“No, I’m not asking because of that.”
“Right, you’re not asking because you don’t want to stick your dick in her.”
“I honestly don’t,” I tell him. “I think she’d cry if she saw a dick in real life.”
“Nice,” he says dryly. “Anyway, she’s off-limits to you. She’s gone through enough. She doesn’t need my arsehole brother fucking up her life anymore.”
“Arsehole?”
“Yes, Bram,” he says, tiredly. “Look I have to go.”
He hangs up and I mutter a swear at the phone.
There’s only one thing to do.
Soon I’m parking the car in an above-ground garage near Union Square and walking several blocks over into the heart of the manky Tenderloin neighborhood. Other than good music venues, the place is crawling with crazies. It’s not that bad during the daytime. I mean, it ain’t pretty but the people just really annoy you to death with their begging and aren’t dangerous. But if I were Nicola’s parents, or even friends, I wouldn’t want her living there. The thought of fuckheads outside her apartment at night makes me strangely pissed off.
By the time I reach her place, I’ve been asked for change by eight different people and was told I “smell like crunchy toast” by a random running down the road with a severed parking meter under his arm. I’m not sure if I do smell like toast, but it is hot out. I’ve been warned how San Francisco’s seasons don’t follow any rhyme or reason.
I take off my suit jacket, run a hand through my hair in an effort to look respectable, and buzz her apartment number having remembered it from last night. Borderline stalker-ish, I know.
“Hello?” I eventually hear her voice come through the crackly intercom.
“Nicola, it’s Bram.”
More crackle. Silence. Maybe she’s hung up.
“From last night,” I go on. “And other times.”
“Uh, hi…”
“Can I come up?”
I can sort of hear Steph in the background, “Who is it?”
“Tell her it’s her brother-in-law!” I yell and then I’m disconnected.
I stare at the door wondering if I’m being told to fuck off when it buzzes and I go on up.
The funny thing about Nicola, the thing I’ve gathered from what little I know about her, is that if there’s anyone that shouldn’t be living in a place like this – bars on the doors, mildew on the stairwell walls, stains on the carpet – it’s her. Maybe some hipsters could make it work, or James and Penny, Linden’s friends on the alternative side who might call this type of living as “being real.” But Nicola seems too stiff, prim and proper for this place, like she should have been born in a palace instead. From the way she was talking, well blubbering, in my car, I have a feeling she might have been.
Just before I’m about to knock on the door, it opens and Stephanie is staring at me with a suspicious twist to her lips.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, blocking the door.
“What are you, her guard dog?”
“Well, I am a bitch sometimes,” she says. “Woof, woof.”
“Can I come in?”
She shakes her head, her skull earrings rattling. “Why?”
“I want to know if they’re okay.”
A line slowly forms between her brows. “They’re going to be okay,” she says in a drawn-out tone. “Sorry, Bram, not used to you caring about people.”
I guess I deserved that. “Can I talk to Nicola? Alone?”
Steph flinches. “What?”
I look over her shoulder and see Nicola appear just beyond the door. She looks like shit. Her hair is greasy and pulled back, her face sallow, her eyes puffy and red. Other than sad, though, I can’t really read her face and tell if she’s happy to see me, or pissed off, or indifferent. I’m betting it’s the latter.
“Hey,” I say to her. “I just wanted to check up on you. You never called,” I add.
Steph looks between the two of us. “He gave you his number?”
“Business card, actually,” Nicola says wryly.
Steph folds her arms across her chest and I try my damndest not to stare at her cleavage. Damn, Linden is a lucky guy. Good thing I think of her more as the mother type. “What did I tell you?” Steph whispers harshly to her.
I raise a brow. “What did you tell her?”
“Never mind,” she says quickly, fixing her eyes back on me. She’s like mother hen with teeth in that beak. “I’m watching you,” she says to me.
I raise my arms out to the side. “Watch all you want, babe, I’m used to it.”
Nicola gives out a small sigh of resignation. “It’s fine. Bram, you can come in. Just be quiet, Ava’s sleeping.”
Victory. I step inside and take a quick intake of my surroundings. It looks like some trendy grandmother’s cottage in here. The type who puts ruffles and doilies on everything but also listens to the Rolling Stones on vinyl to remember the days when she’d get so bloody high.
Nicola walks over to her tiny kitchen, which is cluttered with bright cups and plates. “Want coffee? Or tea?”
Do I admit I drink tea over coffee? Hell. “I’d love a cup of tea, please. Do you have orange pekoe or Earl gray? With cream?”
I can’t see her face but I know she’s not looking too impressed. “I have chai.”