“Why?”
“To . . . to clean it. To make it new.”
“What if it doesn’t want to be?”
Ryan blinks at her, as lost as one of the gals at the assessor’s office.
“What are you talking about?”
“What if it just wants to be what it is? What it has become?”
This makes Ryan laugh, a loud barking laugh that echoes through the empty building.
Winnie snarls, her lip curling. She lifts the wood, brings it down hard.
He curls his arms around his head again, and again the world retreats in darkness.
When he wakes up, she is gone and he is alone.
He limps down the stairs and out of the building, down to where his green Lexus is waiting. It is night, a thick hot summer night. Where did the whole day go? He has the most horrific hangover he’s ever experienced, and he aches terribly.
Running his tongue over his lip, he can tell that it’s split. Touching fingers to his eyes, he can tell that they’re blackened.
When he gets to his green Lexus he looks at his reflection in the rear-view mirror. It’s worse than he thought. There’s a red welting crease over his cheekbone, and both his eyes are as purple and blue as overripe plums.
First, he uses his cell phone to call the police. He tells them about the crazy squatter in his building. He wants her cleared out. He is a man of substance, goddamn it! He has pumped millions into the local economy over the past decade. He is on a first-name basis with the mayor.
Yes, he is willing to press charges for assault. He wants her locked up for life. Maybe in an insane asylum.
Satisfied, he flips his phone shut. Then he drives to his fiancée’s condominium. She is wearing green silk pajamas, and she looks as smooth and beautiful as fresh plaster. She looks at him blankly, without interest, without surprise, without anything. She does not even comment on his battered face. In a flash of blackness, he shoves her to the ground and makes passionate, unpleasant love to her on the bleached oak floor of her entry hall.
Then, sitting naked on her distressed leather couch, her black portable phone pressed to his ear, he calls every contractor he knows. The most brutal, the most efficient, the most pragmatic, the most no-nonsense.
He makes appointments, sketches timelines, makes plans.
The first month, they clean.
Contractors tear out the old offices where Ryan was beaten, commenting on the drops of dried blood and the smell of spilt vodka.
The police find no squatter. They search the place thoroughly, come quickly to the conclusion that she has “moved on,” and happily wash their hands of the whole thing. Ryan, however, is not satisfied with this sanguine pronouncement. In fact, every now and again, Ryan is sure he sees Winnie’s lumpy figure out of the corner of his eye, rushing at him, the wood in her hand raised high. Her eyes are lit with hatred and anger.
But she is never really there, and the police can’t arrest someone they can’t see.
Ryan’s brutal and efficient men start to call him “twitchy,” for he is always involuntarily dodging blows.
After a month, the building is completely gutted and structural work can begin. It is then that Winnie really does reappear. Ryan is alone in a room one afternoon, looking at plans, when he smells honey and steel, sweet and fleeting.
He looks up, alarmed, expecting to see her bearing down on him with the wood. But she’s just standing, looking at him, her arms crossed behind her back. She seems to have lost weight. Her ass is smaller, and her legs seem skinnier. Her skin seems smoother.
He regards her for a while, assessing danger. She’s still and solid and sullen. He flashes her a sandpaper grin.
“You’re back?” he says.
“Never left,” she says. “Never will leave. Never.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Ryan says. “The police . . .”
“The police won’t find me,” she says, looking at him. She looks paler, he notices. Slightly sick. There is a strange shimmer about her, as if he can see her bones superimposed upon her flesh, a luminous ghost-skeleton that moves as she moves. He blinks, trying to clear this odd vision from his eyes.
“What gives you the right?” she asks, softly. “What gives you the right to do this?”
His brow curdles. It is an insane question.
“I own this building,” he says slowly, reducing each word to inarguable finality.
“That is not an answer,” she says.
“What other answer is there?” Ryan blazes, sudden frustration firing him. He wants her to shut up, to do what she is told.
Winnie is silent for a few moments. She is standing at a place where a wall used to be. The wall is gone, only structural timbers remain. She stretches out a hand, strokes her fingers through the air that the wall used to occupy. He can see every bone in her hand set in angular contrast against the timbers and studs and beams. The stark intersecting lines are indescribably beautiful.
“I do not want to be what you want to make me,” she says.
Ryan says nothing, watches her stroke the ghost-wall. The moment of adoration passes, giving way to critical dissatisfaction. Her movements are crisp, clumsy, machinelike. Inelegant, he thinks. She needs curves, smooth clean curves that please the eye. He makes a mental note to work with the architect on some streamlined walls for the entrance.
“You have no right,” she gasps, and he realizes that she is crying. “You have no right to change something that does not want to be changed.”
He takes a step forward, then another, like an unwise park visitor approaching a seemingly tame bear. He reaches out a hand, and touches her face.
“There now,” he says, stroking her cheek. Her skin is smoother, he notices with satisfaction. “There now.”
Winnie reaches into her pocket for a cigarette. Her hand is trembling.
“No smoking,” Ryan says gently, prying the cigarette from between her fingers. With a ferocious snarl, she slaps his hand away. He jumps back, his heart thudding. A surprisingly pleasant thrill surges through him.
“It’s for your own good,” he adds, holding fists defensively before his chest, expecting her to rush him.
“Liar,” she spits at him, and in the time it takes him to blink she is gone.
Problems arise, one after another. Expensive problems. Seismic upgrades. Asbestos removal. Hazardous waste disposal from where old puddles of oil have polluted the ground.
It is easy to take out the first construction loan; Ryan’s bankers love him. They even love him enough to give him a second. But the third one is difficult. They shuffle their wingtips and cast glances back and forth. It is clear that they share some of Jose’s concerns.
We’re unclear on your vision here, Mr. Ceres.
The freeway’s a dozen blocks away.