It wouldn’t, either. Because the next night when he went to work at the club, she’d had an emergency locksmith come over to change the locks. She’d asked her tenant, a flight attendant named Maddy, to help put Vince’s clothing into trash bags. It was possibly the most embarrassing favor she’d ever asked of anyone. It had been far easier to shake off the hospital staff’s probing questions than Maddy’s. “He did this, didn’t he?” she demanded, pointing one long red fingernail at Ari’s walking cast. “I never liked the look of him. Good for you for showing him the door.”
Ari had neither confirmed or denied Vince’s role in her tumble. He probably hadn’t meant to break a bone, but it really didn’t matter. A bone was broken, and he’d been the cause of both her trip to the ER and her sudden wake-up call. With Maddy’s help she’d hobbled around, doing her best to be respectful of his things even as she scrambled to get them all out of the house and into the basement storage unit. Maddy made all the trips down those back stairs herself, which meant Ari owed her. Big.
“You’d do the same for me,” Maddy protested. And surely it was true. When the job was done, Ari gave her a hug and a pre-apology for whatever grief Vince might give her if he happened to show up when Maddy was coming or going. “I can take care of myself, hon. You do the same.”
The four AM pounding on the exterior door had been awful. When Ari didn’t come to the door to explain herself, he’d begun yelling terrible things up at her bedroom window. “Fucking cunt! Get down here and let me in.”
Maddy’s chainsaw voice had rung out from her third floor window. “Go away or I’m calling the police. You have ten seconds. Tomorrow Ari will tell you how to get your stuff.”
“Meddling bitch!” he’d returned. But when Maddy told him she was dialing 911, he actually left.
In the morning she’d e-mailed Vince to let him know he could retrieve his own things from the storage room with his old key. The fact that he didn’t answer or turn up for a week only made her more anxious. It was unlike him to give up and walk away. Especially if his collection of expensive suits was on the line.
But then one day she’d spotted his van nearby. And she’d heard the basement door open and close. It happened again a couple of days later. For the past few weeks he’d either been moving out one article of clothing at a time, or merely torturing her with his sporadic presence.
That’s why her latest e-mail had threatened to change the locks on the basement door, too. She should have done that weeks ago. It’s just that the basement was so inhospitable—its entrance barely a step up from the cellar door in The Wizard of Oz—she thought he’d get sick of the lurker charade and leave her alone for good.
Maybe today was the day.
Hugging herself, Ari kept up her vigil by the fridge. Eventually the door slammed again and Vince strode into view, his back to the window, his swagger intact. He disappeared around the corner of the building. A moment later she heard what had to be the van’s engine start up and then drive away.
Finally, she relaxed.
With her heart rate finally returning to normal, she checked her messages and reheated a square of lasagna she’d saved for dinner. She even poured herself a half glass of wine to go with it. Everything was fine, or soon would be. Tonight her team was going to beat the visitors from Washington, D.C., and tomorrow she’d relieve their aching muscles.
After her early dinner she lay down on the couch with a book. The house was so very quiet. She still wasn’t used to living alone. She’d met Vince when she was just twenty-one and bartending at one of his clubs. She’d never been an adult on her own.
It was obviously time to start. She read her book and tried to think soothing thoughts.
By six-thirty it was time to get ready for the game. She went up the creaky narrow staircase to her bedroom and chose a knit dress with three-quarter sleeves and tights. The NHL liked its staff to look professional, even if she might be called upon to give some last-minute attention to stiff muscles. It had taken her a few months on the job to figure out what to wear. Now her closet held four comfy game night dresses in shades of eggplant (the team color). She wore ballet flats to keep herself comfortable and mobile.
Ari grabbed her bag and headed out the door. Instead of walking toward Water Street where cabs were more plentiful, she walked around the block for a moment, casing her own block like a thief. She peeked into the alley. The basement door of her little building was closed, as it should be. There was nobody in sight. Checking over both shoulders like a paranoid fool, she walked around back, slipping her keys out of her pocket.
But she stopped at the rear door, confused. There, gleaming against the beat-up metal door was a new lock. Even though it didn’t make sense, she tried her key anyway. This was her building, for God’s sake.
The key wouldn’t even fit in the lock.
Anger rushed through her veins like a drug. Damn you, Vince! He was like a cockroach that couldn’t be killed off. If this was his idea of revenge, she was going to give him a piece of her mind. He’d locked her out. Of her own basement.
What the hell?
The only windows back here were narrow and just above her eye level. Shaking with fury, she stood on tiptoe to peek inside. She cupped a hand over the glass to try to reduce the sunset’s glare. But it took her eyes a moment to identify the shapes in the basement’s dim light.
The first thing she could make out was the lights of a computer modem, doing their little dance to announce their connection. And their light helped illuminate a sort of folding table which held the rest of a computer setup—a screen and a keyboard and mouse, with a chair pulled up to them. But the item which really drove home the problem was the wastepaper basket on the floor. There was something so freaking civilized about it that it could almost make steam come out of her ears.
Vince had set up an office in her basement. He was conducting some kind of business on her property! With a wastepaper basket!
She was mad enough to spit. She stomped toward the corner, calm mood ruined, and stuck her arm in the air for a taxi.
* * *
Two hours later she was feeling a little calmer, even though the problem remained unsolved.
But the game was about to start, and she was surrounded by ten thousand fans. It was hard to feel crabby with so much expectation bouncing around the arena.
Ari had already given a couple of last-minute chair massages to players with upper body pain. By this point their fate was out of her hands. She stood in the owners’ box, a soda in her hand, a notebook at her side. She would watch the first period of the game from this premium location and make some notes about who suffered the hardest hits, so she could follow up with those players during the intermission or tomorrow.
Hockey was pretty freaking exciting, too. Just because she’d never been a fan before eighteen months ago didn’t mean she didn’t enjoy it.