Apartment 16

Thirty-two

Sitting alone in a window seat of the theatre bar, which was empty at this early hour of the afternoon after the lunchtime crowd had thinned and before the workers rushed in to anaesthetize the day, Seth shifted about in his chair and anxiously scanned Upper Street for her approach.

After a long bath, his first in weeks, and dressing in the cleanest clothes he could find, Seth had briefly looked about the walls in his room. And was satisfied Apryl would be astounded. Particularly when he told her it was just part of a much greater project.

He tidied the floor space too, so that she would be able to walk about and see his work from different angles. Three walls were covered now. And neither the grainy daylight nor the electric light from the unshaded bulb could relieve the darkness in them, or how it crept across the floor and the stained ceiling. Even the corners and right angles where the walls met were lost unless you looked hard to see the joins.

But out of the sheen of flat lightlessness came the figures. Out of a depth that would mystify an audience. How had he created it, she would ask. How was it possible to suggest such a distance? And to convey the sense of the terrible cold that gripped you while staring into it? He had no idea.

Using the small stepladder from the kitchen, he’d increased the height of the piece to improve the sense of the characters being suspended in nothingness. Though he wasn’t sure, either, how he’d then created the effect of movement in his subjects. Because there was motion in the whole piece. The endless cold darkness upon which their torments were repeated to infinity now seemed to seethe as if with strange currents.

Sometimes when his work caught him unawares, he was tempted to believe they were no longer walls at all, but a long space opening to another place, one so vast and deep you would never find the end. And the images of the figures all drawn at various angles, who were rising to the surface as if attracted by the light in his room, still gave him a start whenever he came in. Even if he was merely returning from the toilet and had been away for a few minutes, he would find himself staring in mute shock at what he had done, at what was up there now.

It was impossible to become familiar with them, with all of those things holding themselves, or being held against their will, his lines capturing the tension and resistance in the suggestions of the limbs, or the perfect nuance of an eye open in terror, or the curl of a lip after a despairing scream.

All covered over, redone and then perfected until the best angle and posture had been achieved for each of them. Until the teeth chattered idiotically, and the mouths stretched to issue cries you thought you could hear, and the eyes were red with a pain that made your nerve endings spark.

Because of Apryl, his efforts had redoubled that morning. His hands had been more careful in the way they had swept and cut and reworked the dark red and black swathes from which the twisted figures were born wet and howling. It was as if he had something to prove now, as if an exhibition was being prepared for a sympathetic audience. If his sketches affected her, she would be in awe of his painting.

She was not in danger. Couldn’t be. That hooded kid and their friend in apartment sixteen couldn’t have anything against her. She’d only been in the building five minutes. And there was no need to dwell on Roth and the Shafers. She couldn’t possibly have known them well. And anyway, if she had, she would have applauded their demise. Old scores needed to be settled. And in return maybe he was being rewarded now. They could make anything happen. Like a beautiful girl walking into your life when your mind was in pieces; someone who admired your work and wanted to know you. Someone who could put all of those pieces back together again and make you whole. That hooded freak had suggested as much, had told him that they were bringing a ‘treat’ to him, ‘summat sweet’.

Dare he suggest such a thing to himself? That she was an offering for all he had given to that place of mirrors? Apryl had woken something vital in him that had long been moribund. And despite his dishevelled and haggard appearance, she’d seen something behind it. Intuited something inside him that appealed to her; she had even spoken of fate at their meeting after seeing his sketches. A connection. And now she wanted to see more of his work. To eat and drink with him too. Spend time in his company. This most rare of women might even accompany him home, to gaze upon his walls. These walls would be the test. His art would show her what he was all about. And she would tell him more about his master and why he had come back to visit those who had wronged him so long ago. Was that not what she had been suggesting?

Perhaps the killing was done now, and his work would continue to flourish. Maybe even within the security of a head porter’s position with sexy Apryl as a companion. They could do anything. Bring you to your knees in shuddering horror, or cast you into the freezing nothingness like driftwood, or show you wonders that left you gaping in awe. This was going to work out; he was being rewarded, he told himself over and over again until he believed it, at least for short periods of time. But it had to work out to his advantage, it simply had to, because he had no control over any of it.

He couldn’t lose his nerve when she arrived. He had to keep himself together. Be cool.

And here she was. Walking slowly and checking the names of the buildings as she searched for the place where he’d told her to meet him. A pleasing shudder passed through his body. She was beautiful. Here for him, an artist. God, he was an artist. Finally, an artist.

As she teetered into the bar, he stood up to greet her. The sweet and heady scent she wore stunned him; perfume’s potential for mystery only truly realized when wafting from the pale throat of a beautiful woman. The sound of her high heels clacking so enticingly against the wooden floor turned the barman’s head.

She had dressed for Seth. Dressed to please him. In a simple but elegant black dress under a long overcoat made from fine and expensive-looking wool. The neck of the dress was cut to partially reveal the heavy white softness of her breasts. Her make-up was full but carefully applied to her exquisite features. Shimmering from black to blue, her hair was elegantly arranged on top of her head. And what he could see of her legs glimmered in barely visible stockings, before tapering into black high heels.

‘Hi, Seth. Good to see you again,’ she said, and leant forward to kiss him on either cheek. Briefly, he indulged himself with the scent of her lipstick and with the aroma of her skin as she came close. All of his opening lines vanished. But his eyes flattered her. He shook his head, managed a smile, and said, ‘Wow.’