White Knuckles, Bare Bones

WK,BB: CHAPTER ONE

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She missed her stop.

Jean caught the way she cursed underneath her breath as the train doors slid shut before she could step her black heel onto the begrimed platform, and was thus faced with her blurred reflection in the fogged, partly obscured windows as the car continued its steady rattle down the tracks towards 42nd Street, occasionally swaying its passengers. She glanced down at the directions she'd written on a cluttered page in her small address book, mentally reworking how she could retrace her steps — she would later confess her lack of reference points, how she hadn't gotten the chance to navigate through a practice round and possessed no sure way of orienting herself.

She was lost, she wasn't from here, and her seat had already been taken by the time she shifted back from the doors of the train.

She narrowly hid her surprise, her wide eyes quickly scanning the gray mosaic of bundled bodies within the semi-packed carriage of commuters reading The New York Times or smoking a cigarette, or engaging in a combination of both as they worked on the daily crossword, before landing on Jean, or rather, the seat next to him, where she diffidently sat down with an unmerited "Sorry".

That's how she ended up in the grotty, sparsely lit hallways of Jean's apartment building, blowing into her dainty hands for warmth as he fished his keys from his coat pocket; by saying sorry, and allowing Jean to convince her why she shouldn't be, why her timing for her five o'clock interview was unnecessarily premature. His place wasn't too far from the financial district where she needed to be, is what he'd assured her.

"You have ample time, you can finish telling me all about Iowa and practice your interview questions, and when it nears the hour, I'll walk you to Conway & Allen myself."

Her pace never once faltered as she'd walked alongside him down the trash-piled residential street, her pale face turning a shade closer to her auburn hair in the cold, biting wind.

Her name was Sophia Dixon, from some forgettable corner of Iowa, and she'd recently moved in with her crippled Aunt in Elmhurst, Queens, though she was looking to leverage her pleasant looks and years of bookkeeping at her Father's carpentry business into a secretary position at a midsized construction firm in the wealthiest borough.

He'd learned all of this within the first fifteen minutes of speaking to her, because her responses would always warrant additional context that she, naturally, couldn't seem to pass the opportunity to disclose. She was a nervous talker with a palpable discomfort at extended, uninterrupted blocks of silence, and one simple inquiry, one gentle nudge in any desired direction, and she'd gladly freefall.

"I can't imagine how much it must cost to live in Manhattan. My Aunt and Garrett are paying almost twice what Papa puts down on the mortgage for their two-bedroom walk up, and, get this, no central air." She had a standard accent and midland way of speaking. "Not that I really mind, or anything. The heater works just fine, maybe a little too fine because I sometimes feel like I'm back at the warehouse if I don't crack one of the windows."

"Really?" The most she knew about Jean was his name, and now, where he lived. "Make yourself comfortable."

Jean noted that, despite his insistence, she had difficulties making herself comfortable.

She remained less than a foot away as he closed the door behind them, as if awaiting guidance or permission. In the tiny entryway, Sophia peered ahead but made no move to help herself inside much further; when Jean offered to take her coat after hanging his own on the wooden, freestanding rack, she shook her head.

"Oh, no thank you, I'll keep it on for now."

Jean shook and hung up his tweed flat cap and initiated a tour that should've been fairly brief but was made additionally lengthy by Sophia's anxious chatter.

When shown the moderate kitchen with its weathered cabinets but stainless steel handles and decade appropriate appliances, she commented that the cluttered ceiling pot rack hanging above the antique island/dining table suggested that Jean must cook a lot, and if he did then it was something she considered impressive because she could never get the hang of it herself, not that she hadn't tried and spent diligent hours in the kitchen alongside her Grandma, of course, but her talents always resided more with summarizing ledgers and processing accounts payable, and she thought that this was due, in part, to the ramifications of mishandling dollars being more drastically felt than fumbling her Grans catfish or burning the raisin pie.

"Interesting," was all that Jean could seem to muster in response as they entered the adjoining living room with its burgundy couch and box television set and exposed brick walls. At a small table near the large window that overlooked the rustic fire-escape and polluted skyline, he started the record player, gently adjusting the volume with his gloved hand as Sophia segued into how her real aspirations lied in singing and performing and being on broadway, if not on stage, then, at the very least, in the audience at every obtainable musical, because she absolutely adored music, she cherished it to a spiritual degree, and, oh, she really liked what Jean was playing right now, enough to fall quiet and nod her head to the riveting, textured melody.

It was a very momentary pause.

"What about your bedroom?" she eventually wondered, turning her head from the compact bathroom located at the end of a short hallway even more narrow than the entryway.

"We passed my bedroom."

Back at the hall in the entryway, Jean twisted and opened a missable door in the right-hand side of the wall, mere paces from the inadequate excuse for a foyer, and as Sophia lingered in the doorway, scanning the bedroom and muttering about the space she shared with her Aunt's daughter turned tenant, about how she wasn't accustomed to bunk beds and being so close to her daughter but was finding hidden charms in the cramped but cozy layout, Jean adjusted his winter gloves where he stood behind her before palming the side of her face and slamming her skull into the steel frame of the doorway with enough force to have cracked it open had she not been on the verge of turning her head and unknowingly evaded a full impact by the slimmest of margins.

It was enough, however, to induce nerve damage and an instant loss of balance as she crumbled to the floor, wide-eyed and twitching on her back as the bile from incoming nausea bubbled at her parted lips. She was seizing and the whites of her eyes had grown bloodshot before Jean even lowered himself on top of her and began squeezing her frail neck, first constricting then blocking her airflow altogether. He watched her flushed face lose all color beyond the blood that trickled from her nostrils and down the sides of her face.

Beneath him, Sophia's jolts grew more and more faint, and, eventually, her shiny heels stopped hitting the floorboards where they peeked past the doorway into the hall.

Jean Dufresne chose to believe that Sophia from Iowa had understood this to be a favor, that perhaps in her dying breaths, she'd willfully ceased her fight, she'd grown lax and surrendered to her release from life in hushed gratitude.

He was convinced that she had developed a sudden epiphany in the midst of her life slipping out of her grasp, that Sophia was ultimately thankful, and that he'd enacted a brutal favor because she would have never survived the cruelties of this incurable city anyway.

She grew limp, deathly still, and Jean could no longer feel a staggered pulse from the veins of her neck, so he gradually released her, breathing a bit heavily as he sat down on the floor and pressed his back against his bedroom wall. His father's classically understated Breguet watch, which he always donned on his right wrist, indicated that it was a quarter past four, around the time he'd promised he'd begin walking her to her interview at Conway & Allen, and forty-five minutes from his scheduled appointment with Dr. Giordano.

Jean leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes as the music from the record player continued to fill the apartment.