Apples Never Fall

“Does the vine symbolize something?” He pointed at the tattoo on her forearm. Green tendrils curled around her purple-veined, stick-thin arm. He had no problem with tattoos—Amy had a few—but this one, though in itself innocuous, seemed a desecration of her childlike arm. “Or did you just like the look of it?”

“It’s Jack’s beanstalk,” she said.

“Huh,” he said. He tried to remember the fairy tale. Jack climbs the beanstalk and steals the giant’s gold? “So … it’s about achieving your dreams?” She didn’t look like the type for self-help books and vision boards.

“It symbolizes escape,” she said.

“Right,” he said. “So, speaking of which, let’s get in and out of this place as fast as we can.” He went to offer his hand, but then thought better of it. Too domineering. He dropped his hand by his side, took a step back, and waved his hand in a courtly, over-the-top, “this way, madam” gesture. Give her space. Don’t rush her. Try to understand.

She undid her seatbelt, swiveled, and slid from the car, smiling tremulously up at him as she put her thumbs in the loops of her jeans and hitched them up around her waist.

“Sorry,” she said. “I know you haven’t got all day.”

“Yes I do,” said Troy. “It’s fine.” He hoped the boyfriend was here and gave him an excuse to grab him by his shirt and slam him up against a wall like a cop in a movie.

“Before we go up, perhaps we should check for his car.” She delicately touched her nostrils and sniffed.

“Good idea,” said Troy. Logan didn’t speak. Troy bounced lightly on the balls of his feet. He was suddenly, unexpectedly jubilant.

They followed Savannah to the covered parking area. She stopped and her shoulders sagged.

“It’s fine. He’s not here.” She pointed at an empty space in the far corner.

“Okay, so that’s good,” said Logan. “Great.”

Troy felt himself deflate. Now this was back to being a boring errand to endure. He looked at his watch. He actually did not have all day.

“There’s something wrong with you,” his mother once said to him as she drove him home from school after another suspension. “There’s something very, very wrong with you.”

I know, he’d thought at the time, pleased.

The three of them went up in the lift to the third floor. Troy looked at the mirrored walls and saw a hundred reflections of himself and Logan, getting tinier and tinier, but always towering over Savannah.

She led them down a carpeted hallway with the familiar lemon air-freshener smell of this kind of well-kept, midlevel apartment block, and unlocked a door.

“Please come in,” she said shyly, as if this were a social visit.

The first thing Troy saw was unframed art leaning against the walls: proper art. Abstracts with violent strokes of paint so thick and textured they still looked wet. He had not been expecting art.

“He’s an artist.” Savannah followed Troy’s eye. “Amateur artist.”

There wasn’t much furniture: a battered double-seater leather couch faced a television leaning against the wall. A tacky-looking glass coffee table contained half-empty takeaway containers, chopsticks shoved upright into the fried rice, an open newspaper stained with blotches of soy sauce, a half-drunk bottle of Corona with a piece of lime floating in the remaining beer. A stack of unopened mover’s boxes sat in the corner of the room. This was a man who unpacked his art before he put up his television. A man who carefully cut up a piece of lime to put in his Corona but left his half-eaten takeaway dinner on the coffee table. A man who hit his girlfriend.

Savannah shook her head at the food on the coffee table and made a move toward it as if she were thinking about cleaning it up, then stopped.

“So these two boxes are obviously yours?” said Logan. He nodded his head at two of the mover’s boxes, one of which was labeled SAVANNAH—CLOTHES and the other SAVANNAH—RECIPE BOOKS.

“Yes,” said Savannah. “Yes, thank you. Much appreciated.”

Much appreciated. The cadences and colloquialisms of her speech slipped back and forth: one moment twenty years old, the next eighty.

“Let’s get everything out of here and in the hallway,” said Logan.

He and Troy carried out the boxes. Troy got the box of books, which made him stagger.

“You right, mate?” asked Logan, straight-faced.

They came back in to find Savannah squatting on the floor in the tiny kitchen, all the cupboard doors open, as she filled a box with saucepans, frying pans, and a blender.