His Rules, His Walls

The bed feels very different. Soft too.

I notice it first. And I know why. Think the worst of me if you want, but a soft mattress, the kind that costs more than three months of my rent, the kind that wraps your body so gently you almost do not notice it at all, this is exactly the kind of mattress I never thought I would sleep on in my whole life. No. Not someone like me. The sheets smell like something expensive and clean. The light coming through the curtains is grey and quiet and nothing like the yellow streetlamp that leaks through my bedroom window at home every single morning. Even the ambience is a clear contrast to the life I am used to.

For about four seconds I forget where I am.

Then it all comes back. The alley. The gun in his face. Raymond Holt sliding down that wall. The SUV outside my window. Marcus Vane from Vane Legal Group at my door. The black glass building. The door closing behind me.

I sit up.

The room around me is unlike anywhere I have ever lived. Large and bare. All this space yet it seems to house only things that are needed. The bare essentials. I recall my small apartment and smile. No clutter here. Nothing that was just occupying space. Everything intentional, nothing extra. Intentional, needed furniture. I look around. I see my bag still on the floor, near the bed, where I dropped it without thinking yesterday. This tells me nothing has been moved since yesterday when I got here.

I  head to the bathroom. Unsurprisingly massive too. I look in the mirror. Same face. Same dark circles under my eyes. Same woman who closes a diner on Friday nights and counts the register by hand. Same look but different person. Because that situation yesterday changes a person. The bathroom alone is bigger than my kitchen, and has everything I need. And I mean everything: from hotel-looking thick, white towels to body wash, shampoo, even some skincare, and I also see a small basket on the counter that contained a new toothbrush, toothpaste, and a comb for my hair.  All things I need, but none belong to me.

I realize slowly that this must have been planned. That someone knew that I would be in this room.

I feel fear beginning to creep in. I shake it off because right now, I need answers.

I go to find out what I have walked into.

* * *

The penthouse is enormous.

You could see everything outside, no thanks to every wall with its own floor to ceiling windows. The living room has cold furniture. The type that feels like a hotel; no personality or warmth. Colours go from grey to black or deep blue sea water. No photographs anywhere. No plants. No personal touch. No proof that someone actually moved in. But it is all well laid out. And tidy. Maybe too tidy.

It looks like a very beautiful, very expensive hospital waiting room.

A woman is in the kitchen. She looks somewhere around fifty, small physique but had the movements of someone who was used to being in people’s spaces without being obvious. She looks up when I walk in.

"Miss Brooks." She nods once. "I'm Anna. I manage the household. Coffee?"

"Please. Call me Callie”.

She doe not respond to that, does not even acknowledge it. I note that and just nod. I guess she’s being professional. She also does not ask how I take my coffee, just pours it and sets it down in from of me, along with a small cream-coloured folder. I look at the folder and shake my head because I can tell I won’t like what is in it.

Anna speaks slow, in a measured tone that she must have mastered while working with the rich and powerful. “Mr. Vane said to take you through the house guidelines," Anna says.  Her tone is neutral but I could sense that she was not loving this part of her job.

I open the folder.

It is two full pages.

"He wrote me a list."

"Yes."

I read through it slowly. No outgoing calls on personal devices. No internet access without prior approval. No leaving the penthouse floor without an escort. Meals at set times. The in-house gym and library are only available during set hours. Under no circumstances, should anyone enter the east corridor on this floor as it is private.

I turn to the second page. More of the same, but more specific. Emergency contacts go through Anna. Medical needs go through Anna. Any requests go through Anna. I begin to understand that Anna is not just a housekeeper. Anna is a system of control dressed in a neutral expression and a sensible cardigan.

I close the folder, then finally, I drink, actually take a long sip of my coffee.

"Where is Marcus?" I ask.

"His office. He said he will see you at noon."

My eyes dart to the clock right above the stove. It is exactly 7:43am in the morning.

"So I am supposed to just sit here fiddling and doing nothing for four hours."

Anna's expression does not flicker. "The library has a good selection. And breakfast will be ready in ten minutes."

I smile at her because it is not her fault. Then breakfast is served shortly and I enjoy it.  Then I sit in the living room for exactly eleven minutes looking out at the city and thinking about my mother and her prescriptions and the fact that I have not called her since before last night. Then I go and do exactly what Marcus Vane told me not to do.

* * *

I try my phone first.

No signal. Not blocked exactly, it just shows nothing, like the device has forgotten what networks are for. I try turning it off and on. Still nothing. I set it face-down on the kitchen counter and tell myself I am not panicking.

I find the library. It is a real one, with floor to ceiling shelves on three walls, a rolling ladder on a brass rail, two leather chairs angled toward each other near a window. The books are organized by subject. Law. Economics. History. A full shelf of philosophy. A smaller section at the end — fiction, which surprises me, though I cannot say why. I pull out one of the novels and read the first page standing up. I put it back.

I cannot concentrate. My mind is too busy.

I close the library door behind me and start to walk away. Then a thought occurs to me. I pick up walking again, this time to the east corridor.

* * *

It’s a bit of a distance, but it is one I am perfectly okay with because my curiosity is what is driving me. I get to the corridor, then find a door that’s similar to every other door. I push it open. A short hallway. Three doors, all closed.

I push the first door. Locked.

The second door. Also locked.

The third door is ever so slightly open, and when I angle myself just right, I can see through it. A desk. Filing cabinets along one wall, tall and grey. Papers stacked in neat columns on a side table. And on top of one stack, a manila folder with a label tab facing outward.

I read the name on the tab.

BROOKS, HELEN.

My mother's name!

I jump back from the door in total shock. No. It can’t be. Helen Brooks is not a common name so it had to be her. My mother. I try to wrap my head around the fact that my mother's exact name is just sitting inside a locked room in Marcus Vane's penthouse like it belongs there. Like it has been there for some time.

So many questions filter through my brain. Why? How long? That one question is the one that keeps recurring, and will not move.

How long has he had a file on my mother?

"That corridor is off limits."

His voice comes from directly behind me.

I turn around. He is right there at the end of the hallway, his face carrying that  expression that is completely unreadable. His face does not look angry, just something that looks like calculating.

"How long have you had a file on my mother?" I ask.

"Come and have breakfast."

"I already ate. How long, Marcus?"

It is the first time I have used his name. I did not plan it. It just came out, and I see something shift in his face when it lands. But just like always, at this point, I can’t place it.

I ask again. This time, slowly and with intention. “How long?”

"Some conversations need to happen in the right order," he says. "And Callie, this is not the first one."

He turns back around and walks down the hall, without even a care as to whether I follow or not.

What the heck?

I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience.

I stay standing at the door for a moment. I think about my mother in her small house across the city, probably awake by now, probably trying to call me, probably starting to worry because I always call on Saturday mornings. I think about her sitting at the kitchen table with her coffee and her pill organizer and the radio on low, waiting for a phone that is not going to ring.

I think about how her name is in there. Filed away. Watched over or studied or tracked. I do not know which yet.

I think about how the problems I had twenty-four hours ago felt so big at the time but now, could not even compare to the world of problems and questions that I live with. I think about how that alley has changed life as I know it for me and now, on top of that, my mother’s name is somewhere in Marcus Vane’s house and I cannot make any meaning of it yet.

I don’t understand anything. That is the part I cannot settle.

I look at the door one more time. I think about what it all means: the fact that there is such a room, that those files are here in the same house with me, even the mere fact that someone like Marcus Vane, this powerful lawyer that no one messes with, has spent time, real time, building a file on a woman who works a cash register in a diner and cannot keep her car out of the shop. My mother!

What does that mean?

I do not have an answer. But I am going to need one before this day is over.

I keep thinking about the folder. My mother's name. The way Marcus said some conversations need to happen in the right order, which means he knows exactly what I found and he has already decided when he will explain it. Which means he still controls the information the same way he controlled the rulebook and the phone signal and the time of our meeting.

BROOKS, HELEN.

My mother's name, in his files, like she is a case he has been building for a very long time.