Ally…

My Monday wasn’t going well. I made it to work and Millie needed me to work half the afternoon past my quitting time, the afternoon girl had food poisoning. I agreed because Millie was in a bind, but that meant that I would be late getting to Mr. Parnell’s… which meant he would likely be home tonight while I cleaned.

I wouldn’t have minded after our last encounter, but I had done what he asked. I had written down everything, how it made me feel, and I had given it to him in a sealed envelope the next morning when he had come in for his coffee, and then... nothing.

It had just been simple, quiet pleasantries and business as usual for the rest of the week. He hadn’t come home early, and I did my cleaning – per usual. Cameras off and in the nude the following Monday from our dalliance, but when Friday arrived, I suddenly felt unnerved and had gotten dressed again twenty minutes after I started. I had felt guilty about taking the extra pay and so I hadn’t. I’d left a note, telling the truth: that I had begun cleaning but then had gotten dressed and I’d left fifty dollars of my pay behind with it.

The weekend had been spent with Dawnie and my gran and had been good, but Dawnie, damnably perceptive as she could be, had pestered me nonstop with questions I couldn’t answer. It had quickly turned stressful and had ended in us fighting. Which then led me to not be as happy as I usually was when I saw Gran, which upset her, and it just felt like a domino effect of awful.

I went through my day at the café and if I could have afforded it, I would have begged off going to Mr. Parnell’s today, but I couldn’t. I needed the money. So instead, with my apologies, I left the café at five instead of my usual two-thirty, begging Millie’s forgiveness for not being able to stay longer but she completely understood.

I was on my third bus in the crush of the peak of rush hour when the day just seemed to want to get worse. I had my headphones in, but they weren’t on. It was just a thing I did to keep guys from hitting on me. Of course, it was just my luck that not just one, but two of exactly the wrong kind of guys decided that I looked interested despite my intense effort to look anywhere on the packed bus but at them.

“Hey baby, you look fine…” one of them said, drawing out the word ‘fine’ like he was slick or something. I switched hands on the railing and turned my back, hitching my tote bag higher on my shoulder but, unfortunately, that just put me facing his friend.

“Oh! That was cold, girly. Why you gotta be so rude to my friend? Corey here was just trying to give you a compliment.”

I pulled one of my earbuds out of my ear, mouth dry and said, “I’m sorry?” as if I hadn’t heard either of them.

“Aw, quit playin’, baby girl.” Corey was entirely too close for comfort, and I hunched in on myself. I was effectively trapped between them, and I didn’t like that.

“What’s your name?” the one I faced asked.

“Please, I don’t want any trouble. I’m really not interested, guys,” I tried to be as polite as I could when I said it.

“Come on, baby. We just asking your name.”

I glanced frantically at the other passengers for help, but no one would even look at me. I got that sinking feeling in the center of my chest and swallowed hard. Fine. If no one was going to help me, I would just stand up for myself.

“I don’t want to tell you my name, and I’ve already told you I’m not interested. Now, if you’d please leave me alone,” I said firmly.

“Stuck up little bitch, would you listen to her?” the one in front of me said incredulously.

The one behind me grabbed my ass and I stomped down hard on his foot, just as the bus lurched to a stop at my stop. I shouldered past the one in front of me and checked my hip hard against the little divider by the door getting around it. I leaped over the two steps and started walking briskly up the block towards the corner.

“You little bitch!” I heard behind me, and I didn’t look back. I ran.

I pelted up the sidewalk and reached the corner and only then did I look back. They were far closer than I liked and I looked between them and the moving traffic, and as one of them reached for me, I stepped off the curb. Tires screeched along the pavement, horns blared and I dodged in front of a taxi, checking my other hip on the brush guard on the front bumper. I yelped and ran up onto the other curb and made a sharp right. I pounded up the sidewalk and as soon as he was in sight. I sucked down a hard lungful of air and screamed, “Mr. Clive!”

He turned from the street, eyes wide, and I reached out even though I was still almost a half a block away when one of them crashed into my back. I cried out and went down hard on my knees. I was wearing shorts and a sharp pain went through my knees. I screamed and struggled, and one of them went to punch me in the back of my head but glanced off it and punched the sidewalk instead.

“Ally!” I heard a man’s voice bellow, and I looked up, expecting to see Clive, but it was Mr. Parnell getting out of the back of a cab.

“Mr. Parnell, help me!” I shrieked and he was suddenly there. I swear I hadn’t even seen him move. I heard a grunt and the man who had me around the ankle let go and the other shoved me down into the sidewalk, pushing off of me by the back of my head. My chin scraped the pavement painfully, and I rolled onto my back and tried to crab-walk away, towards the safety of the dark green canopy in front of the Calvert building.

“Look out!” I screamed, as Damien Parnell leaped back from one of my attackers who now held a knife.

Like some movie martial arts dynamo, he whipped his suit jacket over his head, hands still stuffed in its sleeves and wrapped it around our assailant’s forearm. He pulled the man towards him and it was a flurry of activity too confusing to my eyes and so fast I almost didn’t trust what I was seeing.

Arms reached under my armpits and I yelped, but it was Mr. Clive, saying “Come on, Miss Ally; come with me, this way now. Police are on their way.”

I stood up and went with him, and winced, my knees tight and painful. I moved up the block with him and let him sit me on the bench outside the building’s front door.

“It’s okay now, you’re okay… Here's Mr. Jimmy.”

“Is he okay, is he all right?” I tried to look around the corner, but Mr. Clive and Mr. Jimmy were in front of me, fussing over me. A police car coming from the wrong direction screeched up to the curb, and two uniformed officers got out, leaving their doors swinging wide and I sagged with relief. They went pelting up the sidewalk, and I looked up to Mr. Clive and demanded, “Is he okay?”

“Ally.” My head jerked at the commanding tone and I turned. Mr. Parnell standing there, chest heaving and without his suit jacket, but fine.

I burst into tears of relief, my insides turning to water and my gag reflex working overtime as my stomach rolled. I held up my arms, and he didn’t even blink, he came to me and knelt beside the bench and offered what comfort he could in front of all these people.

“I’m sorry,” I sobbed brokenly, breath hitching through the words. “I’m so sorry.”

“Mr. Jimmy, could you please bring up her things?” Mr. Parnell asked over my head, and I heard the old man agree. His shadow over us disappeared, and before I knew it, I was up off the bench and moving across the parquet floor. The gate on the old fashioned elevator rattled and we boarded and then we were moving. I couldn’t even care I was in the deathtrap little box. I just wanted to be as far away from those thugs as possible. Mr. Clive had left his post for me, operating the elevator and then opening the door to Mr. Parnell’s apartment for us.

“Thank you,” Mr. Parnell murmured. “That will be all for now,” and he set me down and punched in the alarm code. I stood, a trembling, shaking mess, knees burning and aching, and he turned to me, pushing aside my hair that was sticking to my tear- and, admittedly, snot-soaked face.

“Are you okay? What happened?” he demanded, and I crumbled. I couldn’t make the tears stop; I couldn’t make the shaking stop; I couldn’t make my racing heart or the fear stop.

He pulled me into his arms and led me over to the kitchen counter and helped me hop up onto the edge. He stood in front of me and pushed all of my hair off my face, murmuring, “You’re okay, it’s okay now. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. You believe me, don’t you Ally?”

His dark eyes were both empathetic and intent, silently demanding an answer. I nodded, not trusting my voice, and he nodded with me, saying, “Good, that’s good. More help is on the way; I’m right here, I’m going to get a cool washcloth. You’re safe, right? Nothing can hurt you here, right?”

“Right,” I echoed carefully, but I still couldn’t stop shaking.