Around here, there were regulations about the door colors and how frequently to paint the iron railings that had been replaced over the years at great expense. It was the kind of thing Pierce lived for, and no doubt he wanted neighbors who shared the same values. Mrs Koskova’s Christmas wreath was the biggest on the street, and it was all metallic silver and Swarovszki crystals. Not in keeping at all.
I loved it.
I’d rather have glitzy crystal icicles than some snobby sheen of civilization while everyone pulled the curtains closed and turn up the volume on Classic FM when Pierce bellowed loud enough to make the walls shake. They didn’t ask questions about why I never went home straight after school, absented myself on the weekends, and why I didn’t wear short sleeves in the summer.
One of the things I remember my father telling me was that during the war, a lot of the railings around London were cut off and melted down to help during the munitions crisis, but here in Chelsea, there was little evidence of that having any long term effect on the aesthetic of the old buildings.
The mansion building opposite had been bought some time the year before, and whoever owned it was turning it into quite the impressive set of apartments. There had been builders swarming all over it for months on end.
Outside the entrance, just inside the railings, one of the site workers was having a cigarette as I went past on my way to the bus stop. His dusty black hoodie, plaster-covered jeans and steel capped boots marked him as the builder that he was, but there was something different. He wasn’t some twenty-something laborer. He held himself with the poise of an older man comfortable in his skin rather than one of the over-muscled poser-types my gym was littered with. His face was weathered, a little rugged even underneath the stubble. But there was something else. Something polished and smooth that I couldn’t place.
Before I could stop myself, I’d turned my head for a better look. And he was looking right at me.
Maybe it was just the way his cool blue eyes connected with mine with such intensity that stole my breath. The shock of him catching me looking, knowing he was looking back had my heart pounding. I felt my cheeks flush hot as his lips twitched into the ghost of a smile.
My eyes drifted to the cigarette pinched between his thumb and first finger, watching him blow smoke carefully away from his face.
My jaw hinged open before I could stop it and I tilted my head, transfixed by the size of them. Hand span was supposed to mean something relating to the size of a man’s cock. My eyes glanced down to the bulge of his crotch before I could stop myself.
Christ, what was I thinking?
Flustered, I looked away sharply, walking faster, expecting a wolf-whistle to trail on after me. But nothing came.
From the bus stop, I risked another look back along the street.
He’d moved up against the railings, an ancient, indestructible Nokia 3310 held to his ear. Anyone else would have thought he was making a call. But I could see his lips weren’t moving and his eyes were on me too intently for him to be focused on anything else, and they never left me.
His shoulders were rounded, almost hunched, as though he was trying to shrink himself down. Oddly, it had worked until I looked right at him. It shouldn’t have. Even beneath that hoodie I could see he was all muscle, his chest impossibly broad and his waist tapered to a perfect V. His boots were huge, and he was hulkingly tall when he straightened up.
The act melted away as he cricked his neck from side to side, stance powerful and wide. He put his phone back into his pocket, stubbed the cigarette out on the ground. He glanced purposefully towards my house and looked back to me.
I felt a jolt go through me. He knew exactly where I lived. Did he have something to do with the bullet in the kitchen?
Had he been watching me?
The thought was madness. All week I was out during the day and he should have been gone in the evenings. I was hardly in on weekends, by design. Keeping out of Pierce’s way was what my day-to-day revolved around.
Did this guy think he knew something about that?
Something made me tilt my chin up in response, made my feet slip wider, securing my stance, but it wasn’t fear I felt, and it wasn’t aggression coming off him. He was looking at me like he knew me, like he saw exactly who I was, and it was exhilarating and terrifying all at once. Under his gaze I was conscious of every part of my body.