Wind Therapy - A.J. Downey Page 0,19
high, and I was relieved when he took the exit for Delridge Way and we descended the off ramp back down to earth, stopping for the light at the bottom. After close to three hours, I was ready to be done.
“Almost there!” he shouted over the chug of the engine, as though he’d read my mind.
I nodded and we turned left, up the hill. At some point, we turned off Delridge and onto one of the little residential side streets. He slowed and turned again, then once more down a back alley that had deep ruts that he carefully walked us around to pull in behind a small, rundown house. He killed the engine on the concrete pad, back beneath a ramshackle, hastily erected carport, and I hopped off. Straightening, my hands on the back of my hips to aid in a deep stretch, I felt bones in my spine crackle and pop, and it left me sighing in satisfaction. Tired and sore, I longed for a decent hot shower and hoped his bathroom wasn’t excessively gross or old and falling apart.
“Come on,” he said and went up the back step. He keyed open the lock on the back door and I followed him, cautiously. If he were the type to hurt women, now would be the time to do it. Beautiful didn’t equate safe, and I knew the personal cost my being here could wring out of me. I knew it, and I was still willing to pay it.
The back door led right into the kitchen which was an odd sort of shape. There was a long closet behind the door with that slatted sort of doors that slid along a track. I figured it was a pantry or something, but there was a bit of a jut in the wall and then another set of white slatted sliding doors. I didn’t know why two sets, but I could explore later if he let me.
Though tight, the kitchen was new-ish. At least, newly remodeled. There were two doorways – well, maybe doorway wasn’t the right word. I mean, there were no doors, just open archways. Both were in line and straight across from the back door. They appeared to lead straight through the dining room and into the living room.
The kitchen was retro black and white with all modern, stainless-steel appliances, and it made me smile. I could really cook in a kitchen like this. I made a mean tamale and there could be tamales for days coming out of this kitchen if I were allowed free rein and the money for the ingredients.
“This way,” Maverick said, shutting the door behind him and I jumped slightly when he brushed past me. He slowed, but didn’t comment, and I followed him through the archway, through the dining room with its heavy dark wood table and modern straight-backed black leather chairs, and through the intersection between the short hall into the rest of the house and the living room.
The living room had nice furniture – black leather, a modern couch, recliner, and a love seat with a big screen modern television against one wall. The leather furniture was accented by a glass coffee table and three end tables all shiny, modern, and new, but that’s where the nice newness ended. The carpet was threadbare and dingy and the paint on the walls cracked. It was dusty in here; the curtains and rods didn’t look like they worked overtly well, and they also appeared as though the curtains were always closed. Cobwebs hung in the corners and from the ceiling and I felt my brow wrinkle at the state of the room.
“See the desk?” he asked and to one end of the room there was a messy glass desk with an open laptop on a leather blotter. Papers stacked at random on its surface, a window covered in dusty venetian blinds behind it.
“Yes.”
“Leave that alone. Don’t go near it,” he said flatly.
“Okay,” I said, already planning to defy him to get at those dust-coated blinds. The thick layer of fuzzy gray I could see from here on their surface driving me crazy already. I would leave the desk itself alone, but those dust bunnies would be mine. That was disgusting.
After the mishmash of old and new, dusty, and relatively clean of the living room, I started to worry about the state of the rest of the house, specifically the bathroom.
Maverick turned right down the short hall which held three closed doors—one to