Free Loss by Tom Piccirilli Page B

went on. I’d lost what little momentum I might’ve ever had. Eventually all the manuscripts came back and I stacked them on the floor of my closet hoping I might one day have the courage to burn them.
    Maybe I had been waiting for Corben, or maybe he’d been waiting for me.
    We used to walk past Stark House when we were kids and discuss the history of the building. It had always accommodated misfits of one sort or another. There were rumors about it a little more cryptic and wondrous than the rumors about every other building.
    In the late nineteenth century, it had been owned by a family of brilliant eccentrics who’d turned out scientists, senators, and more than a few madmen. A number of murders occurred on the premises. Local legends grew about the shadow men who served the politicians. They said the Stark family carried bad blood.
    In the early twentieth century, the place had been converted to apartments and became home to a famous opera singer, a celebrity husband and wife Broadway acting team, and a bootlegger who’d made a fortune from prohibition. They said there were secret walls. I searched but never found any. The place still called to life a certain glamour nearly lost through time. The wide staircase bisecting the lobby gave the impression of romantic leading men sweeping their lovers upstairs in a swirl of skirts, trains, and veils. The original chandelier still hung above as it had for over a hundred years and I waited for the day it tore from its supports and killed us all.
    I knew Corben would eventually try to buy the building. I was lucky to have gotten in before him. Even his wealth couldn’t purchase Stark House outright. When he and I finally met face to face again after all those years, neither one of us showed any surprise at all. We didn’t exchange words. We shared similar blank, expressionless features. He must’ve mentioned something to his wife later on because I caught her staring at me on occasion, almost as if she had plenty of questions for me but didn’t want to trespass on such a mystery-laden history.
    It made perfect sense to me that I would fall in love with Gabriella Corben virtually the moment I met her.
    Upstairs, Corben screamed, “Wild Under Heaven! Ancient Shadows!” I never quite understood what kind of point he was trying to make when he ran through his list of titles. Gabriella spoke sternly and more stuff got knocked over. I heard him sob. It gave me no pleasure hearing it. Finally a door slammed and another opened. The corners of the building echoed with the small sounds of the lurking outcast phantoms slinking in and out of shadow. The old-fashioned elevator buzzed and hummed, moving between the second and third floors. I heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and she was there.
    I briefly glanced at Gabriella Corben and gave a noncommittal grin. She moved halfway down the staircase and sat in the middle of the carpeted step, her elbows on her knees, watching me. She wouldn’t discuss their argument and wouldn’t mention him at all. She never did.
    My hidden, unrequited love was a secret even from her. Or perhaps not. She was perceptive and understanding and probably knew my heart as well as she understood her husband’s, which might’ve been entirely or might’ve been not at all. He and I still weren’t that different. He was up there screaming out loud and I was down here braying inside.
    I went about my business. I did my work. I waited for her to say what she wanted to say and I willed the muscles in my back not to twitch.
    I knew what I would see if I dared to look over my shoulder. A woman of twenty-five, comfortable beneath the finish of her own calm, with glossy, curling, black hair draped loosely to frame her face. Lightly freckled from the summer sun, her eyes a rich hazel to offset the glowing brown of her skin. Her body slim but full, her presence assured. I caught a whiff of her perfume combined with the heady, earthy scent of her sweat beneath