Chapter 15 - The Abandoned Building

The plywood turned sideways, the gap wide enough for a shoulder, and Teo went through left shoulder first, the rest of him after, one motion in the dark. Cami came through behind him without being told. She had learned the gap by now.

The stairwell railing was gone above the second landing, so he kept his hand on the wall and she kept a step behind him. His knuckles found the plaster, the cold of it specific, and he counted by texture: the smooth section, then the buckled section where water had gotten in from somewhere above, then the open air of the third-floor landing with no more railing at all. The building absorbed sound. Whatever they made went up into the ceiling and stayed there.

Unit 3B. The door was open because there was no lock, and the room inside was what it had always been: concrete subfloor, two windows with glass in them. A folding chair faced the south window. They did not use the chair.

He went to the window. The city through it at this hour was a specific thing. The Bruckner overpass came up if you looked for it, with warehouse rooflines past that and the orange of accumulated light off four million people not sleeping. Two blocks west, the red neon of La Reina Roja sat above the warehouse line. The sign was legible from here. R-E-I-N-A. The second R dimmer than the first, same as always.

He looked at it for two seconds, then turned away.

"Oye." She said it from behind him. Locating him in the room.

"Estoy aquí." I'm here.

Her bag came down on the subfloor with a canvas thump. He turned and she was already on the floor with her back against the wall, her knees drawn up, watching him. The city light through the south window reached her at an angle, lighting her face on the left, leaving the right side in shadow. Her eyes were on him: she had stopped managing the conversation and was only looking.

She had gotten thinner since the summer. Three weeks ago he had noticed it and not stopped noticing it since. The club's light flatted it out on stage; here it was clear. He filed it with the other things he filed.

He crossed the room and sat on the floor next to her. Not close enough to touch and close enough to touch. He leaned his back against the wall, same as her, and the cold of the concrete subfloor came up through his jeans. October had arrived in a serious way this last week.

"You ate?" he said.

She looked at him.

"Yeah. Okay."

They sat for a minute. The expressway came up faintly from below. The train was somewhere else. The traveled sound of it would come up through concrete and old wood when it came.

Her hand crossed the floor and found his, flat, without ceremony. He felt the weight of it on the back of his hand. He turned his palm up and her fingers came between his, and she leaned her head against his shoulder.

She smelled like the club, and underneath it like herself. He had been cataloguing the underneath smell for months and still did not have a word for it.

"Estás bien?" he said.

"Estoy bien."

"Cami."

A pause. "Estoy bien, Teo. Okay? I'm fine."

Her hand in his was real weight. He felt her breathe.

After a while she lifted her head and turned toward him, and when she kissed him the cold of the room was in her lips for the first second and then that passed. He kissed her back. She moved closer, her knee coming up against his thigh, and his free hand went to her jaw. Her skin was warm against his palm. She exhaled into the kiss.

She pulled back one inch.

"Mira." It was not a request. She looked at his face in the orange light, looking for whatever she was looking for.

He let her look.

She kissed him again and this one was different. Her mouth was harder. Her teeth caught his lower lip and held a second before she let go. Her hand came out of his and went to the back of his neck, pulling him in, and he brought her closer by the waist and she leaned into it instead of away.

They went down to the floor by degrees, no single decision, an accumulation of smaller ones. His jacket came off and went under her. The concrete beneath it was still cold but less so. She was warm. Her hands moved at his collar, then his shoulders, and then they were both on the floor and the room had narrowed to her.

---

She pulled his shirt free and her hands went to his ribs. Her fingers were cold against the skin and the palm flat against his side was warm. He got her dress up. The fabric bunched at her hips and she lifted for him, efficient, and he got it the rest of the way off. Cold air came in across the skin they had uncovered. He pressed his face into the curve of her neck.

"Hey." Her hands were in his hair.

"Yeah."

"Look at me."

He looked. Her eyes in the city light were direct and a little fierce. He held the look and kept still and let her see him.

She nodded once, like he had answered something.

Her collarbone was under his mouth and she made a small sound when his teeth grazed it. Her hips came up into his hand, directing. She was harder against him tonight, wanting him more. She pulled at his shirt like she was angry at it, and he read both things at the same time in the same hand. The wanting and the anger were the same gesture.

"Teo." She said his name in Spanish, in the register she used when they were the only two people anywhere.

He answered with his hands.

She got him free of the rest of his clothes with the matter-of-fact efficiency she had shown since the first time, and when he settled over her and felt her hands pulling him in he pressed his forehead to hers and breathed. His hand went between her legs and she was wet and ready and she made a sound low enough he felt it more than heard it. He worked her with his fingers, her breath going short, her back arching off the jacket, and she said: "Ven aquí, papi."

He pushed into her.

The floor was hard and the room was cold and none of that registered. He had her hip under his hand. Her legs were around him and her breath was fast in his ear.

Her hands moved on his back, open and pressing. His face was in her hair and he could smell the club in it and the underneath smell that was hers. He moved in her and she moved against him and the building did not come into it.

The part of his mind that ran exits did not stop. It held the south window. Two blocks west. The red of the second R sat behind his eyes every time he closed them. He pressed his forehead harder into the dark of her hair and the red was still there.

She said his name again. The same Spanish. He kept moving. Her hands pressed into his back, pulling him in, her breath going sharp, her body contracting under his, a sound coming out of her that filled the room.

"Mírame," she said into his ear, half on a breath. Look at me.

He lifted his face out of her hair and looked. Her eyes were wet and open, and her face was holding nothing back. She meant for him to see all of it. He kept moving and let her see whatever was in his.

When he came it was into her and against her, and her hands gripped the back of his neck and held him there. She pressed her mouth against his shoulder through it. He let go with his whole body a few moments later and she held him through that too.

He stayed over her, forearms on the floor to either side, catching his breath. Her hands rested flat on his back. The cold of the room was all around them and the warmth was between them, and he was aware of both.

Afterward, the room came back in.

The expressway was distant. The cold came off the windows. The city's ambient light came through the south glass and lay across the floor. He was on his side, his jacket under her, and she was close against him with her head on his shoulder and his arm around her. Her breathing slowed toward normal under his hand.

He looked at the south window. The city was still there. Two blocks west, the red neon of La Reina Roja was still there. R-E-I-N-A. The second R with its dimmer element, legible from here.

Cami shifted against him, her hand flat on his chest, finding the beat of him. He put his hand over hers. Below them the sound of a train came up through the street and the concrete and the compromised joists. It was not loud and it was not close. It passed and was gone.

---

How long they lay there he could not have said. Long enough that the chill of the room had worked through his jacket, through the concrete underneath, through everything. The cold was in his back and he stayed in it without moving.

She lifted her head. Her face turned toward the south window, the same south window he had looked at. Whether she could see what he saw from her angle he could not tell, and he kept the question off his face.

"Teo." She said his name without inflection.

"Yeah."

She sat up and reached for her dress and pulled it back on. He lay where he was and watched her, the city light on the curve of her shoulder, her hands steady. She had dressed in low light before. She was efficient at it. When she was done she pulled her knees to her chest and looked at him.

"Te lo voy a preguntar una vez más."

He kept his eyes on her.

"Pittsburgh." The word came out with the same hard edge it had carried on the rooftop. "My abuela's cousin Marisol. Bloomfield. The 5:08 westbound out of Penn runs every day. Ahora, Teo. This week. Not eventually. Now."

The room held the word. Outside, the expressway did what the expressway did, continuous and indifferent.

He looked at the ceiling. Old plaster, water-stained, the damage of a building that had been trying to hold on long past the point anyone came to check. Room 9 came back: the lamp, the water stain, Cami's breath slowing beside him. His throat closed around it.

"Not yet," he said.

The silence after had a specific quality. She did not move toward it or away from it.

"¿Por qué no?" The question was not accusatory. It was exact.

He had the answer. The answer was Machete and the Albanians and Ricky's surveillance tightening, three of Ricky's men knowing his schedule better than they should, the cost of disappearing from the system and the cost of trying and getting it wrong. He had run it every night for two weeks.

He did not say any of it.

"Not yet," he said again.

She looked at him for a long moment. He held the look. He owed her that.

Her face went still. She had stopped letting anything cross it. He had learned to read the stillness. He read it now.

She nodded once. Her arms tightened around her knees.

"Okay."

He held the silence with her and did not fill it.

He sat up. The cold in his back came with him. He reached for his shirt, his jacket, dressed in the low light. Her gaze stayed on him or stayed on the window. From his angle he could not tell which. The city beyond the glass was the same as it had been when they walked in. Two blocks west.

When he was dressed he sat next to her again, the same position as before, backs against the wall. She did not lean against his shoulder this time. She was upright, arms around her own knees, looking at the window and whatever was on the other side of it.

He looked at the same window and knew what was on the other side of it. He had known from the first moment he saw this room, the first time he brought her here and understood what was visible through the south glass. The calculation had run then: how much of the frame was Ricky's, and whether telling her changed anything. The answer had been no. He had decided to stay quiet, and every time since then he had decided again.

The train came from somewhere below. The same train or a different train; from here there was no way to tell. It passed. The sound came up through the floor and was absorbed by the walls and was gone before it fully arrived.

She put her head down on her knees.

"Teo." She said it level, no crack in it, no performance. "I'm going to ask you that one more time. After tonight." A beat. "After that I'm not going to ask."

His eyes stayed on the window. The follow-up question, the one about what happened when she stopped, sat in his throat and he did not let it out. His hands went flat on his thighs.

"Cami," he said.

"I know." She lifted her head and looked at him. Her eyes in the city light were tired and entirely honest. "I know, Teo. No me digas nada. I know."

She closed her eyes.

Her face in repose was still watching something. The muscles of it stayed engaged. He had noticed it in Room 9 on the first night, that her sleep was lighter than his, that some part of her stayed turned toward the window even with her eyes shut. That posture had been in her body before he showed up in her life. From the outside it looked like a discipline. He was one more thing in the list of what it was tracking.

He leaned his head back against the wall and looked at the ceiling.

The joists held. The plaster he had counted by texture on the way up was still where it had been. None of it had failed yet.

The expressway came up from below. The south window held the city's orange dark and held what it had held when they walked in, two blocks west.

He put his hand on hers where it rested on her knee. She did not open her eyes. He sat with his hand over hers and the cold worked through his jacket again.

For the first time he ran the arithmetic of leaving with the same attention he had been running the arithmetic of staying. Not the partial math he had been doing for two weeks and calling planning, but the real one. The cost of getting to a westbound train at five in the morning, weighed against the cost of not.

She exhaled, slow, and her head came to rest on his shoulder. Whether she was asleep he could not tell, and the question stayed off his lips. He sat with his back against the cold wall and her weight against him and the city beyond the window, and below them the building held.

It was holding for now. That was not the same as it would hold.