The Apartment (13 page)

It works to some extent, because at least I'm not hearing Zoë's crying anymore. I gradually become aware of myself. I'm standing in my underwear, sockless shoes, and a coat; my legs are numb with cold, and the narrow cobbled courtyard is familiar, but something's different. Then I notice it: the dim patch of light pushing through the grimy window in the courtyard.

Someone's living in there, in the storeroom. It explains the sounds—the talking, the crying. I should just leave it at that, be satisfied that I have someone or something to blame for the night's disturbances; that will make me sleep easier, won't it?

I shouldn't approach the window, go anywhere near that flaking door that looks so much like the final barricade of a slaughterhouse. I should just go back up and keep Steph company through the rest of this shattered night. But fragments of my last dream still hook in my mind: Zoë suffocating, scrabbling for my help under that smothering shroud.

My feet carry me to the window and I peer through; the decision has nothing to do with my mind. The storeroom is lit by the dim orange glow of an ancient light bulb that's absorbed into the dust-dulled surfaces of the covered furniture.

But there's nobody in there; no movement, nobody gasping their final breath.

I'm just exhausted,
I tell myself as I stop and fill my lungs with air. The hush of the misty rain filtering down over the cobbles intensifies the padded silence in this courtyard, walled away from the constant city, with the sleeping windows of neighboring buildings looming over me, and the freshness revives me. I should just go back to bed; it will all be easier in the morning. I turn back toward the building, short of breath, my heart still hammering erratically, and as I do, I'm startled by a clang and a clatter at the far end of the courtyard, as a light flicks on over the entrance to the stairwell.

It strikes me that the light has never worked before, and I wonder if it's Steph, coming out to find me—it can't be anybody else—but a small shadow lurches across the wall in front of me, followed by another one. Then a preternatural wailing, but one I recognize this time—that fucking cat. It's going to give me a bloody heart attack.

I go toward the culvert where I saw it last time and crouch down to peer inside, but I can't see anything there. I spend more time than I should there, shoving my arm into the pipe and trying to extract the cat. There's a rotten smell of fish and sewage in the drain, and I try to push away thoughts of Mireille's congealing blood still lingering there as I draw my arm out, my coat sleeve rucked up to my biceps and my forearm covered with gunk.

I'm pushing myself up again when I hear the light-shod tread of someone behind me. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to explain myself, crouching half-dressed over the mouth of a drainpipe. I turn slowly.

Zoë, seven years old, smiles at me, her hands behind her back. She's wearing only jeans and a T-shirt, and her long hair is soaked and darkened by the rain.

“What are you doing out here, Zo?” I say, my mind bypassing all that is real. “You must be freezing. Come.” I stand up and take off my coat and offer it to her, but I drop it when she shows me what's in her hands.

“I have something for you.”

The cat is hissing and growling in her grasp. Zoë has pinned its legs remarkably efficiently in her strong hands, so that it can't lash out and scratch her. It's writhing its head around trying to nip her, a low yowl stretching from inside it.

“Put it down, Zo. Let it go.”

“But why, Daddy? I know you hate it. It's been keeping you awake.”

I step toward her, pleading, ignoring my shivering, my heart trying to beat itself out of my bare chest. “Sweetie, I never taught you to hurt animals. I always told you that was very bad.”

She ignores me. “I hate it too. It makes me choke,” she says as she shifts her grip and moves the cat's head to her right hand.

“No! Don't!”

It's too late. The cat screams as Zoë squeezes and twists. I hear the crackle of its neck as it's suddenly silent, and Zoë starts pulling handfuls of fur out of it. I hurry over and grab the animal's body from her hands as its blood sluices from its mouth onto me.

“What have you done?”

It's Steph's voice. I look up at her. “It wasn't me. It was her.” I point toward where Zoë's standing, but she's gone.

“Put it down, Mark. Drop it. We're getting the fuck out of here.”

I manage to stand, dazed. I look at my arms, covered with sludge and blood, then down at my stomach, my legs. “But I have to clean up. Get dressed.”

“You stay here. I'll bring you a towel and our stuff. Don't you dare think of going back into that building. We are leaving this fucking place. Right now.”

The tiredness and the cold must get to me then, because I'm hardly aware as Steph has returned and is rubbing me with the Petits' thin towels and is helping me into my jeans, which are still damp, and forcing me into my coat. She leaves the towels in the courtyard, on top of the cat's body, as she steers me out onto the sidewalk and closes the door behind me. I'm stumbling through the gray canyon streets, Steph huffing behind me.

I lean against a wall for a moment and open my eyes to see Steph inside a building's lobby, shouting at a man behind a desk. I know I should be doing more to help, I should be getting involved, but it's so cold. I grip my collar, and then Steph's shunting me along up a hill again.

“Hold this, Mark,” Steph's saying, strapping the daypack onto my back, wrestling our two wheeled suitcases behind her. I shake my head and squeeze my eyes, trying to clear the cobwebs and help her, but I'm so tired. “Can you believe that arsehole? Said he wouldn't give us back our bags because
Serge
wasn't supposed to offer to keep them in the first place. ‘What wiss all the tewwowism at the moment, madame, we should all feel lucky.' I'm so over this place.”

Somehow, Steph's wrestled me and our luggage down into the Pigalle Métro station, then off again and through a change at a narrow little overground station. Although it's still dark, it's busy around us, working people starting their day. The time on the train's clock reads 5:52. The walk and then the moment to sit on the train helps to revive me enough to say, “It wasn't me, Steph.”

She just shakes her head.

“Where are we going?”

“To Gare du Nord to get a train to the airport.”

“But the standby flight's only at eleven tonight.”

She turns to me and glares. “Does it look to you like I want to spend another minute in this city? What are you suggesting? A spot of sightseeing, maybe go up the Eiffel Tower, a three-star lunch, and then find
another fucking piece of roadkill
?”

The people in the carriage stare at us. “Shh!” I hiss. “I told you: it wasn't me. It was—”

“Shut up, Mark. Don't say another word to me.” She jams her arms across her chest and looks away.

When the train stops at the Gare du Nord, at least I'm together enough to keep the daypack on and wheel my own bag. With a bitter charge of wordlessness between us, we navigate our way from the Métro station through the confusing levels of the terminal to the correct ticket machines. I stop and look around me before I take out my wallet; it's early on a Friday morning and the station is bustling with people and many of them look threatening, their hoodies and trainers dressing them as archetypal first-world criminals. I feel a little ashamed of myself, but with our colorful luggage and hesitant steps, we stand out for miles as tourists ripe for the scamming.

But it's all moot since when I take out my wallet, all I find are two euros and thirty-five cents and my impotent credit card. Steph finds another euro and forty in her pocket. We need twenty euros for the train tickets.

“Look,” Steph says, pointing at the rank of turnstiles fronting the entrance to the airport-bound line. “Everyone's going through the baby carriage gate. They don't have tickets. We can just tail someone through to the other side. Everyone does it.”

“No way, Steph. It's illegal to travel without a ticket. I don't care if everyone does it.”

“What? What's the alternative?”

I don't say anything to her; I can't bring myself to open my mouth, but I just venture out onto the concourse with my hands like a bowl, the universal sign of need. It's shameful, but if this situation forces me to become a criminal, I'm no worse than them.

Steph doesn't try to stop me; she merely mutters, “You've got to be fucking kidding me,” then shunts our bags to a railing and sits on one, slumping her chin in her hand. Right now I'd like to disappear into the earth; I wouldn't be disappointed if one of these passing gangsters or hustlers beat me to a pulp, took all I have, and just ground me into the dust.

It's a mortifying forty minutes. I don't know whose embarrassment burns me worse—my own, or Steph's as she sits by the railing, wishing she were anywhere in the world but here and associated with anyone in the world but me. As I make my absurd, meaningless, principled stand, overgrown kids laugh at me, tourists skitter away from me, and harried workers tell me to fuck myself, before a tall, dark man with a white kepi approaches me with a smile. Behind him, his wife, his son, and his daughter watch patiently. The wife wears a colorful hijab and the daughter is in a long purple one. The son wears a neat suit, a small version of his father, who speaks to me in English. “What do we ask Allah for today, my brother?”

I speak frankly. “My wife and I need sixteen euros twenty-five for train tickets to the airport.”

The man produces a wallet and takes out two fives and a ten and offers them to me. I can see he has little else in there and I think I should refuse, but that suddenly seems the least honorable thing I could do today.

“Thank you,” I say. “
Merci.
Let me take your address and pay you back.”

“Non,”
he says. “Think of Suleiman and his family in your prayers,
d'accord
?”

“Thank you,” I say again as I watch the family move off, feeling like a fraud. I'm never going to pray for that man. I don't believe; I don't pray. I have absolutely nothing to offer him.

“You happy now?” Steph says as I join her. “Taking money from a man who probably has less than us.”

“Yes, I am actually,” I say.

“Nice, Mark. Very fucking nice.” She stares at me for five full seconds, and I can see the spite boiling in her eyes, and she can't contain it. “I'm glad you can stand up for yourself and your own sainted morality. But you can't fucking stand up for your wife and child when they're being dragged into a bedroom by a gang of armed men.” She whirls away before she can even register the hurt in my face.

I started to relax only when the plane began taxiing along the rain-swept runway. Until then, I fully expected the flight attendant to tap me on the shoulder, smile apologetically, and say, “I'm sorry, ma'am, but there's been a mistake. You and your fucked-up, twitchy husband have to get the hell off the plane.” Then we'd be stuck in that airport for another full day with no money, an unbearable thought after ten hours spent perching on a slippery plastic chair, sipping nasty coffee.

When we reached Charles de Gaulle, I positioned us within sight of the Air France check-in desks, a few yards from an exit. We were hit with a waft of smoke-tinged icy air every time the exit doors slid open, but I didn't care. Our flight wouldn't be open for hours, but I was so desperate to get on the plane, I couldn't relax unless I had the desks in sight.

Mark fell asleep an hour into the ordeal, head lolled back, mouth open, as motionless as a cadaver. Too anxious to doze, I managed to finish the Kate Atkinson novel that had sat at the bottom of my bag all week without retaining a word and tried not to hate the holidaymakers and businesspeople blithely queuing for the check-in machines. I used up the thirty minutes of free wi-fi doing little else but framing an email to my mom, saying that all was well and that I'd be in touch the following day. I didn't want to jinx anything by letting my folks know we'd changed our flights until I knew for sure that we'd be able to get on the plane. After that I paced, picked at a stale croissant, lugged my case back and forth to the toilets to splash water on my face and change my clothes. (Despite the chilly air blasting through the doors, as the hours dragged on I sweated through two T-shirts.) I was up and hovering by the standby desk the second it opened. We weren't the only ones hoping to squash onto the plane, but the check-in woman was kind and pretended to believe my family emergency excuse. Perhaps it was Mark who really swung it for us. I'd washed his coat in the ladies', trying not to gag as dried animal blood and a matted clump of cat hair clotted the sink, but his eyes were bloodshot and haunted. He genuinely looked like he was in mourning.

My anxiety receded further as the plane leveled out. As the woman in the window seat was determinedly reading her book, my neighbor—a thirtyish German with blond eyebrows—focused on me. He wanted to talk, and I needed distracting. He offered a hand, and I shook it limply, aware that my palm was wet. Only then did I notice that my fingernails were arced with filth. I buried them in my palms.

“You are from South Africa?” he asked.

“Yes. Cape Town.”

“Ah. I am going to Johannesburg. It is my first time there.”

He'd seen us in the standby queue and offered to swap seats with Mark—as the last to board, we were unable to sit together—but I told him not to worry. Now that we were safely away from Paris, I didn't trust myself with Mark. I didn't trust myself not to cause a scene, not to demand,
Just what the
fuck
is wrong with you?
He'd scared me, and the fear was now turning to anger. Fortunately the blond was too wrapped up in himself to question why I didn't want to sit next to my husband. He was en route to meet a South African girl he'd met online and was bubbling with loved-up happiness.
It won't last,
I wanted to say.
One day you could wake up and find her cradling a dead fucking cat.

I mechanically ate the chicken and broccoli in-flight slop. I downed the mini-bottle of cabernet too quickly, and it turned to acid in my gullet. The lights dimmed, and my neighbor finally got tired of holding a one-sided conversation and fixed his attention to the screen in front of him, laughing unself-consciously at
22 Jump Street.
I used the corner of the in-flight magazine to dig the dirt out of my nails. It was glutinous and left a bloody smear on a duty-free advert. I knew what it was, and I tried not to think about it.

We should never have returned to that building. We were rain soaked and on edge, we didn't have a cent, and our clothes were trapped inside Carla's bloody hotel. Neither of us was cut out to sleep rough or hole up in a bus or train station for the night. But to be honest, I hadn't felt much of anything except exhaustion as we'd slogged up the apartment's familiar stairs, breathing in the familiar odor of dust and ancient cooking: no fear, no trepidation, no sadness or regret for Mireille. I was done.

I'd passed out almost immediately. I don't know what woke me—I don't remember dreaming. One minute Mark and I were wrapped around each other; the next, he was gone from the bed. I sat up and listened, but I couldn't hear him moving around elsewhere in the apartment. “Mark?” I called, my voice slurred with sleep.

I jumped up, switched on all the lights, and, still groggy, padded from the bathroom to the kitchen and back again. The only sound was the slap of my bare feet on wood, which for some reason made me think of the shadows poisoning our own home. No Mark. I don't know why, but I got it into my head that he'd gone upstairs to Mireille's room. I didn't bother to get dressed—panic was setting in by now and I was barely aware I was half-naked—nor did I check to see if Mark had left the keys behind. I left the apartment, letting the door slam shut behind me, and ran up the stairs in nothing but my underwear.

Mireille's door was half-open. “Mark?” I whispered, but I could sense the studio apartment was empty. It felt like an intrusion, but I couldn't stop myself from peering inside it and turning on the light. It still reeked of smoke and turps, but now there was an undertone of something else—something like lavender. Someone, probably one of the cops, had turned all the canvases around, and scores of big-eyed children surrounded me as I stepped farther into the room. Then it hit me that the paintings all seemed to depict the same dark-haired child in different emotional states: leering, laughing, crying, and screaming. They were too slapdash to be creepy, but there was something lonely and desperate about their expressions, which stopped them from being purely kitschy or ridiculous. I reached out a hand to touch them but then snatched it back, irrationally certain they'd infect me somehow. The laptop was gone, as were the coffeepot and the coverlet. A pair of worn corduroy trousers lay curled forlornly in the corner.

A thunking sound reverberated up from the guts of the building—the slam of the entrance door?—and I backed out of there, fleeing for our apartment, praying that Mark had returned while I was snooping in Mireille's room. Without the keys, I was locked out. I slapped the door with the flat of my hand. “Mark! You in there? Mark!”

I turned to the neighboring apartment and traced my fingers across the top of the door. The key was gone. I pressed my ear to the door but could hear nothing but the gush of blood in my veins. Mark must have gone outside for some reason.

By now the cold was really starting to bite, and my skin prickled with goosebumps. I hurried down the stairs and pushed through the door and out into the courtyard.

“Mark?”

His dark shape staggered out of the corner.

“Thank God. What are you doing down here?” His shoulders were shaking. Something was wrong. I walked toward him slowly. There was something in his arms. A dark bundle. Unable to see what it was at first, I reached out to touch it, recoiling as my fingers stroked fur, the flesh beneath it holding only a trace of warmth. It was an animal of some sort, and it must have died fairly recently. He shifted his position and I realized it was a cat. The ground beneath me tipped. I forgot about the cold and the stones piercing the soles of my bare feet. “Put it down, Mark. Drop it. We're getting the fuck out of here.”

He murmured something, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. Nor could I read his eyes in the gloom.

“Give me the keys.” I dug in his coat pocket, doing my best not to brush against the cat again. I breathed with relief when my fingers curled around metal. I shouldn't leave him there alone, but I doubted I'd be able to hustle him up to the apartment. “Put that fucking thing down and wait. I'll be back in two minutes.”

I hurled myself up the stairs, a fresh surge of panic pushing me on. All I could think was that this was bad. Very bad. What would make him
want
to pick that dead cat up? Had he gone out onto the street to find it?

I grabbed towels, threw on my clothes—my jeans were still damp, but that was the least of my worries—gathered the rest of our stuff, and ran to rejoin him.

He was calmer when I returned and had discarded the cat in a corner of the courtyard. He didn't speak to me as I scraped the worst of the muck off his coat, gagging at the odor of spoiled meat. I asked him again what the hell he was thinking, and he murmured something about thinking it was still alive and trying to save it. I could forgive his irrational behavior at the train station—his refusal to sneak through the turnstiles like everyone else; he'd always been like that, proud of his moral compass—but I wasn't sure I could forgive him for begging from that family. Mark had scared them. He'd scared me. We were lucky they didn't call the cops. I would have handed over my wallet as well if a man with screaming eyes, an unshaven face, and matted cat hair on his sleeve had approached me. And worse, Mark had been oblivious to their fear and triumphant about what he'd done:
Look, Steph, there
is
kindness in the world.

Sickened by the memory, I felt the acid in my gut turn to nausea. I slipped out of my seat and weaved my way toward the lavatory at the back of the plane. On the other side of the aisle, Mark was staring at his screen, fingers pressed to his earphones. He didn't look up as I passed him.

Safely inside the bathroom, I locked the door, sat on the metal toilet seat, and stared at the clump of dirty paper towels spilling out of the trash can. The nausea had eased, but my stomach was still churning. In less than eight hours we'd be home. Before we left, I assumed I'd be returning relaxed, confident, rejuvenated, with enough ammunition to eradicate the intruders' lingering shadows. Perhaps, I thought, I could say that I was desperate to see Hayden (which was true), then drive down to Montagu and stay at Mom and Dad's for a few days. They were scheduled to bring Hayden back on Sunday—I could easily say I wanted to fetch her myself. Could I—or more important, should I—leave Mark alone in the house so soon after we returned? No. He wasn't well. I had to face the house sometime; running off to Montagu would only be postponing the inevitable.
Unless,
a voice whispered,
you don't come back.

The shame came then. How could I think that? Sitting in that bathroom, that stupid stinking bathroom, I came to a decision. Whatever Mark was going through was
our
problem. I still resented how he'd behaved during the home invasion, but that was my problem. I could forgive him for that. I loved him. Of course I did. And his freakish behavior—the dead cat, harassing that family—might be symptoms of a chronic lack of sleep, PTSD, and stress. I stood up and stared at myself in the warped mirror above the sink. We'd been through Hayden's difficult first months together; we'd built a life. I'd known he was damaged from the start; I'd known what I was getting myself into. You don't come back from the death of a child.
You can't run away from your history.
And I wish I could say that pride wasn't a factor, but I'd be lying. No one had thought our relationship would work, not my parents, not my friends, and especially not Carla. I needed to prove them wrong.

I left the bathroom, and this time as I made my way back to my seat I touched Mark on the shoulder. He jumped but then smiled in relief when he saw it was me. I almost mentioned that the guy next to me was willing to swap seats but decided against it. A few hours apart wouldn't hurt.

“You okay up there?” he asked.

“Fine.”

The light was poor, but I searched his face, looking for any sign of irrationality. The woman sitting next to him stirred and eyed me with interest. Women liked Mark—they always had.

“Steph, I'm sorry about what happened in the airport.”

“In the airport?”
Oh shit,
I thought,
has he done something else I don't know about?
“What happened in the airport, Mark?”

“You know, me falling asleep and letting you deal with everything by yourself.”

“Oh. Oh right. That's okay.”

“It isn't. Really.” He gave me a crooked grin. “I'm sowwy, Steph.” I laughed out of relief, remembering the crappy vocalist on the train ride into Paris. He was sane enough to make a joke—that was something.

“Try and get some sleep.” He kissed my hand, and I returned to my seat. I felt easier, almost ready to convince myself that I'd blown the scene with the cat out of proportion. I'd just woken up, after all. I was spooked, disoriented. Maybe I
had
misremembered it. Maybe he really did think he could save it. Soothed, I fell asleep within minutes.

The blond German woke me as the plane was touching down in Joburg. At some point he must have climbed past me to get to the toilets—he was freshly shaven and was wearing a crisp white shirt. As everyone deplaned, I waited nervously outside the exit door for Mark to join me. His two-day stubble made him appear haggard and older, but he seemed calmer, less fidgety and distracted than the day before. As we queued at immigration and collected our baggage, we didn't say much, mostly just swapped inanities like polite strangers: “Did you sleep well?” “Wasn't the breakfast awful?” “Should we get coffee before the flight to Cape Town?”

A cloud of metallic balloons bounced above the crowd congregating around the arrivals-hall barrier, and my spirits began to lift. The place was packed, full of noise and color; it felt like real life again after the grayness of where we'd been. Someone screeched, making both of us jump, and then I spotted the German guy running toward a woman clutching a handful of ribbons tethered to the balloons. She outweighed him by at least forty pounds, but he swung her around effortlessly, both of them laughing. As they kissed, the people around them laughed and clapped, the balloons floating off listlessly.