The Wicked City. Beatriz Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ that fried away the dampness in the basement air. “Not expecting all the washing machines full at this hour of the morning? Sorry about that, too. Just one of the quirks about life inside Eleven Christopher. I’m Hector, by the way. Top floor.” He held out his hand.

      Ella transferred the basket to her opposite hip and grasped his palm. Firm, steady, brief. “Hector?” she said.

      “My mom’s a classics professor. Was.”

      “She’s retired?”

      “No. Died a few years ago. Breast cancer.”

      “Oh, my God! I’m so sorry.”

      “Me too.” He turned away and moved to the second washing machine, which had just finished a thunderous spin cycle and now sat in stupor. “Tell you what. Special deal for the newbie. You jump the queue and take over my machine, and I didn’t see a thing.”

      “That would be so unscrupulous. What if I get caught?”

      Hector tossed her a luminous grin. “In that case, I guess I’d just take the blame. Pull rank. I have seniority around here. Well, except Mrs. McDonald on the ground floor. She’s been here since the Second World War. Gets an automatic laundry pass.”

      “Sounds like you all know each other.”

      “We are kind of a tight crew, you might say.” He moved away with his basket of wet clothes. “All yours, Four D.”

      “Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.”

      “So, that was your cue, by the way.”

      “My cue?”

      “You’re supposed to tell me your name. Unless it really is Four D.”

      “Oh! Sorry. I’m a little slow on weekends. It’s Ella? Ella Gilbert.”

      “Nice to meet you, Ella Gilbert. Welcome to the neighborhood.” He set his palms on the edge of the folding table along the opposite wall and hoisted himself up. “Don’t mind me. Just waiting for that dryer to finish up.”

      Ella looked at the two machines, clunking in hypnotic circles.

      “So what if the owner doesn’t turn up in time? Is there a protocol?”

      “Oh, you know. We just take the load out and fold it.”

      “No, seriously.”

      “Seriously.”

      “We, as in the other tenants? You fold each other’s laundry around here?”

      “Like I said. Tight crew.”

      “I guess so.”

      “Once you get to know everyone, I mean.”

      To this, Ella made a noncommittal hunh—get to know everyone? What was this, college?—and studied the instructions on the lid of the washer. Realized she was supposed to add the soap first. Started to unload.

      “What’s up? Something wrong with the washer?” Hector asked.

      “Nothing, just … I guess you add the soap first on this model.”

      “Ella, I hate to have to break this to you, but it really doesn’t matter. Soap first or soap after. Unless there’s a soap drawer, I guess, which there isn’t. Pretty basic machine.”

      Ella stopped with her hand on a T-shirt. “But it says—”

      “So break the rules. It’s okay. What’s the worst that could happen?”

      “I don’t know. The whole laundry room floods with soap?”

      Hector laughs. “You are awesome, you know that? Go ahead. I dare you. Be bad.”

      Ella overturned the basket into the drum, added half a cup of liquid Tide, and slammed the lid. “There. Are you happy?”

      “I am. Felt good, didn’t it?”

      “Maybe.” She turned and leaned her bottom against the washer, an act of supreme courage because it brought her back in direct communion with Hector’s face, which had the kind of fresh, animal beauty that made your eyes sting. She’d forgotten what that was like, instant attraction. Not that she hadn’t encountered beautiful men since meeting Patrick; this was New York, after all, colonized by the beautiful, the brilliant, the rich. Sometimes all three in one hazardous, electromagnetic package. But falling in love with Patrick had somehow, blessedly, immunized her against fascination for somebody else. She could appreciate a man’s gleaming charisma—she could say to herself, Well, that’s certainly a good-looking guy, nice style, great sense of humor—without feeling any meaningful desire to have sex with him, even in the abstract, even in fantasy. So it was strange and shameful and utterly unsettling that when she tried to meet Hector’s lupine gaze, she felt her skin heating up and her mind grasping for wit. Like some membrane had dissolved in her sensible, grown-up, married brain, unleashing an adolescent miasma. Wanting to say something sensible and thinking, Your eyes are the color of cappuccino, can I drink you?

      “My mom was a rule-follower, too,” Hector said. “It’s okay. I get it. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

      “I’m not ashamed. You guys seriously fold each other’s laundry?”

      “Sure. I mean, when we have to. Not just because. That would be weird.”

      “What about—well, you know—”

      He grinned again. “Unmentionables? If you feel that strongly, Queen Victoria, you can always take them up to your room and dry them on a chair arm. Me, I’ve got nothing to hide. Just tighty whities. Pretty boring stuff.”

      “You do realize we’re in New York City, right? A rental building? We’re not even supposed to make eye contact in the hallway.”

      Hector shrugged. He wore a fine-gauge V-neck sweater, charcoal gray, cashmere or merino, a bit shabby, exposing a triangle of white T-shirt at the neck. The sleeves were pushed halfway up his forearms. The blue jeans were likewise worn, but to an honest fade: not the awkward, fake threads of a pre-shredded pair. He had enviable olive skin, and maybe that was the key to his strange luminosity—this smooth, golden sheath of his that didn’t show a single line, not even in the fluorescent basement lighting. Just a shadow of stubble on his jaw. Because of course he rolled out of bed like that. Stretched, shook himself. Probably drank a shot of wheatgrass and did fifty naked pushups. “Just the way we operate around here,” he said. “Band of brothers. And sisters.”

      “But folding laundry. Really? That’s—I don’t know, it’s so personal.”

      “It’s just laundry. And we are kind of personal around here. Anyway, you can’t just dump your buddy’s clothes in a pile and leave the scene. That would be wrong.”

      “Why wrong?”

      “Do unto others, Ella. Who wants wrinkled T-shirts?”

      “Then just do your laundry СКАЧАТЬ