Tommy didn’t think that Mara had been suspicious earlier. Well, maybe. Tommy didn’t think so, but maybe. What Tommy really thought was that Mara was his friend. He’d probably looked distressed, begging Martín for those keys, and that had made Mara concerned. So, being a friend, she had followed him here, to make sure everything was okay. His head spun, looking around the room like Keyser Söze searching for anything he could spin into some bullshit. The fan. The laundry machines. The lemon smell.
—
Mara was deliberate with each stair, but didn’t want to be slow enough to arouse suspicion or make Tommy think she was nervous. What was she walking into? She didn’t know. Murder? Part of her wouldn’t imagine it, refused to believe that Tommy was The Butcher Of Uptown or whatever, but the part of her that had spent the last however many weeks reading about murderers was certain that she’d get to the bottom of the stairs and see a blood-drenched basement. Some customer who’d asked for extra ketchup disemboweled on the floor.
—
Tommy pushed himself off the wall. Sat in one of the thin plastic chairs. Made himself as casual as possible, scrolling around his phone.
“Tommy?” Mara said, reaching the bottom of the stairs.
“Oh, hey, Mara,” he said. “Show over already?”
“There’s still another band. What’re you doing here?”
“I guess I must’ve left a pretty odd impression, huh?” Tommy smiled. A friend catching another friend in an embarrassing moment.
“You kinda barged into the venue, begged Martín for keys to the restaurant after hours, and then bolted. You didn’t say hi to any of us. It was—yeah, we were worried, I guess.”
“Oh. Nothing to be worried about.”
“Okay. That’s, good? What are you doing here, though?”
“Some, uh. Personal stuff. Martín lets me do this after hours sometimes. Usually, we plan ahead a little bit better, you know, a few days ahead. But it’s nothing. I don’t know why I was all huffy at Alewives. I’ve just, you know, been under some stress lately, you know, I cut my hand, and I’m embarrassed, and—just a weird time.”
“What personal thing does Martín let you do that usually requires a few day’s planning?”
“Well, I did say it was personal. Kinda embarrassing. But. We’re friends, right? It’s not, like, a sex thing, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wasn’t thinking it was a sex thing but now I’m kinda wondering if it’s a sex thing?”
“Look, I gotta do my laundry somewhere,” the words fell out of Tommy’s mouth like ice spilling out of a knocked-over glass. “The machines in my building have been broken for, like, six months. I tried using the laundromat on my block but their driers take two loads to dry. So I asked Martín, hey, you know, I can pay, but can I use the restaurant’s machines? And he was cool with it. Martín’s a good friend.”
“Is that embarrassing?”
“A 30-year-old single guy doing laundry in the basement of his workplace?”
“Sometimes things happen in life. I don’t think anyone’s judging you for having broken laundry machines and a shitty landlord.”
“But you’re judging me for something?”
“I didn’t say that. You seemed so, I don’t know, distressed at Alewives. You didn’t have just-need-clean-clothes energy. And what’s with the fan?”
Tommy laughed and shook his head. He wasn’t bullshitting, this was true. No bullshit. “I’m a chef,” he said. “I thrive on cacophony, a loud environment. Fan silences all the noises in my head, right? If there’s white noise in the room. As far as laundry, I didn’t have clean chef’s whites or, not that you asked, clean underwear. Didn’t realize it until after I’d had dinner, was trying to catch Martín before he went home.”
There had always been a faint whiff of bullshit around Tommy, but Mara felt like she was in a pasture. Well, she could make up a lie about the basement, too.
“Okay, Tommy,” she said. “I’m sorry to, like, grill you. It’s—we were worried, I said I’d go see what’s up. Also, since I’m here. I forgot my phone charger in my locker.”
She had no idea what she was doing. If she was even looking for anything. Something felt off, though. She wanted to bolt, but she wanted more time in the room, too. The air had a warble. Nothing Tommy said about laundry connected with Martín’s side-eyed hints of outlaw mystery. Besides, Martín would’ve mentioned letting Tommy use the laundry machines. That wouldn’t be, like, a state secret.
She opened her locker, started to grab the backup phone charger that she kept there, then let it go. Pushed a few other things around. Knelt at the base of the locker.
In the gap, right between where her locker met Diego’s. A red splotch.
Blood.
Deep, wine-colored, viscous. A blotch that had obviously been one blotch amongst many until very recently. When she bent over, the smell of fresh lemon was an assault on her nostrils. Tommy had been in here cleaning blood.
She took her time standing up. Made a show of oh there it is with her phone charger. Put the phone charger in her bag. If that blood spot was still there, that meant that Tommy didn’t know it was there. Now she needed him not to know that she knew it was there.
Something she’d picked up from some talking head on some True Crime documentary, she couldn’t remember who the person was or what the case was, but she could remember the woman’s head-shaking admonishment: always have a way out of a room. She crossed the basement. The air a little more still now, but charged. Had the fan and washing machines gotten louder?
“So I’ll see you tomorrow?” Tommy asked.
She was at the stairs. She could get up to the back door. But she still didn’t know anything, not really.
“Totally,” Mara said. “Sorry if I intruded.”
“No problem. Thanks for being a friend.”
“Hey, speaking of friends, have you heard from Diego? He was supposed to come out tonight, but never showed.”
Now Mara felt the air change.
Now Tommy had a different expression on his face.
She turned and sprinted up the stairs, Tommy quick on her heels.
Her whole body was starting to react. Her hands fumbled with her bag, dropping her phone charger. Finding her phone. Her knees popped up and down, hopping the stairs. Code to unlock the phone. Recent calls. Parth’s name. The call started to go, but her phone slipped out of her hands. She kept running.
Tommy picked up the phone. Ended the call. He watched Mara reach the top of the stairs. Slam her shoulder into the door. Bounce right off when it didn’t open. Put her hands on the handle, look back at Tommy. Run into the kitchen.
Tommy took a breath. Jogged up the stairs. “Mara?” he called out.
Mara crashed through the kitchen. Feet unstable beneath her. These were not non-slip shoes. The kitchen floor was still the kitchen floor. She needed the dining room.
Only the emergency lights were up, a single ceiling fixture above the front door and a couple lights on the half wall in the middle of the dining room. She ran toward the front door. Past the host stand.
She heard Tommy call her name.
Being a restaurant equipped for Chicago winters, there were two doors: the glass door that was actually attached to the building, and the plastic storm door built out into the sidewalk. No time to unlock the front door and the storm door. She ducked low and crouch-walked around the half wall to Booth 12.
If Tommy followed her path, walked toward the front door first? Then she’d be able to sprint around the other side of the half wall. Back to the kitchen.
Was she getting a knife, or was she running for the back door?
She tried to slow her breathing.
“Mara?” Tommy called. There was a knife in his hand. He was in the dining room now. He knew Mara still was, too.