back, but he’s following as much as he is leading. He throws a note down on the bar and they hear a grunt of thanks and goodbye. Their footsteps are loud on the hard wood floor as they exit, the wood aching in relief when they’re gone. As the door swings shut the note goes into the register and the barman returns to the screen. They might never have been there. In the taxi there’s another sleeping driver. Quietly, Alistair’s hand slides over Ava’s. They could do anything. Say anything. As they arrive at her building the driver wakes with a shiver, and mumbles goodnight before the car drifts away with him at the wheel.
Paused by the door of her apartment, Ava dips into her handbag and comes up with keys. Alistair’s hands are on her shoulders, unwrapping her scarf and letting it fall from her skin. The scent of it floods their senses as it moves. She opens the door and turns to lean against the wall, hands behind her back with her handbag dangling on a shoelace string. Inhaling the breeze as she allows him to enter, the room comes into view when the lights flick on.
Posing, he takes to his mark at the centre of the room.
Everything around him is square. A solid black coffee table gleams on thick posts on a smooth rectangular rug. Colourless sofa’s made of slotted cubes sit into each other in front of an L-shaped kitchen unit. The counter, clean like everything else, has never had any food prepared on it. There’s a steel lamp, here in the corner, and a series of vases on a shelf, three sizes in line from large to small, placed only because the apartment had come fitted with the ledge and needed something on it. No flowers, because they wilt when not cared for. No fake ones because what’s the point. There’s no art on the walls. The photos on display show shots of herself in crowds of beautiful people who she only calls friends when it suits her, and carefully chosen to be slightly less attractive than herself at that. He walks over to the long window and sees a dim reflection of himself in it placed among the furniture behind him, an ivory kendle armchair set, worth more for their name than for their comfort. Ava walks out of the doorway and into the image, linking her delicate fingers in his big bear paw, admiring the sight of him at her side. Rubbing the length of his arm she finds a price tag on his sleeve and teases him playfully as it’s tugged off with a smirk. He doesn’t see what’s so funny about it. As she pulls his jacket off his wide back, they appraise one another in the glass, assessments wet on the tip of their tongues.
‘We’re going to get caught,’ Alistair says.
Walking away from him, she kicks her shoes off at the threshold of her bedroom, first one, then the other, unclasping her earrings as she goes. Constrained to follow her example, it’s as if all the world has become a tunnel leading to the bedroom where she waits, and with loafers slipped off, the doctor walks into the dark, where everything that was going to happen, happens.
CHAPTER 6
So much of Francis Mullen’s work entails the investigation of that feeling one gets when entering a room and realising that the conversation by those present has hushed to an awkward silence. Not knowing what happens behind closed doors, getting to the bottom of what was said, in one way or another, his life is spent prying into these places he’s not wanted. Reactivity, the observer effect, applies in both directions.
Francis finds his attention passing to the newsroom outside the cramped office he has managed to claim. Set to frosted, he can see the staff on the other side of the window but all they can see of him is a blur. Ava is lingering by the conference room, an errant lock of black hair falling across her face as she rummages through her purse. He had told her his name and didn’t even notice. He’d blamed the hangover, but he hasn’t had a drink since and doesn’t feel any more confident in his ability to handle her.
Paused by the door of her apartment, Ava dips into her handbag and comes up with keys. Alistair’s hands are on her shoulders, unwrapping her scarf and letting it fall from her skin. The scent of it floods their senses as it moves. She opens the door and turns to lean against the wall, hands behind her back with her handbag dangling on a shoelace string. Inhaling the breeze as she allows him to enter, the room comes into view when the lights flick on.
Posing, he takes to his mark at the centre of the room.
Everything around him is square. A solid black coffee table gleams on thick posts on a smooth rectangular rug. Colourless sofa’s made of slotted cubes sit into each other in front of an L-shaped kitchen unit. The counter, clean like everything else, has never had any food prepared on it. There’s a steel lamp, here in the corner, and a series of vases on a shelf, three sizes in line from large to small, placed only because the apartment had come fitted with the ledge and needed something on it. No flowers, because they wilt when not cared for. No fake ones because what’s the point. There’s no art on the walls. The photos on display show shots of herself in crowds of beautiful people who she only calls friends when it suits her, and carefully chosen to be slightly less attractive than herself at that. He walks over to the long window and sees a dim reflection of himself in it placed among the furniture behind him, an ivory kendle armchair set, worth more for their name than for their comfort. Ava walks out of the doorway and into the image, linking her delicate fingers in his big bear paw, admiring the sight of him at her side. Rubbing the length of his arm she finds a price tag on his sleeve and teases him playfully as it’s tugged off with a smirk. He doesn’t see what’s so funny about it. As she pulls his jacket off his wide back, they appraise one another in the glass, assessments wet on the tip of their tongues.
‘We’re going to get caught,’ Alistair says.
Walking away from him, she kicks her shoes off at the threshold of her bedroom, first one, then the other, unclasping her earrings as she goes. Constrained to follow her example, it’s as if all the world has become a tunnel leading to the bedroom where she waits, and with loafers slipped off, the doctor walks into the dark, where everything that was going to happen, happens.
CHAPTER 6
So much of Francis Mullen’s work entails the investigation of that feeling one gets when entering a room and realising that the conversation by those present has hushed to an awkward silence. Not knowing what happens behind closed doors, getting to the bottom of what was said, in one way or another, his life is spent prying into these places he’s not wanted. Reactivity, the observer effect, applies in both directions.
Francis finds his attention passing to the newsroom outside the cramped office he has managed to claim. Set to frosted, he can see the staff on the other side of the window but all they can see of him is a blur. Ava is lingering by the conference room, an errant lock of black hair falling across her face as she rummages through her purse. He had told her his name and didn’t even notice. He’d blamed the hangover, but he hasn’t had a drink since and doesn’t feel any more confident in his ability to handle her.
Similar Books
