach above the waistband of his sweats. His arms are at his sides. His head is turned slightly to the left, his jaw slack, his lips parted. The trazodone has done its work. His breathing is slow, deep, no resistance, no dreams, no awareness of the room or the man standing three feet from the bed.

I watch him breathe for sixty seconds. I count them. Sixty inhales. Sixty exhales. His chest rising, the stomach expanding, the slight pause at the top of each breath where his body holds before releasing. His face is younger in sleep. The tension around his eyes, the permanent squint of always watching for threats, is gone. His mouth is soft. His hands are open on the mattress, palms up, fingers curled loosely.

The vulnerability is beautiful.

He’s beautiful.

I know what I’m about to do and I have no regrets, no second thoughts. From the minute I heard his voice, this day was already written.

He’s mine, he’s been mine since he dialled the number that lead him to me…

And now I’m going to make sure his body knows it.

I take off my shoes, and my jacket. I set them on the floor by the doorway. The lube stays in my hand. I move to the side of the bed. His side. The left side, where his body is angled, where his hip creates a ridge under the sheet.

I sit on the edge of the mattress. The bed dips. He doesn't stir. The trazodone has him deep enough that a 190-pound man sitting on his mattress doesn't hit his conscious. His breathing stays even. His eyelids don't move.