discover she’s been sneaking out to take photos. It wouldn’t be much of a travel shoot for London.
So there are the clothes.
And then there is the shelf.
It’s one shelf, also IKEA-chic, snugged up in a space below the narrow window at the front of the room. The window looks down over a New York City street as nondescript as anywhere else. That doesn’t mean it’s safe. That doesn’t mean they won’t find us. But that’s old information. What interests me is the contents of the shelf.
The top two squares are filled with records.
Records leaning against each other in a tilted slope toward the left side. On top of the shelf, in a place of prominence, is a blush pink record player. This, at least, looks perfect for an Instagram shoot. Something sent to her by a company that wanted her influence, no doubt. Women like London get this kind of thing all the time. That’s why they go into careers on social media, or at least side jobs there.
I would expect London’s apartment to be full of these kinds of gifts, or bribes, or payments.
It’s not.
Aside from her clothes, the record player is the only obvious sign of her career. And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she bought this for herself to go with her record collection.
I didn’t intend to come into the room when I stood up. Only to look. To canvas. The records change my plans. My fingers itch to separate them from each other and read the titles. It’s the same aching itch I have to touch London whenever she’s in the same room, which is nearly always.
A deep breath to steady myself turns into an exercise in restraint. I can smell her. The light floral soapy scent of her shampoo is all over the blanket, and she’s left it tumbled and open, like she just climbed out of it. The bed is a trap. It’s the records that hook me at the center of my chest and tug me across the threshold.
The fact that I hesitated has made all of this more illicit and more irresistible. If I’d just walked in like I own both the bedroom and London Frank, I wouldn’t get to feel this blend of shame and exhilaration.
My feet meet the rug and it gives. The rug, like everything else, is shockingly secondhand. It’s endearing as hell to know that a person like London, beautiful, well-traveled London, furnishes her apartment with comfortable castoffs. I fight off the urge to sink down to my knees and run my palms over the fabric ridges.
The rug ends where the shelf begins.
This is more intimate than rifling through her underwear drawer. Make no mistake—I want to do that, too. So much that if she ever knew, she’d call me a sick bastard and change the locks. I want to look at the records more. Is it an obsession if it makes you want to go through a person’s records more than you want to see their lingerie?
Perhaps.
I test the paperboard sleeves of the records and my heart races like I’ve hooked a finger into the waistband of her panties. It hurts to stand, as cavalier as I’m being about it.
What hurts more is the absence of her in this apartment. I’m six inches from the side of her bed and it’s a joke. A furniture taunt. I could have her in that bed. What I wouldn’t give to have her in that bed, to have my fingertips on her skin instead of on these records—
I pull one out at random, take off the sleeve, and drop it onto the record player. My grandpa had one of these when he was alive. An Army man. He would have been ashamed of what his son had become. He would have been ashamed of me, too. I suppose it’s just as well he died of a heart attack decades ago.
The needle drops into the groove and the soulful voice of Etta James fills the space.
Maybe she’s listened to this, too, standing in this very spot. Maybe she was only dressed in panties and a bra. Maybe she was wearing nothing. Her body would have been relaxed. It wouldn’t be like it is with me. London pretends to be at ease but I know she’s not. She knows what I’m capable of.
“What are you doing?”
London’s voice is a spear through At Last. My hand goes to the bullet wound before I can stop myself, skin tightening. I’ve been swaying a little with