STELLA
A noise startled me awake, and I looked around my room, blinking against the stripes of sunshine blazing in from between the blinds. I tapped my phone and saw that it was half past nine. My heart dropped when I noticed that Nick’s clothes were gone. I pressed my hand to the side of the bed where he’d slept and found the mattress was cold. But there, tucked under his pillow, was the receipt that had been stapled to our takeout order, slightly crumpled. On the back, he’d written, Be back soon, cutie. Text when you wake up.
A knock at the door broke up my thoughts and made my heart bounce around in my chest like a rubber ball. It must have been what woke me, I realized. Clutching his note with its strong, firm writing, I untangled myself from the sheets to go answer the door. The knocks were serious and aggressive. “Who is it!” I said, cinching my bathrobe tightly around me.
“Locksmith, Ms. Peretti. Your super told us there was a problem.”
I peered through the peephole. At first, all I saw was the bill and front of a well-worn trucker-style hat, stylishly bent at the brim. A faded logo that looked like some sort of beaver or bear was in the middle. I didn’t recognize the hat, but scanning the little fish-eye image in front of my eye I realized I did recognize those tattoos. It was Nick. As if he could feel my eyes on him, he lifted his head and winked at me.
I flung the door open. “Well, hello there.”
“Morning, gorgeous.” His voice was gruff and low. Morning voice. Good God, I was such a sucker for morning voice. With a sexy lift of his chin, he handed over a paper tray with two coffees and a waxed bag in the middle. He nudged his hat up his forehead an inch and leaned in to give me a kiss as I shut the door. Over his shoulder was a tool bag, full of all sorts of drills and special wrenches.
“Should I make a dirty workman joke now or should I wait?”
He did a sort of manly cough to cover his laugh and took one of the coffees off the tray. I opened up the waxed bag and inside found a pair of still-warm chocolate croissants. I bit into mine, and Nick took a sip of his coffee. “I told you I was going to help you with the locks. Better to re-create the scene here than get our asses busted at La Quinta or wherever.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! I said maybe!” I tried to say. What came out instead was just a whole lot of croissant crumbs. These he gracefully brushed off his T-shirt, then headed down the hallway toward my bedroom. Over his shoulder he said, “I’ll patch this up when we’re done. But you need to practice.” He set his bag down in front of my door. From inside it he pulled a chain-lock mechanism, like they had at the Ritz, and also a big replacement doorknob, which had a keypad where the Ritz locks had a card reader.
He pulled a drill from his bag and popped a battery into the bottom. On the drill end, he attached a kind of cylinder, then took a measuring tape off his belt. Apparently, there was no maybe about it.
Finally, I finished chewing my croissant and watched Nick make a few small and precise pencil marks on my door. “This might fuck up your security deposit, but it’ll be worth it.”
I wiped my mouth and checked for smudges of chocolate on my palm. “Not to worry. The day we moved in, Roxie dropped three bottles of red nail polish on the kitchen floor. If you move the rug in front of the sink, you’d think it was a murder scene.”
“Excellent,” Nick said, with a drill bit pinned between his teeth. He checked something on the back of the electronic door lock and made a second pencil mark about half an inch to the right of the first.
“Can I help?” I asked.
His eyes moved slowly over my body, pausing for a beat on my cleavage, which was peeking out of my robe. Then he looked up at me. “So we’ve moved on from maybe.”
Though I didn’t much care to admit it, I did need his help. “Yeah,” I said, and pulled my robe’s belt tighter. “We’re past maybe.”
“Good,” he growled, then turned his hat around backward. “I don’t need your help, but I like the company,” he said, and then he drilled into my bedroom door, sending wood chips flying.
Three hours later, I’d broken four credit cards trying to jimmy the electronic lock, pinched my finger in the door trying to duplicate Nick’s hocus-pocus to undo the chain lock, and gotten a blister on my finger from trying pick the deadbolt that he’d installed. The whole setup was meant to re-create what I might encounter at the Ritz. And the whole setup made me realize I was in way over my head.
But Nick was calm and cool. He sat cross-legged on the carpet, coaching me through failure after failure, then showing me how to do it again and again. The chain lock was the most baffling—with nothing but a piece of Scotch tape and a rubber band, he was able to undo it from the hallway side and get into my room. He made it look so easy. And I found that so frustrating. “Where on earth did you learn that?”
The lock slid open, and the chain jingled. Again. “YouTube.”
I shoved his massive shoulder. “No way.”
“Way,” he said, pulling me close and planting a kiss on my cheek.
It was my turn again. I got situated on my knees, with the carpet pressing uncomfortably into my skin. I was hungry and I had to pee, but I didn’t care. I was going to figure this thing out somehow, someway.
“Focus,” he said, straightening his broad shoulders. “Deep breath. Be calm.” Next to me he followed his own advice, inhaling long and slow. “Don’t force it. Just let it happen.”
For a few seconds, I was pretty Zen about it. But when I felt the lock bite back, I gritted my teeth and began to force it. As I turned the little L-shaped wrench and rotated the pick, I thought I felt the pins catch, but as soon as I shifted my hand I felt them slip shut again. My blister throbbed, and the tension in the wrench went slack. “I’m never going to get this,” I said, and pressed my forehead against the door.
“You will,” he said. “It’s just going to take some more practice.” He took the pick and the wrench from me, and in about two seconds flat the deadbolt slid open. “You were planning to leave . . . when?”
Now I went full-on face-slump against my door. “Tomorrow,” I said into the painted wood.
Nick let out a sort of ouch-style whistle.
I opened my eyes and stared at him. “I know.”
Yet again, he was unfazed. “Don’t worry. You’ll get it.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and checked the time. When he saw what it said, he grimaced. “Fuck. I gotta get to work. I’ll be done by dinnertime, and we can keep on practicing tonight. Sound good?”
“I’ll still be here,” I said, rubbing the swollen blister on my right hand.
“Look at me,” he said. He hooked his thumb under my chin and tipped it upward. “Chin up, buttercup.”
I met his gaze. I felt raw and frustrated and worried. He looked unconcerned, confident, and self-assured. “You’ll get it,” he said. “Promise.”
His faith in me helped, a little. I gave him a kiss goodbye and walked him out. Once he was gone, I took another shot at the deadbolt. I closed my bedroom door and used the key to lock it up. I removed the key from the lock and placed it on the carpet next to me, then picked up Nick’s pick and wrench. I centered myself. I became one with the lock, as he’d told me. I placed the wrench into the lock and positioned the rake inside it, then turned. Much to my astonishment, the rake slipped in a little farther, past the first pin.
I gasped. I held my breath. I turned the wrench another quarter turn . . . And it snapped off inside the lock.
I mashed my face into my palms and flopped down on the hallway carpet like a snow angel. I neither wanted nor needed a hero.
But I also knew I was going to need some help. With the locks. With the plan. With taking the hinges off the door so I could get back inside my bedroom.
Whatever came next would affect all the Shimmy Shimmy Bangs. So I grabbed a quick shower, borrowed some leggings from Roxie and a hoodie from Ruth, then went out to wait for the bus. With some choice snacks stuffed into my purse.
Roxie was making long, erotic mmmmmmmm sounds as I fed her cheese crackers. The pain meds were still in full force, but at least now she was now out of traction. Her arm was in a terrifying looking cast, though, which held her hand up in a position like she was about to yank on the horn of a big rig. But at least she was enjoying her crackers. “Why are these so goooooood,” she moaned, with her eyes closed and cracker crumbs flying.
I’d found Ruth in her wheelchair in her room and had wheeled her right next to Roxie’s bed so we could talk things over. Now I sat between them, next to Roxie on the inclined mattress, with the snacks in my lap. I was pretty sure that what I was doing was against every single hospital regulation, but that was fine with me. Ask forgiveness after was my life’s motto.
Well, mostly. Except for when it came to the Shimmy Shimmy Bangs. Any change in the plan would need permission from both of them.
Which was why I was there. Now I just had to pitch the idea to them. We’d never brought in outside help, not in all our years together. But then again, we’d never planned on the North Star either. Special circumstances would require some special members. So I steeled myself. I did a mental countdown of three, two, one in my mind, and I just . . . said it. “I want to ask him. To help me. Next week.”
Roxie froze midbite, with cracker crumbs raining down on her hospital gown.
Ruth looked absolutely stunned. And pissed off too. “You what?”
I jammed another piece of mango in my mouth and explained. “The three of us have done all the legwork. He knows what he’s doing.” I pressed on the edge of the Band-Aid to stick it back down to my middle finger. “But I won’t even bring it up unless you two give me the green light.”
Ruth immediately receded into her introvert shell. She grabbed her phone from her hoodie pocket and pecked angrily at the screen. Roxie, meanwhile, stared at me with her big, honest eyes, accentuated by her totally fabulous lash extensions. “Do you love him?” she asked softly.
“Oh for Chrissake,” Ruth hissed, without looking up from her phone. “Love him? She barely knows him.”
When I didn’t answer, paralyzed as I was by the mention of the L word, Ruth stopped pecking at her screen and looked up. In her eyes, I saw a whirlwind of emotions. Astonishment, surprise, anger. Even a sliver of betrayal. It stung to see it, but I knew that in her place I’d have felt the very same way. It was a pretty big about-face for me, a woman who used to draw long hair on all the princes and heroes in our fairytale books and who never really understood why there was a Ken doll at all. But gut feelings were gut feelings, and they hadn’t failed me yet. “I think he is my best chance,” I explained. “Our best chance.”
Ruth slapped her phone into her lap, and I watched the muscles in her jaw flex and release. She turned her head away and looked at the sharps disposal container; she closed her eyes and gnawed on her lip. Once or twice she shook her head—quickly and angrily, like she was tossing aside thoughts. She looped the string of her hoodie around her finger so tightly that it made red depressions on her index finger, alternating with tight white ridges. She let her hoodie string go and looked at me. “We don’t have to do it at all,” Ruth said.
Roxie’s grip on my arm tightened. I felt her stiffen and from the corner of my eye saw her eyebrows furrow. “We do, though, Ruth. Something has to give. We can’t keep on like this forever. Think of all our plans. Think of all the dreams.”
In spite of Ruth’s cautiousness, I still believed what I had always believed about the North Star. It was an investment in a future that we all yearned for but that was just out of reach. Roxie’s son. Ruth’s plans. Mr. Bozeman’s health. And my Big Wide Open. “We didn’t have to take those glasses for Gus either.”
Ruth looked me hard in the eye. In that stare, I knew what she was telling me. All these years together had given us a very reliable sort of ESP. Be careful, Stella. Be so, so, so freaking careful.
I nodded at her and said, “I know. I will.”
For a long moment, she held my stare. Unflinching, unmoving. Then she nodded, just once.
My heart soared, and I found myself doing the thing I hadn’t done since that day in the ice rink. I put my hand into the center of our triangle. Roxie put her hand on top of mine, and Ruth followed.
A better life was waiting for all of us. And damn it, I was going to make sure we got a chance to live it.