A.
Two.
Three.
Every chime of the bell echoes through the house like a nail driven into a deep well.
By seven o’clock your heart is pounding so hard that you can certainly hear it through the door. By nine o’clock you are so frozen that your muscles ache.
Force yourself to slow your breathing. Relax your jaw a little. Place one hand loosely on the blanket, as you usually do when you are completely absorbed in the tea.
Then footsteps are heard.
Calm.
Calculated.
Not exactly secretive, because secretiveness implies haste or guilt. These steps follow a routine. Practice. He has done this before. Very often. Perhaps even every evening since that first cup of ‘catnip’. The science alone makes you nauseous.
The door opens.
You keep your eyes closed.
The floorboards creak under his weight. The pressure in the room changes as if someone is entering, and a primeval part of yourself wants to run away, throw yourself into the dark hallway, and scream until the old portraits fall from the walls. But fear, if it is useful, does not run away. Listen.
Alejandro walks to the bed.
You feel his presence beside you, close enough to smell him: the clean starch of his shirt, the tobacco he thinks you don’t smell, and the same wholesome sweetness that hovered beneath the tea. He says nothing for a moment.
Then he said softly, almost whispering: “You can always be trusted.”
Your whole body gets ice cold under the blanket.
You hear him lean forward, perhaps to study your face. He brushes your hair from your forehead with one finger. The gesture feels intimate, deeply wrong, not so much sensual as possessive, as if he is checking something that belongs to him.
‘Later,’ he mumbles. ‘Just a moment.’
Then he walks away.
You hear the closet door open.
The rustling of the material.
Then a soft, metallic click, followed by the gentle scraping of wood over plaster. A hidden lock. A hidden door. Your room hides secrets. It seems that more than just sorrow lurks behind the walls of this old house.
You briefly look at your eyes through a small slit under your eyelashes.
Alejandro hides half behind the cupboard. A narrow panel in the wall, where normally only floral wallpaper and old cedar wood should be, is open. Darkness reigns behind him. He slips past it, with a lantern you have never seen burning before. The panel closes almost silently behind him.
You stand completely still for a moment.
