Handsome man's sanctuary
The question pulses like a second heartbeat at the bus stop: Why did that woman want my shoes?
My eyes sweep the radius, lock onto an overhead advertisement. Two men smile down at me. One holds binoculars, grinning. The other is the doctor who discharged me.
SHARPEN YOUR SIGHT.
A white car slides past, my neighbor's friend, the one called "trouble with paperwork." Then the coffee van. The realization burns: something about the shoes, something about weight, about the physics of observation when you don't know you're being measured.
The thought collapses before I can hold it.
I board the first available bus, ride until the driver's eyes close in the way that means exit now. Next bus heading north without reading destination. 6:04 pm. Wheels pulse: you are moving away from something. Not instruction. Not the apparatus speaking. Just the body knowing before language catches up.
Rain accompanies me for two hours through a grey blur of town. My hands shed evidence: a jumper at symbolic intervals, two socks, fragments of discharge papers one piece at a time. On the last fragment, a medical note catches my eye, something about swelling, fluids where they shouldn't be, kidneys down. The dark brown urine suddenly legible as data.
I crouch in the public garden, watching Handsome Man's house. One window glows, bedroom, muted light. He's calibrating. Wait.
Too exposed. I move behind trees. Minutes later, a car stops nearby. His voice: recognizable, a frequency I've tuned to without knowing, thanking someone for the lift. Immediately after, a police car stops in front of a nearby house. They don't see me. I fold into shadow geometry.
A dog barks. Signal to move to the back.
His bedroom window glows. TV on. But an old woman lies in his bed.
I wait near the basement vent, hearing muffled voices, youths, maybe. He's in his garage. When everyone disperses, I hear a phone vibrating, subtle breathing. I whisper his name. Nothing. Voices descending. I run, hide, hoping no one ventures there. They don't. I return upstairs, wait for him next to the front door.
Time is distorted. Hours might pass. My feet are numb in wet socks.
Then he arrives from behind me.
"What a surprise!" His eyes widen, perfectly timed. Theater or genuine, I can no longer distinguish between the two. The wave function collapses according to my needs. "I was at a friend's watching a movie and just had this feeling I had to come home. You're soaked. Come in."
His gaze lingers where my clothes gap. Or maybe it doesn't. Observation changes the system. I've chosen to see hunger, and the universe has obliged.
He was on the same train. His mother is visiting.
He returns with a clean tracksuit that swallows me whole.
I begin to tell him everything: the laundry room, police stations, hospital, shoes. While I speak, he chats seriously with someone on his phone, voice careful, measured, claiming he was indeed on the same train.
"You perceive the energy," he says, hanging up. "You need to eat."
I don't move.
"Someone drugged me. They tried to kill me. I'm afraid to eat."
"Drink from the glass only. Glass. You see as I am doing?"
"But do you want to kill me too? Why?"
"No. Here, a banana." I Peel first, checking for needles.
He almost smiles at this.
"Tomorrow we go to the mansion on top of the hill," I announce, voice gaining a resolve I don't feel. "We hide there."
"Let's organize," he says, already turning back to his phone. "Now I have to finish this. It's really important."
"I'm tired. I'll nap on the couch."
"Wait." He unfolds a pull-out bed.
His goodnight kiss brushes my temple, cold as a scalpel. The tracksuit smells like fabric softener and something else I cannot place. Something that makes my skin crawl even as I lie down, grateful for a surface that isn't hostile.
I sleep deeply, a heavy dreamless erasure that feels less like rest than like my body finally convinced of safety, surrendering entirely. The first time in days I don't count my own breathing.
In the morning, before leaving for work, he looks at me with a cryptic promise in his eyes.