She looked him steadily in the eye. "My name's Sylvie Delaney," she said.
He almost snapped back at her, Why would I need to know that?
But in fact he did need to know her name, if only out of simple human courtesy. "Don Lark," he said.
Her gaze never wavered. Brown eyes. "Thank you for letting me stay, Don Lark."
Her gratitude made him almost as uncomfortable as her begging. "Just leave me alone when I'm working. And don't touch my tools. Touch nothing."
She held up her hands as if she had just touched a burner on the stove. "Hands off. Like a crystal shop." She grinned.
He wasn't amused. She had followed him down the hall, she had embarrassed him, and now she was trying to joke him into smiling at her. He wanted to hit something, he was so frustrated. "Why don't I feel better? I felt guilty throwing you out, and now I feel stupid and angry about letting you stay." He turned away from her and slapped the wall. "When's the part where virtue is its own reward?"
Behind him, she spoke softly. "Let me practice staying out of your sight for a while."
"Eat the burger and fries before they get cold," said Don. He stalked on down the hall, feeling even stupider because now that she was respecting his need for privacy, the need itself seemed childish to him. He imagined himself as a little boy, running into his room and slamming the door, shouting I hate you, I hate you, leave me alone.
He stopped when he got to the end of the parlor wall and glanced back up the narrow hallway. She was still there, spinning down the hall toward the kitchen in little-girl pirouettes, touching the walls as she went. Between and behind the noises made by the Helping Hands guys carrying some big piece of furniture along the upstairs hall, he heard her intoning, almost singing, "Thank you, thank you, thank you." Then she suddenly stopped and pressed herself against the south wall, one arm up as high as she could reach, so the whole length of her body was touching the wall. "Thank you house."
She was as nuts as the women next door.
Well, what did he think? Why else would she be homeless? A college graduate, living in a boarded-up mansion full of corroded furniture? Of course she was a loon. And he had just given her permission to live under the same roof with him.
Not that he hadn't shared a house with a madwoman before. At least this particular loon, this Sylvie Delaney had never looked at him with that blank stare that said, I know you're talking but all I care about is how am I going to score some more blow? So he was living with a better grade of lunatic.
He wandered out onto the porch. The Helping Hands truck was almost half full. He could hear the guys starting down the stairs with whatever it was they were carrying. He opened the door all the way and walked around it so he wouldn't be blocking their path. As he waited for them to get down the stairs, he glanced down at the deadbolt he had put on, still shiny and new, and ran his hand along the smooth wood below it down to the old latchset.
The movers were at the foot of the stairs, stopping to catch their breath. He heard Sylvie's voice and stepped around the door to watch as she spoke to them. They were leaning on a huge bureau, which they had moved with all the heavy oaken drawers inside it. Trying to save extra trips up and down the stairs.
"Just so you know," Sylvie was saying, "my husband and I have decided you should leave the bed in the front corner apartment." She pointed up, indicating the room directly above the north parlor.
My husband and I. Don's blood boiled.
"Whatever," the driver said. "This is pretty crummy old stuff."
"You should look so good when you're that old," said Sylvie. "And we're keeping the big table in the kitchen back there. There's a Coke on it, if you want it before the ice all melts. And a burger and fries but they might already be cold."
"Hey, thanks," said the assistant.
"Oh, you think it's your Coke now?" said the driver. "Come on, let's go." They picked up the bureau. The door was wide, but the bureau barely fit through without smashing their hands.
When they were past him, Don looked back into the entry. Sylvie was standing on the first step of the stairway, draped against the wall again in some parody of a girlish pose. He glared at her. She winked at him, grinned, and then turned and ran up the stairs.
He made the conscious decision not to be angry. If he let her teasing get under his skin already, it was only going to get ugly and that wouldn't make either of their lives any better. He leaned his head against the edge of the door and took a couple of deep breaths. Behind him the Helping Hands guys were jockeying the bureau into position inside the truck. He looked down the smooth expanse of the door and then realized what it was that had bothered him before, when he first got back after the closing. The door was smooth.
There should have been ragged screwholes where he had pulled off the hasp to get into the house when Cindy first showed it to him and Jay. But there was no sign that there had ever been a hole in the wood. He looked closely. The holes hadn't been puttied and stained. The woodgrain was smooth, continuous, unbroken. All the way above and below the deadbolt.
He remembered what the Weird sisters had said about the house. A strong house. And getting stronger, with the work he was doing on it.
He tried for a moment to doubt his own memory, to insist to himself that the lock had been on the back door, or that he had drilled the hole for the deadbolt right where the screwholes had been. Wasn't that possible?
No it wasn't. He had noticed at the time that the screwholes were too widely spread to be covered by the deadbolt, and so he had drilled a little farther down, though still well above the original lockset. No, somehow this door had healed itself.
He looked over at the carriagehouse. There were Miz Evelyn and Miz Judea, on their knees in the front yard, digging dandelions. If they noticed him, they gave no sign.
Well what was he supposed to do now? Run screaming into the street? The house was strange or he was crazy, and he was betting on the house. But strange or not, he'd just closed on the deal and there was no backing out now. And it was possible that he was simply remembering things wrong. Your mind could play tricks on you, everybody knew that. You remember things one way but in fact it happened completely differently. That's all this was. Just a memory thing. He could live with that. He had only been spooked because of the crazy things the Weird sisters told him.
The city van pulled up to the curb, and Don walked out to meet the guy and lead him to the water meter. All he needed now was to have the new water heater installed and there'd be hot and cold running water in the house. Flush toilets and hot showers without having to go to McDonald's or a truck stop. Life wasn't all bad.
10
Tearing Up, Tearing Down
He couldn't accuse her of following him around the house, but that's what it felt like. Half the jobs he set out to do, Sylvie just happened to be waiting right there when he arrived with his tools. It always made him want to turn around and go find something else to do, but he couldn't work that way, ducking out of sight whenever she was around. Yet he couldn't bring himself to bark at her either. She always seemed so glad to see him. It must have been lonely here, hiding out in an empty house behind boarded-up windows. Maybe when the novelty wore off she'd leave him alone.
The water was hooked up and it was time to run the faucets to check for obstructions and leaks. Some fixtures he wouldn't even try—the cracked toilet would never have water in it again. But the upstairs bathtub, where he first found her, that one would probably end up being the one they used.
He caught himself thinking: We'll have to use this tub. It came too naturally, to think "we" instead of "I." And there was nothing wrong with it—as long as Sylvie was in the house, she was going to use the same tub and sink and toilet as him. So why not think of them as "we"?