Run To You

I don’t like being her. So I close my eyes and count to ten. I think of all the ways I can make myself reasonable again. He isn’t here for me, I tell myself, and he could never be. The kind of woman he’s here for will be like the one downstairs at reception, beautiful and elegant. And she’ll have called to organise this meeting by doing something effortless and classy, like ringing a special number on an antique phone.

She wouldn’t hide in a closet, wrestling with her suddenly emerging libido. Her heart wouldn’t beat hard to see someone like that, and hear him say a string of alien words. Tar-zu, he says, and something else that sounds like ‘camera’, and then another thing that reminds me of that castle I thought I was in again.

Only this time it’s real, and on top of a mountain in Transylvania. If I look again he’ll be wearing a cape, and have a pronounced widow’s peak.

Though when I really peer through the gap he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. He’s still this perfect picture of a businessman, all smooth clean lines and big angles, inside his second-skin suit. He’s still so handsome I want to open the door, just so I can see more of him.

But I stop myself in time. I hold back just as he picks up that red silk and lets it trail through his fingers. He’s still on the phone, talking in this uninterested way, probably about stocks that need transferring into bonds, but he’s playing with something so sensuously as he does it. And he is playing with it too.

I can’t pretend he’s doing something more manly, like mining the material for coal. He lets it slide over the back of his hand, and just when it’s about to drift back down onto the bed, he catches it. He’s so deft, I think, before I can kick myself for mooning over him again.

God, mooning. Like a teenager.

Seriously, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know why I’m still watching with bated breath for his every little move. He finally finishes his call and snaps his tiny phone shut, and I jerk like he fired a bullet into the ceiling. And then he strides across the room, quite abruptly, and I almost do the thing I prided myself on avoiding.

I almost stumble into the shoe rack behind me and give myself away. In fact, I’m certain I have given myself away, just by jerking back. I fully expect the doors to swing wide at any moment. I’m sure that’s what he was intending to do anyway.

But when I dare to look again, the room is empty. He wasn’t going for the closet, I realise. He was going for the exit. He came to meet his lovely Lucy, and, once he realised she wasn’t here, he made a call to the complaints department of the Assignations Bureau, before taking his leave.

Or at least that’s how it goes in my head. In reality, I have no idea if there’s such a thing as the Assignations Bureau. For all I know, this could be some kind of sex-trafficking drugs ring. Lucy could have been moonlighting as a high-class call girl. I was almost in an episode of that TV show with Billie Piper.

If I hadn’t hidden in a closet.

But I did, and that’s how it is, and so now I have to fumble out into an empty room. And though I know, rationally, that this should be a relief, it somehow isn’t. I’m not pleased that I avoided him. I’m boiling hot and absolutely furious with myself for being the same person I always am: frightened, foolish, clumsy.

I didn’t even speak to him. I couldn’t even ask him about Lucy. I let myself be intimidated by his brilliance and lamped by my own weird arousal, and now I’ll never know. I’ve missed my chance, because God knows I’m never coming back here. Never, never, never. Wild horses couldn’t drag me.

However, I suspect his business card might.

He’s left it on the desk by the window, propped up against a bottle of champagne he didn’t drink. It’s probably worth more than every drop of lemonade I’ve ever consumed, but he’s just abandoned it here. He’s used it as a backdrop for that little innocuous rectangle – the one that probably doesn’t mean anything at all.

He’s left it for the girl that didn’t come. That red writing coiled across its surface will say, ‘Lucy, lovely Lucy, why didn’t you meet me?’ Or at least that’s what I tell myself, as I try to leave without reading it.

And then somehow I find myself crossing the carpet, to get a closer look. I see the word ‘girl’ and the word ‘wardrobe’, and I know what’s coming, though I try to deny it for another moment. I was so sure he didn’t know I was there. I was so sure I got away with it. He gave no sign, you see. There was no indication he’d guessed – I thought I was safe.

Now I know I’m not.

‘To the girl in the wardrobe’, the card says, on its blank white back. Then on the front: his name, and his number, and one simple instruction:

‘Call me.’

Chapter Two

When I get to my desk I do everything the same as always. I put my coffee on my little Garfield coaster and turn on my computer. I check my emails and send out various messages, then call down to Finance to make sure they’ve got my updated details. It’s just another ordinary day, I think to myself, though I can already tell it’s sliding into something else. I’m concentrating too hard on work tasks for it to qualify as normal. Usually I hardly care; now I can tell I’m caring too much.

Once I’m done with the typical morning tasks I straighten my desk, as though it really needs straightening. Everything needs to be at right angles, and there are far too many paperclips lurking behind sheets of paper. The sheets of paper themselves shouldn’t be here, so I file them away in a filing system I don’t yet have.

But I soon will.

I spend a good hour creating one – with tiny tabs and little plastic inserts and everything. Michaela snorts at me over the divide of our two cubicles, wanting to know why I’m suddenly so busy … but of course I can’t tell her. I can’t tell anyone about this, because my usual go-to confessor has flown the coop and I’m still no closer to finding out why.

I don’t want to be any closer to finding out why. I’ve already dialled his number twice and hung up, and I really can’t risk any more. The night before last was frightening enough, and maybe explanation enough, and I’d far rather be normal and busy and a customer services operative again. The phone rings and I answer it like I always do: ‘Alissa Layton speaking, how may I help you?’

And I expect the person on the other end to be boring and possibly stupid, the way they always are. ‘My payment went out at the wrong time, I don’t understand these forms, I don’t like what I’ve signed up to, do you sell milk?’ I even have my sigh pre-planned, soft and low and aimed at something other than the phone receiver. Just beyond our dividing wall Michaela rolls her eyes and makes a winding finger around the edges of her own phone conversation, like every other day in this mundane place.

So I suppose it’s more of a jolt to hear that voice, in the middle of all of this. Back there at The Harrington he belonged, but even then it was a shock. Now it’s almost impossible … like hearing a lion roar in a library. You turn around expecting dusty books and there it is, sleek and predatory and ready to devour you whole.

‘Hello, Alissa,’ he says, and I think he might devour me whole. In fact, I know he will. He’s barely said a word and I’m already speechless and frozen, unable to process his presence in my silly basic office. How did he know where I was? Why does he care where I am? He wrote those words – ‘Call me’ – but I didn’t think they were serious.

‘I’m very disappointed in you.’

Or that I was capable of provoking an emotion like disappointment. I’ve never been important enough for anyone to be disappointed in me. No one has ever expected me to make something big of myself; I’ve never done anything so awful that it let anybody down.

This is entirely new territory, and so disturbing because of that fact. It’s like I’ve stepped into another dimension, while drunk. The world slants sideways and my stomach goes with it … if this carries on for much longer I’m going to lose my lunch. I’m sweating already, and my skin is prickling, and worst of all: I don’t know how to answer him.

I don’t know.

I don’t belong in your world, I think at him, but phones don’t pick up thoughts. He has to make do with my stupid silence, and my shaky breathing.

‘Calling then hanging up? That’s hardly polite. Why would you do such a thing?’

‘I don’t know,’ I tell him, while the image of my own fear and panic rises inside me. It’s like seeing a bird caught inside a bottle.

‘Perhaps you were busy, and couldn’t complete the call,’ he says, in this purring persuasive tone – almost as though he’s daring me to say yes. Make it easy on yourself, he seems to be suggesting, but weirdly I can’t quite do it.

I can’t say, ‘Yes, go away, I’m busy’ now.

‘Perhaps.’

‘Or maybe you had an appointment you had to attend.’

‘That could be the case.’

‘You have such an important life,’ he says, and I know for sure then. He’s teasing me, in the most subtle and strange way I’ve ever been teased in my life. I can almost hear a lick of laughter in the back of his voice, but it’s not unpleasant. It’s not even infuriating.

It’s something else, instead.

‘I really do.’

‘So many matters to attend to.’

‘Absolutely.’

He makes a little hmm-ing noise in the back of his throat, like some friendly psychiatrist. I can almost see him nodding with understanding, though of course it’s obvious the understanding is fake. It’s obvious even before he knifes me with his next words, hard and fast and right under my ribs.

‘Nothing at all to do with being afraid and intimidated.’

I fall silent again then – mainly because I have to. It’s impossible to talk when your throat has sealed itself up, and your body is frozen in one weird position. I’m almost bent double over my desk and my hand has made a fist in my best suit jacket, as though my body just had to prove him right. Naturally I’m afraid and intimidated.

I’m a completely ridiculous person talking to this scion of business. He probably eats people like me for breakfast. I’m probably not even good enough for his breakfast. I’m the water he swills around his mouth after brushing his teeth with his gold toothbrush, before spitting me into the sink.

‘Are you still there, Alissa?’

I wish I wasn’t. I wish I could tell him where to go, but there are so many reasons why I won’t. There’s Lucy and what happened with her, and that place and its mysterious allure. And then of course there’s the real reason:

Him.

‘Possibly.’

‘This makes me think of you as something ephemeral, that I might blow away with a whisper. Is that so?’

‘I’d probably phrase it a different way, but generally yes.’

‘Really? How would you phrase it? Tell me, enlighten me, let me hear your voice.’

That’s too much pressure. He has to know that’s too much, right? Just the idea of enlightening him is making my armpits prickle.

‘I wouldn’t use the word ephemeral.’

‘I see. And there is a reason for this?’

‘Yes. It’s too … pretty. It needs to be more basic.’

‘Ah, then perhaps insubstantial would do.’

‘That’s better.’

‘Or invisible.’

‘I could deal with invisible.’

‘Of course you can. Of course. Because that is how you feel, is it not? You feel so perfectly invisible, like no one could ever notice a single thing about you. And, in fact, you’ve grown so used to this state of affairs that you’ve started to fall in love with it. You like being in the background, hidden from view … lingering around the edges at parties … keeping out of conversations in case someone finds you as insufferably dull as you’ve always suspected you are. You can’t even talk to me because what if I don’t care either? Surely my life must be so expensive and jaded that anything you say will sound like the simperings of a child.’

He pauses just long enough for me to say something here – a denial, perhaps, or an accusation. But truthfully, I think he knows I’ll only answer with this hollow, horrified silence. I think he was hoping for it, so he can just go ahead and fill it up with this:

‘And yet I feel I have to ask: if this is all the case, and you are so little and so weak … why is it that I could feel your presence through five inches of wood? Can you tell me, invisible Alissa? Why are you – in silence – stronger and stranger than any woman I’ve actually met?’

* * *

I don’t know why I hung up on him so abruptly. When I look back on it now it seems like something a person would do if the phone suddenly bit them, and they really needed to get away. I can even picture it in my head: the receiver clattering back down onto the cradle, my hand jerking back.

He probably thought I was insane.

But that’s OK, because I think he’s insane. I think he’s so insane I can’t stop thinking about him. What did he mean by invisible, exactly? And more importantly: how did he know that I was? Surely the point of being invisible is that no one can see you. He must have X-ray vision, I think, but doing so doesn’t help me.

It only makes things worse, because who wouldn’t be intrigued by a man with superhero eyes? If I call again I might find out he has other skills, like the ability to fly in through a window and save me from this stultifying existence.

And for a while I come close to calling him. I get as far as the last digit, but before I can hear the purring ring in my ear I slam the phone back down again. I’m not a weak person, tricked by strange mind games and just waiting for some Superman to come rescue me. I know that he never will, for a start.

But oh, my foolish heart.

How my foolish heart fails me when my phone suddenly goes, ten seconds later. It actually seems to jerk in my chest, before slowly dissolving through my insides. I flick my gaze to that previously innocuous piece of machinery, angry at it for changing. Angry at the ring that now seems as sharp as a knife and dark as midnight.

It makes me think of horror movies, when you know the killer’s calling. The startled heroine, that lonely drilling tinkle, the wide-eyed stare in the phone’s direction … it’s all there. I actually catch myself with my mouth open. I have to compose myself and close it, before I pick up the receiver. And it’s a close call, even then.

I almost go get myself a drink of water.

But I’m glad I decide otherwise.

‘Hello, Alissa,’ he says, and for one mad second I know how Lois Lane feels. I threw up the signal and he came calling, right on cue. ‘Are you ready to finish our conversation now?’

I’m amazed he even remembers our conversation, in-between million-pound meetings and making himself so slick and flawless. The suit alone must take a thousand years to put on, with all of its buttons and extra bits and the always imminent threat of ruining something so expensive. I bet he has to lever it on with tweezers. I bet geishas roll it onto his body using their breasts.

And yet here he is, just waiting to finish something so pale and slight.

It makes me think it wasn’t pale and slight at all. Somehow I’ve stumbled into a Very Serious Discussion about important things, and now I have to finish it. How do I finish it? What were we even saying?

‘Describe your face to me.’

I definitely don’t think we were discussing that.

‘Why? Don’t you know what it looks like?’ I ask, confused. He saw me in the lobby, didn’t he? Though when I think back … how would he have known I was the same person, hiding in the wardrobe? He couldn’t have, not for sure.

And I don’t feel like explaining. Everything might end, if I do.

‘How would I?’ he says, and I can almost hear his shrug through the phone. Just one big shoulder, as lazy and casual as a basking lion.

‘Well, you know where I work. You must have found things out about me.’

‘So you think I’m some obsessive stalker. From invisible to so sure of yourself in under a day. Very impressive.’

‘No, I don’t think … that’s not what I meant,’ I say, but I flounder over what I did actually mean. In the end I have to settle for the truth, even though doing so makes me picture that lion, suddenly baring all of its teeth. ‘It’s just that … well … you seem like a stalker. And also a mind-reader.’

‘You think I found out where you work because of mind-reading?’

He sounds so amused I almost take the words back. But in the end I think it’s better that I stand my ground. If he is a maniac, he’ll know I have him pegged now. He’ll picture me with my thumb on speed dial to the police, and never put me in a box beneath his stairs.

I’m not fooled by you, I think at him – though my actual words sound weak.

‘Possibly.’

‘Ah, possibly again. Not sure, can’t decide, don’t want to commit.’

‘Why would I want to commit something to someone I barely know? You haven’t even told me your name,’ I say. He doesn’t have to know that I’ve invented hundreds for him, in my head. Stanislav, Arvikov, Amritza, my mind murmurs, even though I’m sure none of those are actually words. ‘And I have no idea how you know mine.’

He laughs, low and dark. I swear the sound rattles my bones.

‘You keep calling me, remember?’ he says, and I want to smack my hand over my face to see my own silliness spelled out like that. Of course, of course, I keep calling him and hanging up. I really am sending out a signal. ‘If you hadn’t, I would have surely bothered you no longer. But seeing your work number in neon was too tempting, so I simply called you back and listened to your delightful answering machine message. How does it go again? “You have reached Alissa Layton, please leave a message after the beep.”’

I’ll admit it. I love the way he says the word ‘beep’. It’s almost a click, instead. It snaps out of him, oddly abrupt and oh, so interesting.

‘That does sound like me.’

‘Why do you think so?’

‘It’s straightforward.’ I hesitate, wanting to hold off on the final verdict. It’s just too damning. I want to claw my way out of the outfit it puts me into, and run newly bared down the nearest street. ‘And dull.’

‘So now we have dull to add to your collection. What were your other terms for yourself? Invisible, and insubstantial?’

‘I might have said something along those lines.’

‘So you don’t think there is anything beneath all of this? Nothing of interest?’

‘Certainly nothing as interesting as the life you lead.’

‘And what makes you think my life is so interesting?’

I see the entrance hall of The Harrington behind my eyes, glossy and glorious. The coil of the receptionist’s hair, the three neat items laid out on the bed like bowls of porridge in the Three Bears’ house.

Which one is just right?

‘You do those things at that hotel.’

It doesn’t come out the way I want it to. It comes out fumbled and childish, with a hint of judgement I didn’t realise I felt. I mean, just because I don’t understand sex doesn’t mean other people can’t, and in a second I’m sure he’ll tell me as much. ‘Shouldn’t people explore if they wish?’ he’ll say, though when this doesn’t happen I’m not grateful. His amusement is back, and it’s just as prickling as it was before.

‘Is that what you think happens there? “Doing things”?’

‘You know what I mean.’

How can he? I don’t even know what I mean.

‘I really don’t. Speak plainly.’

‘I thought I was,’ I say, because I’m a fucking liar. That laughing lilt to his voice just makes me want to lie and lie and lie – but that’s all right.

He tells the truth for me.

‘No, you were speaking in a vague way because you’re afraid to say the actual words.’

How does he do it? Years of reading people over the boardroom table, I suspect, though there are other options. Perhaps he operates in some shady, cut-throat world I can’t even fathom, where everything dances on a knife edge.

Or maybe I’m just really easy to read. I’m a neglected book that’s been left somewhere damp, swollen to twice its size and suddenly filled with enormous words. Most of them probably ask for help. Some might mention loneliness.

All of them must be hidden, immediately.

‘Maybe that’s just because you’re a stranger.’

‘My name is Janos Kovacs,’ he says, casually. He doesn’t know that I cradle those two names to my chest like rare and ready-to-fly birds. ‘There, now we are no longer strangers.’

Indeed we are not. He is Janos, pronounced with a curdled call for silence at the end. He is Hungarian, as I had guessed, and suddenly so large in my head I fear I’ll never get him out. I have to tear away the rest of him with claws I don’t have.

I’m not this fierce, I think.

I’m not this able to resist.

And yet I am.

‘I don’t think that’s enough.’

‘How about if I tell you I work in finance?’

‘Lots of people work in finance.’

‘I have a penthouse that overlooks the city.’

‘Doesn’t everyone, these days?’

I marvel at the boredom in my own voice. My palms are sweating so much I have to keep switching the receiver from one hand to the other, but somehow I keep up this charade. When it’s just our voices, I can do it.

‘My favourite opera is Madame Butterfly.’

‘You could be any anonymous millionaire suit.’

‘So if I was poor you might say what you mean?’

‘I might.’

‘Then I am penniless.’

The words themselves are not unusual. But, I confess, the sudden conviction in his voice gives me pause. There’s something steely about it, as though he’s carving each word into a tree with a knife.

It makes me shiver, but I pretend it doesn’t.

‘You can’t change the dynamics just by saying.’

‘Of course I can. That’s how the game is played.’

‘And is that what The Harrington is about? Playing games?’

‘If you say the real words I might tell you yes or no.’

Whatever this game is, he’s extremely good at it. I didn’t agree to dancing, and yet somehow I’m doing it anyway. I’m doing it right here in the middle of the work day, with Michaela to one side of me yakking away into her own phone and my boss over there by the water cooler.

He gives me a slight nod, like he thinks I’m fielding an important call – and I suppose that is how I must look. I’m hunched over, near-whispering, one fist clenched over my keyboard. The other clinging to the phone for dear life.

‘All right. All right,’ I hiss at him. ‘People meet there to have illicit liaisons.’

‘I’m not sure that’s quite real enough. It sounds like something from a tabloid newspaper, about the swinging the neighbours have been doing.’

‘People meet there to have sex, then.’

‘Sex is better, but I think you can do more.’

I glance across at my boss. He’s no longer looking, but that doesn’t matter. This conversation is definitely giving off a vibe, now, that people should be able to feel across long distances and without glancing at me. I can feel it pulsing at my core like some nuclear reactor, so it must be spreading outwards.

Soon everyone will be irradiated.

At the very least, they’ll know. Alissa is having an oddly sexual conversation with a complete stranger, and doesn’t want to stop. Look at her there, shamelessly not stopping.

‘They meet to touch, and kiss, and lick,’ I say, and though my voice shakes I’m proud of myself. It feels like he shot a tennis ball at me with a cannon, and somehow I miraculously managed to smack it back.

‘And is that all?’

I close my eyes and take a breath, hovering on the brink of not obeying. He’s just toying with me, pushing me, daring me to go too far. I shouldn’t care. I should put the phone down. But I suppose the trouble is:

I want to go too far. I’m tired of living in the land of not far enough.