Lock Every Door (ARC) Read online

  Mortified, I try to ignore them all while continuing to collect my groceries. When I reach for one of the rogue oranges, another bolt of pain zaps through my arm.

  The girl gasps. “You’re bleeding.”

  “It’s just tomato sauce,” I say.

  Only it’s not. I sneak a glance toward my arm and see a long gash just below my elbow. Blood streams from the wound in a thick rivulet that goes all the way to my knuckles. The sight makes me so dizzy I momentarily forget about the pain. It comes back only when Charlie yanks a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and presses it to the wound.

  Looking around, I see chunks of broken glass scattered across the floor. I can only assume one of them dug into my arm while I was scrambling for the groceries.

  “Sweetie, you need to see a doctor,” Leslie says. “Let me take you to the emergency room.”

  That would be a fine idea, if I could afford it. But I can’t. Part of my severance package included two more months of health insurance, but even that comes with a hundred-dollar co-pay for an emergency room visit.

  “I’m fine,” I say, even though I’m starting to think I’m not. The handkerchief Charlie gave me is already crimson with blood.

  “You should at least see Dr. Nick,” Leslie says. “He’ll be able to tell if you need stitches or not.”

  “I don’t have time to go to a doctor’s office.”

  “Dr. Nick lives here,” Leslie says. “Twelfth floor. Same as you.”

  Charlie stuffs the last of my groceries into the mangled bags. “I’ll take care of these for you, Miss Larsen. Go on up and see Dr. Nick.”

  Leslie and the girl help me to my feet, lifting me by my good arm. Before I can protest, they’re ushering me into the elevator. Only two of us can fit, which means the girl remains outside the cage.

  “Thank you, Ingrid,” Leslie says before sliding the gate shut. “I can take it from here.”

  I stare at the girl through the grate, surprised. This is Ingrid? Although we look to be roughly the same age, she’s dressed like someone younger. Oversize plaid shirt. Distressed jeans that reveal pink knees. Converse sneakers with the left laces coming undone. Her hair is dark brown but had previously been dyed blue. A two-inch strip of color fans out across her back and shoulders.

  Ingrid catches me staring, bites her bottom lip, and gives me an embarrassed wave, her fingers wiggling.

  Inside the elevator, Leslie hits the button for the top floor and up we go.

  “You poor girl,” she says. “I’m so sorry about this. Ingrid’s a lovely girl, but she can also be oblivious to what’s going on around her. I’m sure she feels terrible. But don’t worry. Dr. Nick will fix you right up.”

  Soon we’re at the door to 12B, Leslie giving it a series of rapid-fire knocks while I continue to press Charlie’s blood-soaked handkerchief against my arm. Then the door opens, and Dr. Nick stands before us.

  I was expecting someone older but distinguished. Gray hair. Moist eyes. Tweed jacket. But the man at the door is a good forty years younger and a lot better looking than the doctor of my imagination. His hair is auburn. His eyes are hazel, set off by glasses with tortoiseshell frames. His outfit of khakis and crisp, white shirt reveal a tall, trim physique. He looks less like a doctor than an actor playing one on Marianne Duncan’s old soap opera.

  “What do we have here?” he says, his gaze moving from Leslie to me and my bloody arm.

  “Accident in the lobby,” Leslie tells him. “Do you think you could take a quick look and see if Jules here needs to go to the ER?”

  “I don’t,” I say.

  Dr. Nick gives me a clipped smile. “Maybe I should be the judge of that, don’t you think?”

  Leslie nudges me gently toward the door. “Go on, sweetie. I’ll check on you tomorrow.”

  “Wait, you’re leaving?”

  “I need to go. I was in the middle of something when I heard that ruckus in the lobby,” Leslie says as she hurries to the waiting elevator and descends out of sight.

  I turn back to Dr. Nick, who says, “Don’t be nervous. I don’t bite.”

  Maybe not, but the situation makes me uncomfortable all the same. Handsome doctor rich enough to live at the Bartholomew. Eligible girl paid to live right next door. In the movies, they’d banter, sparks would fly, a happy ending would ensue.

  But this isn’t a movie. Or even Heart of a Dreamer. It’s cold reality.

  I’ve been on this earth twenty-five years. Long enough to know who I am. An office worker. A girl you might notice at the copier or in the elevator but probably don’t.

  I’m a girl who read on her lunch break, back when I had a lunch break.

  A girl people pass on the street without a second glance.

  A girl who has had sex with only three different guys yet still feels guilty about it because my parents were high school sweethearts who had never been with intimate with anyone else.

  A girl who has been abandoned more times than I can count.

  A girl who catches the attention of the handsome doctor next door only because I’ve cut myself and am now bleeding on his doorstep. It’s the blood that ultimately convinces me to enter Dr. Nick’s apartment with an awkward, apologetic smile plastered on my face.

  “I’m really sorry about all this, Dr. Nick.”

  “Don’t be,” he says. “Leslie was right to bring you here. And please, call me Nick. Now, let’s get that arm looked at.”

  The apartment is almost a mirror image of 12A. The décor is different, of course, but the layout is the same, only flipped. The sitting room is straight ahead, but the study is to the left and the hallway leads to the right. I follow him past a dining room situated on the corner just like the one in 12A. His is more masculine, though. Navy walls. Spiky chandelier that looks like modern art. The table here is round and surrounded by red chairs.

  “Although this place has a lot of rooms, I’m afraid an examining room isn’t one of them,” Dr. Nick says over his shoulder. “This will have to suffice.”

  He guides me into the kitchen and gestures for me to sit on a stool by the counter. “I’ll be right back,” he says before disappearing again down the hall.

  I have a look around in his absence. Our kitchens are roughly the same size and of similar layout, although Dr. Nick’s has an earthier vibe. Pale brown tile and countertops the color of sand. The only splash of brightness comes from a painting that hangs over the sink. It depicts a snake with its mouth clamped down on its tail, its long body curled into a perfect figure eight.

  I approach the painting, curious. It looks old, the surface spiderwebbed with a hundred tiny cracks. But the paint itself remains vibrant, the colors bold and eye-catching. The scales on the snake’s back are scarlet. Its belly is seasick green. The one visible eye is a deep shade of yellow. There’s no pupil. Just a blank teardrop shape that reminds me of a lit match.

  Dr. Nick returns with a first-aid kit and a medical bag.

  “Ah, you’ve noticed my ouroboros,” he says. “I picked it up during my travels abroad. Do you like it?”

  That would be a definite no. The colors are too garish. The subject matter too grim. It reminds of a Mexican restaurant Andrew once took me to themed around Día de los Muertos—the Day of the Dead. It had waiters with painted faces and garishly decorated skulls staring from the ceiling. I spent the meal shifting with discomfort.

  I do the same on the stool as the snake watches me with his blazing eye. Bright and unblinking, it seems to be daring me to look away. I don’t.

  “What’s its meaning?”

  “It’s supposed to represent the cyclical nature of the universe,” Dr. Nick says. “Birth, life, death, rebirth.”

  “The circle of life,” I say.

  Nick gives a quick nod. “Exactly.”

  I stare at the snake’s eye one second longer as Dr. Nick washes and dries his hands, slips on latex gloves, and gently peels the handkerchief from the wound.

  “What happened here?” he says, add
ing, “Wait, don’t tell me. Knife fight in Central Park.”

  “Just two women colliding in spectacular fashion and a broken jar of spaghetti sauce. I’m sure it happens here all the time.”

  I hold still as he cleans the wound with peroxide, trying not to flinch at the sudden, cold bite of pain. Dr. Nick notices and does his best to distract me with small talk.

  “Tell me, Jules, how do you like living in the Bartholomew?”

  “How do you know I live here?”

  “I assumed that if Leslie brought you to see me that you must be a tenant,” he says. “Am I wrong?”

  “Partially. I’m a—” I search for the term Leslie used yesterday. “Temporary tenant. Right next door, in fact.”

  “Ah, so you’re the lucky apartment sitter who snagged 12A. You just move in?”

  “Today.”

  “Then let me officially welcome you to the building,” he says. “I hope my medical expertise will make up for the lack of a casserole.”

  “What kind of doctor are you?”

  “Surgeon.”

  I glance at his hands as he attends to my arm. They’re definitely surgeon hands, with long, elegant fingers that move with steady grace. When he removes them, I see that the cut looks less severe now that it’s been cleaned. Just a two-inch gash that’s quickly covered with a rectangle of gauze and sealed in place with medical tape.

  “That should do it for now,” Dr. Nick says as he peels the latex gloves from his hands. “The bleeding’s stopped, but it’s a good idea to keep the bandage on until morning. When was your last tetanus shot?”

  I shrug. I have no idea.

  “You might want to get one. Just to be on the safe side. When was your last checkup?”

  “Um, last year,” I say, when in truth it’s another thing I can’t remember. My approach to health care is not seeing a doctor unless I absolutely need to. Even when I had a job, the idea of regular checkups and preventative visits seemed like a waste of money. “Maybe two years ago.”

  “Then I’d like to check your vitals, if you’ll let me.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “Not at all. This is just precautionary. The heart can sometimes beat erratically after a fall or loss of blood. I just want to make sure that everything’s okay.” Dr. Nick digs a stethoscope out of the medical bag and presses it to my chest, just below the collarbone. “Take a deep breath.”

  I do and get a whiff of his cologne in the process. It has hints of sandalwood and citrus and something else. Something bitter. Anise, I think. It has a similarly sharp tang.

  “Good,” Dr. Nick says as he moves the stethoscope an inch, and I take another deep inhalation. “You have a very interesting name, Jules. Is that short for something? A nickname?”

  “No nickname. Most people think it’s short for Julia or Julianne, but Jules is my given name. My father used to say that when I was born, my mother took one look into my eyes and said they sparkled like jewels.”

  Dr. Nick peers into my eyes. It lasts only a second, but it’s still long enough to make my pulse quicken. I wonder if he can hear it, especially when he says, “For the record, your mother was right.”

  I will myself not to blush, although I suspect it’s happening anyway. A noticeable warmth spreads across my cheeks.

  “And Nick is short for Nicholas?”

  “Guilty as charged,” he says while wrapping a blood pressure cuff around my upper right arm.

  “How long have you lived at the Bartholomew?”

  “I suspect what you really want to know is how someone my age can afford an apartment in this building.”

  He’s right, of course. That’s exactly what I want to know. I blush again, this time for being so easily read.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s none of my business.”

  “It’s fine. I’d be curious, too, if our roles were reversed. The answer—to all your questions—is that I’ve lived here my whole life. This apartment has been in my family for decades. I inherited it after my parents died five years ago. They were both killed in a car accident while visiting Europe.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say again, wishing I had just kept quiet.

  “Thank you. Losing them both so suddenly was hard. And I sometimes feel guilty knowing that if they hadn’t died, I’d be living in some Brooklyn walk-up right now and not in one of the most famous buildings on the planet. In some ways, I feel like I’m also an apartment sitter. Just watching this place until my parents come home.”

  Dr. Nick finishes taking my blood pressure and says, “One twenty over eighty. Perfect. You seem to be in excellent health, Jules.”

  “Thanks again, Doc—” I stop myself before I can finish the word. “Nick. I appreciate it.”

  “It was no problem at all. Not to mention the neighborly thing to do.”

  He leads me back into the hall, where I get turned around by the opposite layout of the one in 12A. Instead of making a right, I go left, accidentally taking a few steps toward a door at the end of the hallway. It’s wider than the others, locked in place with a deadbolt. After a quick spin, I’m back on track, following Nick to the front door.

  “I’m sorry for being nosy earlier,” I tell him once we’re in the foyer. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

  “There’s no need to apologize. I have plenty of good memories that balance out the bad. Besides, my story isn’t uncommon. I think every family has at least one big tragedy.”

  He’s wrong there.

  Mine has two.

  9

  My phone buzzes as I leave Nick’s apartment. It’s an email from Chloe, which I give a cursory glance while unlocking the door to 12A. The subject line prompts an annoyed sigh.

  Scary stuff.

  There’s no message. Just a link to a website that, when I click on it, brings me to an article with a headline that’s ominously blunt.

  THE CURSE OF THE BARTHOLOMEW

  Rather than read the article, I shove the phone back into my pocket and push into 12A, where I toss my keys into the bowl on the foyer table. Only my aim is off and the keys end up hitting the edge of the table before clattering onto a heating vent in the foyer floor. An antique grate covers the vent—all cast-iron curlicues with gaps between them wide enough for the keys to tumble right through.

  Which they do.

  Instantly.

  I drop to my hands and knees and peer into the grate, seeing mostly darkness within.

  This isn’t good. Not good at all. I wonder if losing keys is also against the rules. Probably.

  I still have my face pressed to the grate when there’s a knock on the door. Charlie’s voice rises from the other side.

  “Miss Larsen, you in there?”

  “I’m here,” I say as I lift myself off the floor. Before opening the door, I smooth a hand across my cheek, just in case the grate left any marks on my face.

  I whip open the door to see Charlie on the threshold, two large grocery bags in his arms. Rather than the torn and mangled ones from the lobby, these are pristine.

  “I thought you might need these,” Charlie says.

  I take one of the bags and carry it to the kitchen. Charlie follows with the other. Inside are replacements of every item damaged in my collision with Ingrid. New economy-size box of pasta. New jar of sauce. New oranges and frozen pizza. There’s even the addition of a bar of dark chocolate. The decadent, expensive kind.

  “I tried to salvage what you had bought, but I’m afraid not much survived,” Charlie says. “So I made a quick trip to the store.”

  I stare at the groceries, touched beyond words. “Charlie, you shouldn’t have.”

  “It was nothing,” he says. “I have a daughter your age. I hate the thought of her going hungry for a few days. I’d be a terrible father if I let the same happen to you.”

  I’m not surprised he knows I couldn’t afford to replace all the groceries. He saw what I had purchased. All of it implied the tightest of budgets.

&n
bsp; “How much do I owe you?”

  To my relief, he shoos away the offer like it’s a pesky fly. “No need to worry about that, Miss Larsen. It makes up for that unfortunate incident in the lobby.”

  “Are you referring to the collision or to Greta Manville?”

  “Both,” Charlie says.

  “Accidents happen. As for Greta Manville, I’ve already shrugged it off.” I unwrap the edge of the chocolate bar, snap off a square, and offer it to Charlie. “Besides, everyone else here has been so nice that it was bound to end at some point.”

  “You’re suspicious of nice?” Charlie says as he pops the chocolate into his mouth.

  I do the same, talking and chewing at the same time. “I’m suspicious of rich and nice.”

  “You shouldn’t be. Most people here are both.” Charlie runs his thumb and forefinger over his mustache, smoothing the bristly hairs. “I can only claim to be one of those things, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes, the nicest. And I feel like I should repay you somehow.”

  “Just perform a good deed for someone else,” he says. “That’ll be payment enough.”

  “I’ll do two good deeds,” I say, biting my lower lip. “Because it seems I need yet another favor. My keys, um, sort of fell into the heating vent.”

  Charlie shakes his head, trying to stifle a chuckle. “Which one?”

  “Foyer,” I say. “By the door.”

  A minute later we’re back in the foyer, me watching as Charlie presses his formidable stomach against the floor. In his hand is a pen-shaped magnet stick, the end of which he lowers through the grate.

  “I’m so sorry about this,” I say.

  Charlie wiggles the stick. “Happens all the time. These grates are notorious. I think of them as monsters. They’ll eat up anything that comes their way.”

  The comparison is apt. The longer I look at the heating vent, the more it resembles a dark maw just waiting to be fed.