Chapter Text
A spider. The kind that should come with its own zip code and social security number, there squatting in her kitchen sink like it owned the place. The kind with a juicy body and thick defined legs ready to pounce and bite and leave her rotting corpse as it fled with whatever of her meager possessions it could carry. Probably all of them.
The spider had the more interesting life, Rey decided.
She forwent breakfast. Showered and changed with military-grade situational awareness should the spider decide to make a run from the kitchen to the bathroom, which amounted to about six feet of space inside her generously named studio apartment.
What if it gave up halfway and set up camp on her sofa bed?
The thought lingered as she set off for work, stomach empty and nauseated. The spider had won this battle. She doubted that she would survive the war.
She hated spiders. She hated cockroaches too but they were sneaky and rarely showed themselves, though she knew they were there, lurking beneath the detritus. (She had stumbled upon a few of the fallen.) There were monsters everywhere, inside her shithole studio and even more outside its walls. She drew her backpack closer as sweaty bodies nudged her on the train then two buses. Ninety or so minutes door to door.
The supermarket served the better side of town. Still, some travelled from further out because the deals were good. Rey was tasked with stocking shelves and setting up the displays that would draw the most attention. Buy one, get one free. Half price with a loyalty card. Extra offers if you deigned to use the app.
She had progressed from organizing the inventory out back. That kind of physical labor she had always been good at, despite her slim frame. She had been worked hard since she could remember existing. It was a relief when her duties changed, those tedious efforts being finally rewarded with a role at the front. It was shameful how much that slip of recognition had meant.
Today she was working the late shift. It was Friday. She had no plans for the weekend but she worried that the spider did. It sat there spinning webs in her mind, maybe laying eggs in the sink and letting its children overrun the building. Her landlord would probably blame her. He’d treat the arachnid usurpers better than he treated her. She didn’t want to go home, she kept thinking, even when her shift was over.
It had been busy and lots of items had sold out. One woman had complained that a deal was only covered by the app and she didn’t know how to use the wretched thing, and Rey had mutely agreed, nodding as she ranted on until the manager had intervened. There was a bunch of teenage boys who had sabotaged a display of energy drinks, one that she had spent hours setting up. There was a man who was drunk and sad and had smashed a carton of eggs on his feet. He had snapped at Rey when she had tried to assist. No point in taking it personally. Some people had things even worse than she did.
But did they have a megalomaniacal spider plotting to evict them from where they lived?
She didn’t rush to get the first bus home. She hovered outside at the rear where the deliveries came in. Sometimes she wished that she smoked since it was here that the others did. She had no excuse to hang out with them. No one else was around at this time anyway. She stuck a licorice stick in her mouth and pretended to inhale deep.
“Need a light?”
She almost screamed.
A tall man was standing nearby. His cigarette was lit and he breathed out smoke up into the sky, body leaning back against the chain-link fence. He was on her side of the tracks, the wrong side since he didn’t have a polyester uniform like hers. His suit looked expensive. Was he the CEO? Why on earth would he be here?
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “Just seemed like a good place to smoke.”
Rey busied herself with chewing on the licorice stick. The man let out a short laugh.
“I really did think you had a cigarette.”
“I don’t smoke,” she said.
“You work here?”
“Yeah.” Dumb question. “What about you?”
“I don’t work here.”
An even dumber one. “I knew that.” Idiot. “I’m just bad at making conversation.”
“Me too.”
He continued to smoke in silence after that. Rey chewed on her licorice and thought about how long she could put off going home. She could wait until dawn and work the early shift as overtime. There was bound to be someone calling in sick due to a hangover or some other lame excuse like that. She could live here amongst the crates and cigarette butts. The spider deserved its own dwelling more than she did.
“Do you hate spiders?” she asked.
“I’m indifferent,” the man said.
Rey nodded.
“Why?” he said a beat too late.
“Why what?”
“Why are you asking that?”
“I don’t know.” Rey wanted to disintegrate. “Forget I said anything.”
“Now I’m curious.”
She shuffled her weight from side to side, held her arms and scratched her elbows, chewing on how much to reveal. It was dark and the back of the supermarket had become a place of secrets.
“You won’t laugh?” she said.
The man straightened up. He was taller than she realized, broad and with hair black as the night. He looked like he could slay spiders.
“There’s one in my sink, big as my head, and I’m afraid to go back knowing that it’s there.”
“There’s no one that can help you?”
She shook her spider-sized head.
“Everyone’s afraid of something I guess.” He lit another cigarette, holding onto the smoke for a while.
“What about you?”
He exhaled as he spoke. “What about me?”
“I doubt you’re afraid of anything.”
“I’m afraid of lots of things.”
That made Rey feel better. “Like what?” Now she was curious.
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“How is that fair?”
He was going to say life’s not fair or some other bullshit idiom she had already learned the hard way. It wasn’t her habit to whine or feel sorry for herself. She didn’t want him to remind her of that truth.
“Rey.” How did he know her name? His eyes had flicked down to her chest and the silver tag caught in the streetlight. He was looking at her once again. “I’m Ben.”
“Nice to meet you I guess.”
“You guess?”
She smiled at his faux offence and he smiled too. This was how they met.
He didn’t shop at the store but he lived in the neighborhood. His office was a shiny tower in the CBD. He drove a car but he had walked that day, something bothering him enough to need the smoggy air and eventually a nicotine fix.
“Haven’t smoked in a while but I stopped to buy a pack and here I am.”
Here we are, she thought. She wanted to stay for different reasons now. She was lonely at her core, to the point that she could consider the spider a friend or an acquaintance at least. She had people she shared lunch with sometimes in the break room but she was an awkward bird, flittery and guarded. There was always a gap between her and everyone else. Knowing her truly might put them off.
“I’m not going home yet,” she said. “I might go get coffee.” She still hadn’t eaten, save for the licorice, bought with her own loyalty card voucher.
“Is it safe?”
“To drink coffee?”
“Wandering around by yourself.”
“I’m always by myself. I’ll be fine.”
She couldn’t imagine walking across the city like he did on some random inclination. She knew what he meant. She took the risks that she faced into account every day. Right now, the spider was at the top of the list.
“I’ll come for coffee,” he said.
“Suit yourself.”
It shouldn’t have felt so normal to walk beside him. Safe, she thought and later, I cannot allow myself to get used to this.
He held open the door of the 24-hour diner. He was standing behind her, large and with a presence that made the few other patrons, all male, duck their heads. A waitress answered “sure thing” as he asked for two coffees and guided them to a booth beside the window. A neon sign flickered against the glass. The lights inside were bright. The tabletop tacky against her tapping fingers.
“Been here before?” he asked, one arm stretched across the back of the bench while he took up the rest.
“No.” Her eyes were down.
He looked around. “Me either.”
It was the only place they found still open. The coffee tasted stale and was tepid. His voice made up for it though. A rich roast. Warm and deep. Her metaphors were cringe-inducing. Everything she said and did made her want to crawl out of her skin. She could ruminate for days on one meaningless interaction. He said his mind didn’t stop, and he got it somehow, didn’t he? That soul-destroying habit of overthinking when there was nothing else to fill the space.
“What is it exactly you do?” A designer suit was nonspecific when it came to highflying careers.
“Mergers and acquisitions.”
She shrugged. “That sounds like something they say in the movies.”
“I made it up.”
It made her laugh out loud.
“Rey.” He was smiling in a way that twisted her empty stomach. Filled it with butterflies and hot caramel. More cringe-inducing shit, holy fuck. “My job is boring but it makes me a lot of money. Today I lost some, which sucks. I’m scared of fucking up.”
“Me too.”
“What are the consequences for you?”
“I lose my job. I end up on the streets.” The spider lives in her apartment forever.
“Other people lose their jobs if I do.”
“At least I only have to worry about myself.”
“Who else worries about you?”
She didn’t answer. He called on the waitress for more coffee and a slice of apple pie. He pushed the plate towards her.
“You look like you could use the calories,” he said.
She was halfway between grateful and affronted, which balanced out enough for her to accept. The pie was good.
“Do you do a lot of charity?” she mumbled around her fork.
“I’ve never taken care of anyone but myself.”
“What about the people that work for you?”
“They don’t count.”
“They’re not people?”
“I don’t care about them.” He handed her a napkin, gesturing towards her crumb-lined mouth. “Who kills your spiders, Rey?”
She wiped her lips thinking about the last creature she killed, which wasn’t a spider. She hadn’t thought about it for a while. She was tired and her belly was full with coffee and pie now.
“You look like you need taking care of,” he said, not waiting for her answer.
“I don’t have the luxury to dream about things like somebody killing spiders for me.”
“It’s a weight, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
He looked like he could take it. God, he looked like he could hold her whole crumbling apartment building on his back. Take her mountains of debt and years of baggage, no sweat. Fill her belly easy and keep her sated to the point of delicious lethargy. She wouldn’t have to lift a finger. That’s why it hurt so much to imagine.
“I’m not proud,” she said. “I’m just practical. I’ve been on my own my whole life. I’ve planned around the basis of that never changing. Please don’t taunt me with impossible ideas, alright? I’ll have to face the spider.”
“You’re brave,” he said.
“Thanks.”
A large hand reached out. It cupped the full side of her face, thumb dragging along a cheekbone. Since when was she crying? Shit.
“Rey, it’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“My place or yours. I don’t mind.”
“I want to kill the spider.”
“Okay. Your place it is.”
He paid for the coffee and pie. She was too out of whack to argue and too short on change. He got them a cab when she told him where she lived and the journey that she normally had to take by public transport. There was no possibility of her paying for the fare. The dawn was breaking now. This new day seemed entirely different, a world of possibilities that terrified her down to her core.
“This place is a shithole,” he said, standing at the bottom of the stoop.
“Yeah but it’s my shithole.”
“It’s not good enough for even spiders.”
“Ha!”
She unlocked the door and guided him up the two flights of stairs. It was only a four-story building, from a different century and different regulations. There might not have been any that existed back then and now the owner refused to change with the times. A messed-up kind of historical authenticity. A shitty ironic coincidence. A disaster just waiting to happen. Her landlord would suck whatever the era.
Ben looked too big for the stairs and like a giant as he bent and twisted slightly to enter through her narrow front door.
“You only have one lock?”
“And a chain.”
She dumped her bag on her unmade sofa bed. They had to weave single file across the cramped living space to the single counter with its sink that she’d affectionately dubbed the kitchen.
“Have at it,” she said.
He moved around her, chests brushing, his body sending currents though her body as he passed. Static electricity from her tacky uniform, surely? He leaned over the kitchen sink like something from Gulliver’s Travels or when Alice ate a cookie that she shouldn’t, even if it was labelled that she should. If Rey was in her shoes, she would have eaten everything, labels be damned.
“Christ,” Ben said, “you weren’t kidding.”
“It’s still there?”
“Yeah, there’s a deed and it’s unpacked its belongings.”
“Shut up!” She was laughing.
She stopped when he scooped it up in his hands.
“Oh my god.” Where was the murder he promised? If it lived then it could get back in.
“Window,” was all he said.
There was only one option, behind the sofa-slash-bed. She hurried to open it up then had to crawl out of the way, watching his huge body kneel on the place where she had slept. He poked his cupped hands through the limited opening and could barely shake them out.
“You’ll need to change your locks after this.” He sat back on the edge of the sofa, rubbing his palms over firm thighs. “That was a joke about the spider,” she had almost believed him, “but I still think that you should.”
“Thank you,” she said. She came to stand before him, between his parted legs. “Thank you.” Her arms went around his neck. “Thank you, Ben.”
He was slow to react and she worried that she had overstepped. She was bad at this, at physical affection. Never had enough practice but she really wanted to show him how she felt.
“I’m not used to being hugged,” he said.
Ah—
He hugged her back.
It was clumsy because of the angle and she sort of fell into his lap. Sort of found herself caught in the circle of his arms, his body an immovable rock inside her ramshackle walls. He breathed her in like one of his cigarettes. She breathed him in like she knew how to smoke.
“You’re sweet,” he said.
“Apple pie.” Or licorice, she thought.
“No, Rey, it’s you.”
They laid down together on the thin mattress of her sofa bed, not really meant for two people and certainly not somebody proportioned like him. He didn’t try to undress her, which was a relief since she had no idea what to do next. They looked at each other. His eyes reminded her of the sad drunk from earlier that day. Not that he was drunk or explicitly sad but there was a deep-seated melancholy that folks like her could recognize. Life that didn’t go how it was meant to. Hurts that had never fully gone away.
“You’re kind of sweet as well,” she whispered.
“Not if you knew me.” Fingers brushed through her hair.
She grew tired. She fell asleep where she was, in her stinking uniform still atop the crumpled covers, safe in a way she had never known before.
It was how she woke up. He was watching. Sunlight pouring through the window. What was the time? She remembered distantly that it was Saturday.
“I should go,” he said. “I need a shower.”
“You…”
The thought died on her lips—it was too grubby for him to get clean here—but it must have been there on her face all the same.
“I don’t think I’ll fit in your shower to be honest. But I still want to see you.” He caught her chin between a thumb and finger. “Can we meet later?”
“Okay.”
He kissed her on the forehead and she showed him out the door. There was another man making his lumbering way down the staircase, age indeterminate since he was nebulously overweight. The man looked their way, beady eyes narrowing to nothing. Ben turned around to face him, blocking her from view. His back filled the entire doorway.
“Who’s that?” he asked once the man’s footsteps had faded.
“My landlord,” Rey said. “Manages the whole building. He’s not used to seeing me have guests.”
“Name?”
“Plutt.”
“Okay.” Ben nodded. “I’ll pick you up later. Say in three hours?”
She nodded back. Was this a date? He didn’t wait to explain himself or what she should wear or where they might be going. He was coming back in his car it seemed. He moved fast down the stairs.
Rey showered. She wore her only dress, hair down, her good pair of sneakers on. It was warm enough not to need a jacket but she wrapped an old shirt around her waist just to be sure. The buzzer sounded. It sounded foreign, rusty and underused. Her only visitors were Plutt and delivery guys for people in the building other than her.
Ben was dressed casually when she met him outside. “Plutt’s going to change your locks and fix your door.”
“How?”
“Caught him on the street. It was a friendly conversation.”
“Was it?”
He held out his hand, swallowing her own when she took it. “He’ll know when I’m not being friendly.”
He led her to his car. Rey thrilled at what he had done. A small voice argued that she should be mad but there were louder cries of yes and finally and the weight was not gone but it had gotten tangibly lighter.
“I don’t normally do this,” he said, holding open the passenger door.
“Do what?” His car was something vintage. Not secondhand but rare and loved. The seats were soft leather, like his hands, she thought, thighs sinking against the cushion.
“Ask girls out.”
“I thought maybe you meant friendly chats with the landlords of girls.”
He reached over her to fasten her seatbelt, grinning. “That either.”
Learned helplessness was quick to set in. He could do everything and she would let him. Become entirely weightless. Float high in the sky with him as her only tether to the ground.
He got in on the driver’s side and started the engine. “Where do you want to go?”
“Wherever,” Rey said.
“Wherever it is,” and he eased them out onto the street, hand sure upon the stick as he took them where he chose for them to go.