Sold to the Man Who Took Me, but I Hold His Life novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Augie's Hand

Augie takes her elbow in the hall to show her the house; Declan's hand stops his before it closes and says no one touches her, including him.

In the morning there was a kettle on the counter, a box of tea bags and a note in square capitals: *I am out until noon.*

He had kept his word to the minute.

I stood at the kitchen window with my hands around a mug and looked at the bay.

It was flat and gray, with a rotted dock running out into it and a gull standing on the last post.

I thought about the sixty-one thousand dollars, and about how many nights of the late show it came to.

I had never counted it before.

At ten the doorbell rang.

I stood very still.

Then I went to the front hall and looked through the glass beside the door.

Augie Farina stood on the porch in his camel coat with a flat leather book under his arm.

He saw me and lifted two fingers.

I opened the door the width of the chain.

"Good morning, Roz," Augie said. "Is it Roz, or Ruby? I can never keep it straight."

"What do you want?"

"I keep Mr. Mallory's books. Someone has to sign for the household, and since you're the household." He tapped the leather book. "Let me in. It's cold."

I took the chain off.

I did it because I did not want him to see me afraid, and because the house was not his.

He came in and looked at the hall the way a man looks at a thing he is thinking of buying.

"Nice, isn't it? Nine years he's lived here and it still looks like a rental."

"Mr. Mallory said he's out until noon."

"I know. I'm the one who sent him out." Augie smiled. "Come on. I'll show you the house. You'll want to know where the fuse box is."

I did not move.

"Come on, honey," Augie said.

He put his hand on my elbow.

It was an ordinary hand, warm and dry, with a ring on the little finger.

My whole arm went cold from the shoulder down.

I had thought I was done with that kind of cold.

I had thought it lived in one room, in the Starlite, and I had left it there on Friday with my coat.

"Take your hand off me," I said.

"I'm only being friendly," Augie said.

"Take it off," I said.

"Roz. You and I are going to get along fine, once you stop being so..." Augie said.

The front door opened behind him.

I had not heard the car.

Declan stood in the doorway with the cold coming in around his shoulders, and his hand was already out.

He did not touch me.

He took Augie's wrist, high up, above the cuff, and held it away from my elbow.

He did not squeeze.

He did not need to.

Augie's hand came off me like something that had been burned.

"You said noon," Augie said.

"It's ten-twenty." Declan did not let go of the wrist. "I forgot something."

His voice was level, almost polite.

I looked at his hand on Augie's coat and saw that the knuckles were white.

"I was showing her the fuse box," Augie said.

"I'll show it to her. If she asks."

"Declan," Augie said.

"No one touches her," Declan said.

He let go of the wrist.

He stepped between Augie and me, sideways, so that his back was to the stairs and his face was to the door.

He still did not touch me, and he did not turn around.

"Not Philadelphia. Not the door crew. Not you."

Augie rubbed his wrist, slowly.

"She's staying under your roof on a paper I brought you," he said. "You might remember that."

"I remember it," Declan said.

"Do you? Because you signed it without a word," Augie said.

"Get out of my house, Augie," Declan said.

Augie looked past Declan's shoulder at me.

He smiled.

It was a small, friendly, patient smile, and I did not like it at all.

"We'll talk later, Ruby," he said, and went down the steps.

He left the leather book on the hall table.

The door shut.

Declan stood with his back to me and his hands at his sides for a long moment.

His shoulders were shaking, very slightly.

He turned his head, not his body, so he was looking at the wall and not at me.

"I should have been here," he said. "I won't send anyone out of the house at ten again."

"He sent you out."

"I let him."

I looked at the leather book on the table.

It was thick and worn at the corners, with a rubber band around it and a strip of red tape on the spine.

Someone had written on the tape in small, neat, slanting writing: *HOUSE.*

I knew that handwriting.

It was the handwriting on the Starlite's schedule board, on the pay envelopes, on the cards taped to the dressing room mirrors.

"That's Augie's," I said. "He wrote it."

"He keeps the house's records."

"He told me he brought the paper to you. My father's paper."

Declan did not answer.

"Why?"

"He said it was a house debt that needed signing." His voice was very even. "He put a stack of them in front of me and I signed them."

"You didn't read it," I said.

"No," Declan said.

"You sign things you don't read?" I said.

"Not usually," Declan said.

I stood there in his hall, in a sweater I had slept in, with the key in my pocket and my elbow still cold where the hand had been.

He had not touched me.

He had stood between me and a man and had not touched me, and had not turned around.

I did not know what to do with that.

"Miss Dunleavy."

"What."

"The fuse box is in the cellar, on the left of the stairs," he said to the wall. "If you ask me, I'll show you. If you don't, you'll find it."

He went up to the third floor.

I picked up the leather book, because it was in my hall.

It was heavy.

I did not open it.

I carried it to the kitchen and put it on the counter beside the kettle, with the red tape up.

My phone buzzed against the counter.

It was Kieran.

*Aunt's clinic called. Dialysis is paid through June. Roz, who paid?*

I looked at the leather book with Augie's handwriting on its spine.

Then I looked at the ceiling, where Declan was walking slowly back and forth on the third floor, and I did not answer my brother.

I did not know who had paid, and I was afraid of what I would think when I found out.

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