Chapter 3

He stood there at the doorway to 5262 Halstead. The doorbell's little circle lit up as it chirped ding ding ding. A moment of silence, then the buzz and snap of the deadbolt retracting. Ezra slipped through the doorway and swapped out his sneakers for a pair of house sandals.

The hallway breathed violet. Lines of LED lighting encased by swirling strips of white metal, forming abstract shapes of warm radiance. Subtle, soft, like it was being exhaled from the walls themselves.

Ezra moved through it slowly, jacket over one arm, the other trailing along the smooth plaster as if to prove it was real. He could feel the grime on his fingers. Through the doors could be heard murmurs, soft laughter. The occasional creak of springs or moans. Everything muffled, like a house wrapped in cotton.

A girl passed by, barefoot, hair damp from a shower. She kept her eyes down as she passed by him. They always did, either out of shame, or fear of meeting the eyes of their pastor, neighbor, father's friend or father himself.

He climbed the stairs without thinking, the violet giving way to blue at the landing. A cooler light. Like water after fire.

Room seven, the door was cracked. He knocked softly as he pushed slowly into the familiar scents of her body.

Inside was the stillness he craved. The curtains were pulled back, showing nothing but a brick wall on the other side of an alley. It's better than no view at all, she once joked. A candle flickered on the nightstand, causing the shadows to pulse with movement. Mixed with her was a floral smell, faintly medicinal. Something like lavender disinfectant.

She was seated at her dressing table, just finishing brushing her hair. Her body was covered only by a cheap lace shaw wrapped around Walmart lingerie. She looked up slowly, like it cost her something.

"Natalie..."

It trailed out of his mouth with a gruffness that carried the weight of his loneliness, and she had the ears that could hear it.

"You look tired," she said, in her soft Eastern European accent.

He shrugged off the coat, quietly closing the door behind him. She stood up to lock it with a soft click, while he pulled out two-hundred in twenties and placed it on her bedside table. She reached over to count it, while he began to undress, folding his clothes neatly on a worn armchair.

She let her shaw fall to the floor and crawled onto the bed on all fours. So few moments like this in life, where the relief can wash over you in ways usually reserved for strife.

For once in what felt like forever, they were both able to lay there in silence. The void interrupted only by the momentary pleasure of a drop of sweat dripping down the tip of a nipple, or other drops running down around other ridges.

He was a pleasant respite from the otherwise endless rounds of being hammered upon. A smoke break from work, a chance to just be. She leaned her head against his shoulder and let herself smile only because she knew he wouldn't be able to see it.

He could feel it though, her cheek sliding against his skin. He tried to look down, but she was right. After a few soft rubs up and down her cool, white thighs, Ezra stood up to begin getting dressed.

"Are you sure you're alright?" she asked.

"Yeah," he sighed. "Just this claim, a fire."

They won't believe you, echoed in his mind.

"Well, I hope you figure out who did it."

He chuckled, not wanting to bother explaining what his actual job was. He didn't catch bad guys. He wasn't even sure he wasn't one himself.

"You?"

"You know, you get to only fuck me. I have to fuck everybody."

Kemp's words rang in his ears, You fucked me. He wasn't the only one. She wasn't the only one. We're all getting fucked here, he thought.

Unsure if he should laugh, he simply smiled slightly and sighed. It was hard not to imagine meeting her elsewhere, in a different life, in a different city. But this is where they were, a brothel under the train tacks.

He moved towards the door, and she got up to kiss him on the cheek and see him out of her space. Her lips lingered for a moment longer than they had to. Her fingers brushed down his wrist and rested there.

Just a second. Then she let go.

The wind off the lake had a bite, even in spring. Ezra hunched into his coat and stepped out into the green glow of Halstead's streetlights. A train screeched above as he made his way to the car. The rusted steel beams shook, rattling around all the different bits, stopping them from settling in his mind.

The drive home was mostly muscle memory, traffic lights blooming red across the windshield, wipers screeching as they cleared a mist that barely qualified as rain. The heater ran too hot, so he cracked the window. He could never get the temp just right.

At first he told himself he wasn't thinking about it, but the voice kept echoing in his ears and the scene kept blooming behind his eyelids.

You'll feel it soon enough.

The cheap kitchen linoleum curling like paper, the smell of melting plastic and gasoline, a man screaming for his dog, already too late. Hadn't he felt enough already?

And the adjuster, standing there with a clipboard, knowing how bad it was going to look.

The report had been easy to fill out. Presence of an accelerant, policy voided. But now someone was looking.

Late at night, and the parking garage was still. The thud of his car door closing echoed off the concrete pillars. The moment held a strange kind of clarity, like a glass of water he didn't remember pouring. He didn't want to go inside. Didn't want to check the mail. What he wanted was to avoid what was waiting for him.

After a minute of standing there, breathing the stale air, he mustered the courage to go inside.

The stairwell felt insurmountable, forever climbing upward. Day after day. Ezra's keys jingled as he found the right one and slid it into the lock.

The door stuck, as it always did, then gave way, like it always had.

Placing his keys back in his jacket pocket, he felt something else. At first it didn't arouse anything in him, just his fingers brushing against a piece of paper, but a compulsion came to pull it out and see what it was.

Same stationery, same precise lettering.

You don't seem as sure as you used to be.

He stood there, the door half-open behind him, the hall light pooling at his feet.

The note felt heavier than it should, like it was pulling something loose in his chest. Ezra folded it once, twice, and tucked it back into his pocket.

He didn't turn on the lights, just stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

His heart picked up a beat. His breath turned shallow. This small corner of the city that used to feel safe now pressed in too tight. There was just enough light coming in through the window to guide his steps around the kitchen. He reached into a cabinet and pulled out a bottle and a glass, hoping a dose of something brown would shut it all out long enough to sleep.