The Pretty Ones (2 page)

HELLO FROM THE GUTTERS OF NYC!

Nell had read that letter, unable to shake the strange itch of envy. It was a letter written by someone who had had enough. Someone who had been pushed too far; shoved right over the line of civility and onto a path of blood-soaked freedom.

Uninhibited liberation.

A personal renaissance.

She shoved her hands into the pockets of her sweater, felt the soft edges of one of Barrett's crumpled notes.

Ignore them. Don't start trouble.

Reaching her row-house apartment on Quentin Road, she climbed up the crumbling concrete steps and pushed open the front door. She had two keys on her vinyl Snoopy key ring. One for the building's front door. The other was for the apartment. But the front door had been kicked in more than six months before, either by police or a drunk resident who had misplaced his key. Most days the front door flapped open and closed like a kid's loose tooth. People came and went at all hours, whether they lived there or not. Homeless men had taken to sleeping in the front hall, sometimes blocking the stairs Nell had to take to get to her floor. Sometimes, when she arrived home late, she'd hear people having sex behind the stairwell—women moaning
daddy
and
baby
while men puffed
You like that?
like locomotives. It turned her stomach, and yet, those were the nights she couldn't help herself. She'd wake up early the next morning and run to King's Chapel to pray, unable to shake the smell of her own body on her hands, no matter how hard she scrubbed them with Borax and bleach.

Filthy pig.

Nasty whale.

Today, there were a couple of kids playing jacks in the lobby. Their clothes were dirty and half-soaked, most likely from a romp around a curbside fire hydrant. Nell gave them a faint smile, but they only stared with their wide, stupid eyes. Tempted to ask them what the hell they were looking at, she started up the stairs instead. She paused on the second-story landing to catch her breath, then continued to the third floor. Barrett would be waiting for her behind their dead-bolted apartment door.

Barrett didn't work, but Nell didn't resent him for it. His joblessness had been her idea. He was creative, had a passion for books and words. He was a writer, and someday he'd be in print. Nell would make sure of it, even though he never let her read a single sentence he wrote.

“Barrett?” Nell stepped inside the apartment, then fastened all three dead-bolt locks behind her. The place was little more than a handful of walls, thin enough for both of them to know everything about their neighbors without ever meeting them face-to-face. Yellowed wallpaper was peeling away in places like blistered skin. The ceiling was pockmarked with stains from where the upstairs neighbor's kids regularly flooded the kitchen and bathroom. The floor, while hardwood, was so warped it was next to impossible to keep the secondhand kitchen table level. Nell had shoved two old paperbacks beneath one of the legs to keep it from leaning too far to the right. Lady Chatterley and Father Lankester Merrin were doing their best to keep plates and silverware in place. And the rest of the furniture wasn't any better. All of it had come from the Salvation Army. All of it needed some sort of support.

But despite the old furnishings and dilapidated state, the place was spotless. It held an air of scruffy hipness that lent it an almost cute quality, from Nell's potted ferns balanced on the windowsills to the miniature herb garden on the fire escape. There were always two settings on that shabby kitchen table. Matching place mats and plates surrounded a small vase of the cheapest flowers the market had been selling on shopping day. Usually they were carnations, and Nell didn't mind that one bit. Carnations lasted a long time, sometimes over a week if she kept the water fresh. Plain but hearty, just like her.

She dropped her keys into a little bowl on a side table next to the door, slid her purse off her shoulder, and shrugged out of her sweater, then folded it into fourths. When she peeked into his bedroom, Barrett was nowhere to be found. Nell frowned at that, picturing him wandering the streets of Sheepshead Bay, looking for someone more exciting than her. If that was what Barrett wanted, he was likely to find it anywhere but here, in their sorry excuse of a home.

“You'll be back.” She murmured the reassurance to herself. Peeling the wet back of her shirt away from her skin, she stepped into the kitchenette and tied on her ruffle-trimmed apron with a sigh. Barrett
would
be back. He never strayed for long. Men were predictable. As soon as they got hungry, they came scratching at the door.

.   .   .

She tried to wait up for Barrett the night before. But after an hour of reading C. S. Lewis's
Screwtape Letters
with Beary—her teddy bear—she couldn't keep her eyes open. Barrett had always hated Beary's name. Even as a boy he'd complained that it was uncreative, that it sounded too much like
his
name, but Nell hadn't cared. She liked that it sounded like her big brother's moniker. And so Beary had stayed Beary, now her only surviving childhood memento. Sometimes, it seemed, her only friend.

Hours later, she woke with her favorite book strewn across the floor. Beary was stuffed beneath her pillow, and the apartment was silent. Her brother's absence hung like a storm cloud over her head.

When Nell woke for work, Barrett's empty dinner plate was on the kitchen table, the only sign she had of his return. But when she searched the rooms for him, he was still missing.

She stood in the kitchenette with her arms wound across her chest, staring at his dirty dishes with a sense of doom. There was an early morning argument happening in front of the building. A drunk woman screaming
don't touch me
at her stumbling boyfriend. The yelling did little to soothe Nell's frayed nerves.

She twisted away from the kitchen table—a sorry old thing that looked like it had been salvaged from a down-and-out diner. Its rounded corners and chrome trim made her think of
I Love Lucy
and
Leave It to Beaver
, of retro soda fountains and perfect families living in perfect neighborhoods inside their mother's old black-and-white TV. That memory was the reason Nell had splurged on the red-topped table in the first place. It didn't match a thing in the apartment, and it was overpriced for what it was, especially because it was missing its matching chairs. But she had bought it with a fleeting hope. Maybe if she stuck that bit of Americana in the center of her apartment, a bit of that vintage happiness would transpose itself into her own life. It was why she kept the little vase of carnations in perpetual bloom, why she fixed dinner every evening despite her long workday. The whole thing had been a stupid idea, a ridiculous childlike notion.

Nell didn't want to accept it, but the reality of it was becoming harder to shake. They could have moved into a pastel-painted house on Magnolia Lane in a perfect little town a million miles from Brooklyn, but things would stay the same. Barrett would always hate their mother. He'd always wander and never speak. Nothing would ever be perfect, no matter how hard Nell tried. Not after what Faye Sullivan had done.

Pressing her hands to her face, Nell took a deep breath, familiar pain blooming at the back of her brain. She tried not to imagine her sibling, carousing in the seedy streets of New York City or living it up while “You Should Be Dancing” pumped through club speakers. She tried not to picture him as one of the men who took women behind staircases of unlocked buildings, pressing them up against the wall. Most days, Nell thanked God she had a brother like Barrett, but there were the occasional moments . . . moments when she wished they were only friends.

Roommates that could fall in love.

Fall into bed.

Fall into a life beyond what they had.

It was a temptation she had repressed for years. A desire she didn't dare put into words. When she heard those couples behind the stairwell, her stomach soured and twisted into a fist. But not before she saw a flash of her own face pulled into a grimace of lust. Not before she imagined his hands,
his
hands, drawing across the naked flesh of her well-rounded hips.

She squeezed her eyes shut against the thought, gritted her teeth, and exhaled a quiet, abhorrent bleat deep in her throat. When her hands fell away from her face, Barrett stood not three feet from the apartment door. He had a way of sneaking up on her. Nell may have been a mouse in appearance, but Barrett had her beat when it came to silence.

“B-Barrett.” His name was a faltering greeting. “You scared me.”

He raised his eyebrows at her, but didn't speak. Of course not. Had he said a word, Nell would have fallen right over, maybe even fainted from shock.

That was the thing about Barrett.

He hadn't spoken since he was six years old.

“Where were you?” Nell asked. She tightened the belt of her robe, scowled at his dirty dishes. “I waited all night. I was worried. You could have at least cleaned up after yourself, instead of leaving it for me.”

Barrett gave her a level look, one that suggested that she had far more pressing issues to worry about. He reached for one of the many pads of paper strewn about the apartment and scribbled something down.

What time is it?

“Oh,
damn
,” she hissed. “I'm going to miss the train!” She rushed past him fast enough to catch her shoulder on the doorframe. When she appeared from the bathroom smelling of soap, her hair still sopping wet, Barrett was lounging in his tattered wingback. He was reading Robert Louis Stevenson again. Barrett was a little rock-and-roll with his surfer-like Leif Garrett hair, a little intellectual with his forever-pensive expression. Far too cool to be her biological sibling. Way too smart to stick around. He didn't raise his eyes from his book to acknowledge her exit, only lifted an arm with two fingers held aloft in a lazy peace sign.

Later, dude.

She rolled her eyes and triple-locked the door behind her, hoping it would keep him from disappearing again.

.   .   .

She reached Rambert & Bertram a half hour late; a reason to panic for any employee, but an absolute nightmare for a girl who tried to blend into the beige carpet and potted plants. The elevator spit her out into an incessant ringing of telephones and chipper
please hold
s. Mary Ann Thomas glanced up from her typewriter. Her upper lip curled over her teeth just enough to suggest a sneer, as though some unspoken hope of Nell quitting her job had been dashed onto the rocks of reality. Mary Ann shot a look at Adriana Esposito, who sat to her right, as if to say
Are you seeing this?
Adriana was a beautiful girl, but she wasn't quite as pretty as Mary Ann. None of Mary Ann's friends were. Nell was fairly certain that if Mary Ann ever crossed paths with a better-looking woman, that girl would be found dead in a gutter the next afternoon.

A crime of passion.

Jealousy.

Maybe revenge.

Adriana was Mary Ann's best friend. Her right hand. A henchgirl if there ever was one. As soon as Mary Ann gave her a nod, Adriana lifted her hands from the keys of her typewriter. She rose from her seat and glided across the office floor as graceful as she'd seen Michael Jackson dance across Johnny Carson's stage. A seed of panic bloomed in Nell's stomach as she watched Adriana shimmy toward their supervisor's door. Nell's attention bounced back to Mary Ann's desk, but Mary Ann had turned her back, busy transcribing handwritten notes onto official letterhead.

Oh God.

The words wheeled their way through Nell's head.

Oh God shit goddamnit oh God.

A flash of pain. A wince between beats of her heart.

She marched down the center aisle of desks as fast as she could, just short of falling into a full run. She shoved her purse into the little cabinet attached to her desk, tore off the Selectric's cover and shoved it into the compartment along with her things. Snatching up her coffee mug, she pulled her sweater tight across her chest and made for the break room. It was against her better judgment. Logic said to sit down and get to work, but Barrett would have suggested otherwise.
Act natural
,
he would have written. Maybe if she at least
looked
like she'd been there for a while, Misters Rambert and Bertram would let her tardiness slide—not that she'd ever met them. Men like those spent their days on the golf course, not in a city dying of heatstroke.

No matter how many times Nell had considered quitting this job, she needed it to pay the rent. Without it, she and Barrett would be sleeping in the ground-floor hallway along with the drifters. Barrett would have to find a job—but how? No matter how smart or good-looking he was, he didn't speak, only wrote notes on his little yellow pad. Maybe a night stocker at a grocery store or a mechanic at a tire shop . . . a job that didn't require him to talk to anyone, to interact with customers. And once he
did
find a place to work, he wouldn't have time for his writing. That was something Nell wasn't sure he'd ever forgive her for. Her quitting this job would mean him quitting on his dreams. And then there was the fact that he'd be pulling an eight-hour shift—that was eight hours of him realizing how much better the world was without her in it. Without his sister. The girl who had cost him everything.

Nell's hands trembled as she reached for the coffeepot, splashing brew into her Mr. Topsy-Turvy mug. Only three minutes into her shift and she was already sweating beneath the wool knit of her sweater. She stared at the orange bean of a character as she chewed on her bottom lip, wondering what she'd do if the boss sent her home early with an empty Xerox box full of her things. She'd think up an excuse. Something that would make her supervisor, Harriet Lamont, think twice before terminating her. Something that Nell couldn't have prevented. An accident. No, worse. Much worse.
A death.
Someone had thrown themselves in front of the B train, took a flying leap right off the platform and onto the rails. She'd seen it with her own two eyes. It was like something out of a nightmare. She doubted she'd ever sleep again.