The stairwell was dark. An hour ago I’d been in the back seat of Tree’s car in the Barn parking lot. I was preoccupied, wondering how tomorrow would go. This crucial first meeting with Tree had gone well enough, but that was the easy part: scaring him. Tomorrow I had to reason with him, which was where it could get hard.
I was alone. She’d given me the key to her apartment and told me to go on ahead. She had her own car tonight, so why didn’t I take off a little early and get the frozen pizza in the oven and put the hot water on for Sanka, and go ahead and get started on the late show, if my eyes were up to the postage stamp screen of her portable. She’d be along soon.
The stairs creaked; the walls of the stairwell were peeling paint; the smell of disinfectant hung heavy. Light seeping out around the doors on either side of the little platform of a second-floor landing made me feel less alone, but the third-floor landing was long, more a hallway, though there were only two apartments up here, one of which was empty. Or anyway she’d told me it was empty. I noticed light along the bottom crack of the door and wondered if somebody had just moved in today or what.
And I had this prickly feeling, on the back of my neck, that made me wish I still had the silenced nine-millimeter on me, and I swung my arm back and gave the guy coming up behind me, from out of the shadows of the landing over to my right, an elbow in the face. Felt like I caught a cheek, flesh and then sharp bone, but it was dark and an elbow isn’t the most sensitive part of the body to be making such distinctions with, so who knows.
The important thing was I’d sensed the guy in time, and I was drawing back my right foot to kick his balls up inside him when that apartment door opened, flooding the landing with light, and somebody hit me with something.