This is a flash draft, a story I knocked out in an evening when the first line was used as a prompt. Everything else just came after that line. It's fun to do that once in a while, but you never know how it goes until someone reads it. So... read. Thanks...
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The knock on the door came sooner than she expected.
"Honey, get your things and let's go out to the balcony."
"But I want to keep reading."
"We'll read later."
She took her daughter by the hand and made sure she pulled the kitchen door closed behind them as they headed to the balcony. She heard the knocking on the apartment door again as the kitchen door was closing. It was louder knocking, more rapid.
It was insistent knocking. She pretended it wasn't.
She reached across the flimsy railing that separated their balcony from the family next door. She rapped on the window of her neighbor's kitchen door. A black woman, about the same age, with the same beginning signs of weary age that made her look slightly older than her thirty years, opened it. She wore an apron and held a spatula.
"Carla can Millie stay with you for a few minutes? I have to go out."
"I'm just fixing lunch for my girls. You want her to eat with us?"
"Could she?"
Millie interrupted.
"Where are you going, Mommy?"
"I'll tell you when I get back, honey."
She lifted her daughter over the railing and mouthed 'thank you!' to Carla, who with a smile reached out and took Millie, but behind the little girl's back she rubbed her fingers together and raised her eyebrows. She mouthed another message.
"You owe me!"
Millie's mother answered with a barely perceptible nod of the head. Carla's face changed from arrogant to concerned, but Millie's mother hurried back into her own apartment, not seeing the Carla's worry or the sad wave from Millie.
She closed the kitchen door and rushed across the apartment to the sounds of ceaseless pounding from outside.
"Just a minute!"
"It's been a minute already! Open up!"
She breathed deep and exhaled as quietly as she could. She snapped open the locks and as she turned the knob the man outside took over and forced his way in and past her. She closed the door as he stood near her and took an angry look around the place.
"You Nancy?"
"Nanette."
"Whatever."
"People call me 'Nan.'"
"How about I call you 'fuck up' for making me wait out there like that?"
"Sorry."
"I heard you had a kid. Where is she?"
"Babysitter's."
"Is that every day?"
"Only some days."
"Why today?"
"I was waiting for you."
That did not please him. Nothing on him moved. He stood and stared down at her for what felt like a half an hour. She got her first good look at him.
He stood taut, straight, like a man who held that position often and could go from standing there to beating or strangling her faster than she cared to imagine. For a microsecond she thought that he must have been a boxer, and a big one. He was at least half a foot taller, with shoulders that scared her, even under the black t-shirt and faded denim jacket. He was bald, with a dark beard and a horizontal scar under his right eye. The scar looked old but deep. She wondered how he got it but was afraid of the answer. His eyes were gray blue and intense, and getting more so.
"Me?"
"Yes."
"So where's the money?"
"The money?"
"Yeah, the money."
Her mouth fell open.
"See." He still hadn't moved. "That tells me you're not ready."
She swallowed and bit her bottom lip gently.
"No, I'm not."
He moved closer to her. She felt as if a storm had just blown a tree down and it was about to land on her. She would have backed away but she was already against the door.
"Are you fucking me here?"
"No, I'm not. I swear."
"Because it feels like the two of you are fucking me here."
She could smell him, and she could feel the heat of his breath. She stared up at him and swallowed several times but her throat was dry and it hurt. He saw the stress in her face and backed away until she was free of his shadow.
"You know what's going to happen here if you two are fucking me."
She nodded.
"Sweetheart, you—what was your name again?"
"Nan."
"You better start talking, Nan. I'm already here longer than I shoulda been."
Her shoulders lifted as she breathed as deeply as she could. She still wore Hank's t-shirt that she had slept in the night before. It hung down over her loose gym shorts. She felt even smaller in it now than she usually did. Her hands clasped in front of her stomach, like a child's hands during bedtime prayers.
"You want a drink?"
"Wrong answer, Nan."
"May I have one?"
"You need one?"
"I'd like one."
"Where?"
"The living room."
"Go."
He followed her. She poured some Jack Daniels in an iced tea glass and swallowed it all in one drink. She started to pour a second.
"That's enough."
She put the bottle down and turned to face him.
"I don't have the money, Mr...?"
"You already told me that, and my name doesn't matter."
"Hank told me a man named Curtis was coming."
"Call me Curtis if you want. Where's the money if it's not here?"
"Hank said you were bringing the stuff."
"That's not how this works, and don't change the subject. Where's the money? And I'm getting impatient."
She moved farther away from him and sat nervously in a chair by a window that brought no light into the room. She made her body as small as it could get and did not look up at him.
"Someone else has your money."
"It's not my money. Who has it?"
"One of Hank's friends."
She wished he would move. He didn't. Nothing moved. She was afraid that if he ever decided to move it would be quick, decisive, and decisively bad for her.
"Do you know this friend of Hank's, where he stays?"
"Yes."
"Let's go there now."
He moved, finally. He came across the room and grabbed her by the arm and lifted her to her feet. She was afraid to wince, thinking her fear might anger or encourage him, like a dog looking for a weakness. She wondered if he could pull her arm off. She believed that he could.
"Get dressed."
"I am dressed."
He lifted the t-shirt and saw the shorts she wore.
"Shoes?"
"In the hallway."
When he moved toward the door he held onto her arm and moved her in front of him. With his other hand he reached for the doorknob.
"Wait!"
"I thought so."
"There's no money."
He stopped abruptly and the grip on her upper arm tightened. She felt the pressure of his hands, but she felt no pain.
"You see, that's bad, Nan, for everybody, but it's really bad for you."
"No, I mean there's no money right now, but it is coming. Hank's friend just has to go get it."
He slammed her back against the door. His other hand whipped a blade out of his belt. He held the point to her throat.
"I'm getting tired of being here, Nan."
"I mean I just can't go get the money, just like that. The money's coming here, today, from some place Hank stashed it. That's how Hank set it up, with his friend. It's just not here yet."
"Why didn't Hank just have you get it?"
She felt the point of the blade against the skin of her throat.
"No one told me where it was. Hank didn't. His friend didn't. Hank said the less I knew the better for me."
"So when I knocked you thought I was the bag man?"
"Yes."
She hadn't cried, and she wouldn't. The Jack Daniels made sure of that. Her eyes were steadier than they should have been if she was lying. He lowered the blade but held onto her arm.
"You're either a very cool liar, or Hank married a good girl."
"We're not married."
"Then he chose a good girl."
"What makes you say that?"
"You're steady, in the face, everywhere else. Most guys cry or beg or shit themselves when I have 'em up against a wall about to cut their throats."
"You do that a lot?"
"I do it when they deserve it."
"Do I?"
"Too early to tell."
