The Woman Who Made Me Feel Strange

by Anna Ferrara

  “Shut up,” she hissed and peeped out.

  The guard’s footsteps got closer, as did his voice. “This place is not safe for sleeping in, ma’am. There’s a shelter just a few blocks down. You can still make it there before it fills up today if you run now.”

  “What are we going to do?” I whispered to her.

  “We?” she whispered, just as softly. “I’m going to go and leave you here for him because this is your problem, not mine.” The determined look in her eyes told me she meant every word.

  I grabbed her arm and squeezed it. Hard. “Don’t, please. There are people trying to kill me and I don’t have any money. I won’t survive a week out there without you.”

  The guard’s heavy footsteps got even closer. The dusty floorboards in the room we were in began to visibly shake.

  I looked at Paul and pleaded with my eyes. Please help me, I mouthed.

  She looked right back at me, her pupils huge abysses of black, then rolled her eyes and sighed. She wrenched her hand out of mine.

  The guard stepped into the room.

  I’m not entirely sure how but next thing I knew, I was in a squat behind the island counter in the secret apartment’s kitchenette, out of the room we had been in just a second earlier. Paul had an arm around me and a hand over my mouth. She gestured at me to be quiet and let go of me to go peep around the corner. I followed suit.

  I saw the guard standing alone in the now empty room, muttering something unkind about homeless people. He rammed the open window shut and walked out shortly after with disbelief all over his face.

  Paul darted back behind the counter when he emerged and pulled me along with her. She turned to me and put her arms around me once again.

  Next thing I knew, I was back in the previously empty room, behind the wall again, safe in Paul’s embrace. She stared at my face and I stared at hers. I stared at her lips and she followed suit with mine. Something about the way she looked at me made my heart jump. A rush of chemicals moved underneath my skin. I realised, while looking at her face, that she really was the smartest and bravest woman I had ever known.

  Outside, the rusty spiral staircase groaned dramatically, as if it was on the verge of collapsing.

  Inside, Paul and I remained inches apart, close enough to feel each other’s warmth. I found myself wanting to kiss her, so I did.

  Paul let go of me and backed away the moment my lips touched hers. She frowned and regarded me with disgust. “You just slept with Arden Villeneuve,” she said.

  I did, yes, but I didn’t understand what Paul was trying to say.

  She rolled her eyes and moved a good distance away from me. “I’m not like everybody else. Just because everybody thinks it’s normal to love a million different people at the same time doesn’t make it right for me.”

  Oh. Okay. And I was not ‘the type of person’ she was looking for. How did I forget? I sucked in my lower lip and tried my best to look apologetic, even though I wasn’t. Not really. I had enjoyed the sensation of her lips on mine again, even though the moment had been brief. “Sorry. I thought since you bought me roses—”

  “Only to cheer you up.” Paul sighed, reached into her pocket and dug out a wad of cash. She held it out in front of me. “Here. Make it last or use it to get a job, I don’t care. You’re on your own.”

  I stared at the cash in her hands and felt like a horrible person. “Paul, I’m not here for the money. I missed being with you.”

  Paul rolled her eyes again and set down the backpacks on her shoulders onto the floor. She removed the picnic mat from one of them, spread it out in the middle of the room the way it had been before and put the cash she had been holding on one of the edges of the mat. She then took more items out of her backpacks—a stack of papers, that pen, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter—and set them all around her. She sat down, lit a cigarette and refused to look at me.

  “You smoke now?”

  Paul ignored my question and released a large cloud of smoke into the air between us. She picked up the pen and began drawing boxes on her stack of papers like an artist in a fit of inspiration. She then added words in the middle of the boxes she had just drawn. I couldn’t read what the words said because they were upside down, cursive and too far away to see properly.

  I went to the part of the mat where the wad of cash wasn’t and knelt down in front of her. “I am incredibly sorry, Paul. For everything. Especially what I said about you growing up in an institution. That isn’t your fault or even a bad thing. I really shouldn’t have said it like it was.”

  Paul said nothing in reply. She looked like she didn’t even hear me.

  “Truth is, I was furious because you were right. I’m good enough for nobody. I’ve known so for the longest time, I just didn’t want you to know it too.”

  I saw her hear me. For a brief moment, her eyes glanced up and her throat moved but right afterwards, Paul continued pretending like she hadn’t heard a thing. She dragged on her cigarette like a seasoned smoker and continued drawing on her stack of papers without a word.

  “Thing is, in high school, I was really popular, even though I had no money and just about the lousiest grades in the world. I was really popular on Instagram, for some reason, so the cool kids thought of me as their own. I got to date the prettiest girls, the most handsome jocks, the richest kids, practically anybody I wanted. I never thought the fun would end but of course it did, in time. The kids who used to worship me started getting degrees and good jobs then nice homes and partners with big paychecks. We stopped hanging out because my face alone was no longer enough to keep me in their league. They started following new people, made new friends, found new lovers, while I eventually got used to being single and, well, mostly alone. Nobody wanted to build a life with me because I had nothing to offer in real life. I had no money, no assets, no promise of a bright future... All I had was... Arden Villeneuve. And even then, I didn’t. Not really.” I sighed. “Now, all I have is you. So wherever it is you want to go, whatever it is you want to do, I’m all ready to do it with you.”

  Paul frowned, to my relief, and properly looked up at me at last. “I don’t think you’re ready for what I want to do next.”

  “I am. Just give me a chance. Please.”

  “No. I’ve known you long enough to know you. You can’t handle it. We’re better off going our separate ways now because you’re only just going to get in the way and ruin everything. Again.”

  “I won’t. I promise. I’ve learnt my lesson. I’ll do everything you say from now on, I swear.”

  “Well, the last two times you swore, you broke your promises so—”

  “I won’t again. Not anymore. Paul, you need a friend as much as I do. It’s not going to be fun going about life alone. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

  She narrowed her eyes as she observed me. “I could always just give you more money now, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  “I don’t want your money. I want... to be with you.”

  Her eyebrows went up and I saw her inhale sharply. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  On hindsight, I really should have asked what she was planning on doing first.

  Chapter 21

  Date Unknown

  Paul and I left the library with our backpacks the next morning, the moment the doors opened and the first hoard of patrons entered. She said I had taken the word ‘secret’ right out of the phrase ‘secret apartment’ so we couldn’t stay at the secret apartment a minute longer. The guard from the day before was planning on gaining fame and possibly a promotion from the ‘historical treasure’ he discovered and he had been bent on telling everyone and their mother about it the evening before, she said. But, it didn’t really matter, Paul said. The secret apartment was unliveable and she needed to move over to Manhattan to get things done anyway.

  Things unrelated to enjoyment, I discovered, when she rejected the four-hour spa treatment I su
ggested we do next.

  “I don’t want people thinking I’m just a loser who’s achieved nothing,” she told me with the raised eyebrows of sarcasm as she marched us to the subway station closest to the library. “I’ve since decided to do as you suggested. Use my ‘powers’ for good, save people and stuff. Prove myself worthy in the eyes of the world.”

  The hardness of her face as she said those words made my cheeks burn with shame. “I’ll help you,” I said right away. “Who do you want to save?”

  She didn’t have time to go into that, she said. Not when on the move. It was too complicated and she didn’t want to risk other people listening in.

  We stopped in the middle of the subway station’s foyer, near the gates, with the peak hour rush flowing all around us. I was clean again—thanks to the soap, water and hand towels Paul stole from Room 103—and had on a new set of clothes, but commuters glared at us with disgust on their faces all the same. They hated us because we blocked their paths and added additional seconds and hassle to the daily journey they already detested to the core. I understood that because I too had been a miserable commuter once before but Paul didn’t.

  She—the one who had chosen to stop where we were—didn’t move away. She didn’t even notice the glares. Her eyes were on her shoes and there was that strange vacant expression on her face again, the one she had on the day we got to The Canned Food Factory Hotel. She looked as if she were lost in deep thought or stuck in a trance of sorts. Frankly, she looked thoroughly weird.

  Someone rammed against me as he or she passed and made me stumble backwards. My hands jumped into my pockets and checked frantically for my wallet the moment that happened and stopped checking only when I remembered I no longer owned a wallet. Right. I depended on Paul. She had stacks of cash. Stacks I feared she would lose if we stood where we were a minute longer.

  “We should go,” I told her. “The city’s full of crooks who deserve to be shot.”

  “Shh, I’m trying to concentrate.” Paul closed her eyes right smack in the middle of the subway station’s migratory rush and became completely motionless.

  Another commuter knocked against me as he passed and yet another knocked against her. They both gave me ugly stares so I felt compelled to show them gestures of apology even though deep down inside, I wished them both the shortest, most treacherous lives known to man.

  “Paul, why don’t we do this somewhere else,” I said when the two angry commuters finally moved out of sight.

  Her eyes shot open as I said those words but they didn’t turn to me. They fell instead on a man in the distance—an olive-skinned workman dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit that was completely covered in paint of all colours.

  He was all-alone, leaning against a wall and playing with his phone, possibly waiting for somebody.

  “Wait here,” she said and very abruptly marched towards him.

  “Why?” I asked but she had already gone.

  Adrenaline shot through my veins as I watched her for I couldn’t tell what she was planning on doing to him. Saving him? Just talking to him? I decided to look around for the nearest exit in the meantime, in case I would need it at short notice. When I turned back to check on Paul, I found her already right in front of the workman.

  She looked as if she were merely walking by him, with no ill intentions whatsoever, until I noticed—

  —the bunch of keys flying out of his pocket, into the hand Paul held open next to her thigh.

  I panicked because the scene was as clear as day, yet nobody but me seemed to notice.

  Paul brought the keys to her front and, without even looking down, wrenched one of the keys away from the keychain that held them all together. She shoved the key she had removed into her pocket and stopped in her tracks as if she had suddenly remembered something she had forgotten. Commuters behind her glared and said unkind words to her face but she didn’t seem to care. She turned around and marched back towards the workman like a woman in a hurry.

  As she passed him, the bunch of keys in her hand flew back into his pocket as magically as they had emerged. The workman didn’t even look up from his phone once. Nobody else noticed the keys at all.

  I couldn’t help but smile when it was all over. Paul was incredible, I was aware of that then. I knew I would kiss her again in a heartbeat, if she would only just let me.

  Paul didn’t walk back to me right away. She went round the edges of the station, in a circle, with her head angled upwards as if she were trying to find a signboard or something.

  Why? I followed her eyes and saw nothing out of the ordinary—just ads and travel information and the like. I only got what she was doing when I looked away from her eyes and down at her hands.

  At thigh level, wallets were flying, all by themselves, out of pockets, into the open front pocket of the backpack on Paul’s back. Some were pretty visible, even from where I was, so I didn’t get why nobody else noticed them flying. Everybody else seemed to be simply preoccupied with their own rush, their own thoughts or their own music, and nobody actually saw what was happening right under their eyes. Literally!

  By the time Paul returned to my side, the front pocket of her backpack was stuffed to the max with wallets of all shapes, sizes and colours. She brought the backpack to her front, zipped up the front pocket like there was nothing unusual in it and smiled at me with twinkles in her eyes.

  “How ‘bout we do Chinese followed by a four-hour spa thing next?”

  I changed my mind about what crooks deserved and said yes right away.

  When darkness fell, when the day of fun—we did two movies and more Chinese after our trip to the spa—was done, Paul tipped us into a driverless taxi and typed an address I didn’t recognise into its control panel.

  “Is that our new hotel?” I asked.

  She put her finger to her lips, pointed to the little holes at the sides of the car’s doors and didn’t reply. Built-in microphones, I realised. Risky.

  I nodded, smiled and ran an imaginary zip over my mouth. The hours of fun and relaxation had done wonders for my spirit. The tight knots in my neck had been rubbed away, my hunger had been satiated, my tired legs had been rested... I was happy again and in the mood for adventure. I thought of the taxi ride as another fun experience and wasn’t in the least worried about where we would end up.

  We ended up in front of a row of pre-war elevator buildings somewhere in Manhattan. Instead of going into the buildings though, Paul led us across the road and made us stand in the shadows of an alley opposite them.

  “Where are we?” I asked after I followed her lead and pressed my back against the alley’s grimy brick wall. I thought she looked more beautiful than ever in the dimness of the alley and couldn’t stop staring at her.

  Paul lifted her expensive $2000 watch and said, “You’ll find out in exactly one minute.” She turned her head towards the road and held her gaze there so I did the same.

  Exactly one minute later, a taxi screeched to a stop at the exact spot ours had stopped at moments before. A man dressed in a shirt and tie stepped out with a briefcase in hand. His brown hair was so neatly gelled, it shone like plastic under the orange glow of the street’s lamps. His face looked familiar too. Too familiar.

  My heart jumped then sank with dread when I realised why. All the happy sensations I had been feeling for most of the day vanished in a flash. The hairs on my arms stood on ends. “Dr Clark?”

  Paul never replied. Her eyes watched Dr Clark the way they had watched so many other men before him but I got the feeling she was uncharacteristically a little nervous this time.

  Like the other men before him, Dr Clark had no idea Paul was even close. He walked up to the main door of one of the buildings, tapped a card on the security panel at the side of the main door and went right in.

  “What if he calls the rest of CRO?” I whispered. “They have guns and they use them! I saw them do so myself!”

  Paul shushed me. Her
eyes fell on the pavement across the road.

  A discarded flyer on the pavement suddenly rose, as if it had suddenly gotten caught in a gust of wind. It fluttered towards the door Dr Clark had gone through and ended up between that door and the wall, right where the door’s catch was, right before the door closed shut.

  “Now.”

  Now what? Before I could even ask, Paul was already halfway across the road. I dashed after her with legs that were unsteady as I watched her push open the door that hadn’t locked properly because a flyer had been in the way of its catch. She tossed the flyer and held the door open for me as she beckoned me to join her inside.

  The door locked behind us the moment she let go of it. I found us in the lobby of a rather nice apartment building—one with a floor of black and white squares, with vintage-looking letter boxes in the corner—but Paul spent no time at all admiring our surroundings. She pressed a button that opened an elevator and said, “Come.”

  I obeyed, as always. Only this time, I didn’t feel all that safe as I did so.

  On the fifth floor, seven well-polished apartment doors lay along a stretch of orange carpet in between freshly painted grey walls. It was yet another building I wouldn’t have been able to afford to live in yet Paul glided through the perfumed corridor as if she had been living there for decades. I followed her and stopped when she stopped outside a well-polished door with the words ‘5D’ in gold letters on it.

  The door opened—all by itself and ever so quietly. I saw a living room behind it. A small but cosy space with mostly grey walls and a single blood-orange wall on one side. There were no windows... or maybe there were, just none that we could see, perhaps hidden behind the two sets of thick cream curtains at one end.

  Paul tiptoed in and gestured at me to follow.

  I did, of course. Where else was I to go?

  To the left of the entrance was a small open kitchen complete with ovens, a dishwasher and laundry equipment. A bar counter with two black leather barstools on chrome legs separated the kitchen from the living space on the right in which Dr Clark lay slumped on a white sofa. He had his briefcase on the sofa next to him, his legs propped up on the stone coffee table in front of him, his tie loosened, shirt unbuttoned, eyes closed and he held his glasses in one hand. The other hand pinched at the flesh in between his nose and he looked thoroughly beat. He had not the slightest inkling he was being watched and didn’t notice when Paul shut the door behind us.