The female host looks about ready to leap out of her chair in suspense. I feel like I’m about to throw up. “Wow, he’s a real hero! You couldn’t get him to come today? We’d love to interview him, he sounds like a man who knows how to defend himself… and his loved ones.” The words make me swallow hard.
“That’s just it,” Jade slides to the edge of her seat, her hand waving in the air, her voice bright and cheerful so different to the soft whimpers I heard from her that first day I met her. No, this is how she should sound, this is a woman who is filled with life. “I don’t know who he is!”
“NO! You don’t? How can that be?” The host plays the devil’s advocate, and I want to strangle her.
“He was wearing a grey hoodie when I first saw him before I fainted, and the nurses and doctors at the hospital told me that he wore the hoodie hiding his face the entire time he was there. And no one knows his real name, we just know him as ‘Mr. K.'”
“Fuck.” I say to the empty room.
“And now all I want to do is to be able to thank him. Thank him for saving my life.”
She turns to face the camera right on. It focuses unmoving on her doll-like features. Her eyes widen and her face opens like a blossom.
“Please. If anyone out there has any information on who this hooded hero is that saved me, please get in touch with me. Please. If you were in my position, you’d want to be able to thank your guardian angel as well. And that’s what he is. People like this need to be acknowledged and recognized as heroes. Please help me find him.”
Her mouth trembles a bit, and her eyes sparkle with tears threatening to spill out onto her bone china white cheeks.
She is good. I am almost inclined to give her information to find me myself.
“Ugh,” my head falls into my hands. It’s the first time I’ve torn my eyes from the screen. This is not good. This is going to fuck with the perfect harmony I prefer my life to exist in.
I force myself to lift my eyes back to the screen and watch the rest of the interview.
“… so you’ve got all the information that Jade has on her hooded hero. Come on, New York! Let’s reunite this lovely woman with her savior. You can contact us on…”
The hosts jarring voice fades into the background as I watch Jade wave and smile at the camera.
“What’ve you done now, Kaine?” I groan and grab my towel and retreat to the showers, bracing for what the day is going to bring. As if I don’t already have enough to deal with.
The phone rings as I strip my body of my clothes and prepare to step under the steaming hot water.
“What?” I answer, my voice accurately displaying the gruffness of my mood.
“Oh. So, you’ve heard,” Xavier’s voice echoes in the shower chamber, the phone on speaker.
“About what? The citywide search for a guy in a hoodie fitting my exact description?”
He is quiet. I know he’s grinning.
“Shut the fuck up,” I say as I duck my head under the water, feeling it open the pores in my scalp.
“What? I said nothing.”
“It’s when you’re quiet that I’m most afraid. What am I going to do?”
“About what? There’s nothing to do. She’s looking for a guy about 6″3 who wears a hoodie all the time. That’s three quarters of Harlem.”
“She mentioned the hospital bill.”
“Well, you and I are the only two people who know about that, and you’re not going to talk, and you pay me too much for me to talk, so you’re safe.”
“Fuck. What a mess. I do NOT want this out, Xavier.”
“Where are you?” he asks, ignoring my stress.
“In the shower,” I reply as I squeeze some body wash into my palm and lather up my chest and arms, letting the heat from the shower massage my aching body.
“Yeah. I’m going to call back. When you’re done being naked while I speak to you.”
“Don’t you fucking go anywhere until we’re done. Take care of this, Xavier,” I warn him.
“Okay, okay. Geez. You think she’s going to find you in city of 8 million? Based on a HOODIE? Egotistical much?” he chuckles, enjoying my pain.
I am not impressed.
“Take care of it,” I tell him one last time before hanging up the phone to finish my shower.
Truth is, I wish there was a way I could see her, without being found out.
Seeing her, albeit on screen, reawakened, or to the completely honest, amplified, my inexplicable obsession with her. Before, I had only seen her dazed, confused and drugged up. But watching her come completely alive and so animated, breathes life into my thoughts. I feel a strange sensation dig its nails into the darkest pit of my stomach, and I claw at my abs to try to dislodge it.
This is out of my control and that is not allowed. I don’t have a place for it in my life.
I rest my head gently against the cool shower wall, letting the water fall over my neck and shoulders, hoping it’ll wash this weird feeling away.
***
Dressing in the spare clothes I keep in my private bathroom in the small apartment I keep on the second highest floor, I take a glance in the mirror before I go to my office. I run my fingers over my left cheek, feeling the bumps and lines there. It’s been a while since I’ve studied them, but something makes me scrutinize my face more than usual. For a split second, I ponder how Jade will react if she ever saw me without my hoodie, but I banish the thought from my mind before the indulgent idea runs too far.
Running my fingers through my hair, I pull the hood over my head and ride the elevator to my office.
The floor is dark when I arrive. Except for the faint row of solar powered LED lights around the edges of the windows, I prefer that the building is kept dark outside of office hours, to preserve electricity. I press the button on the keypad, to illuminate just the area around my desk and go for a walk around the perimeter of the floor, looking out at the city before it floods with life.
She is out there somewhere.
And she is looking for me.
It seems like the plot for a story of star-crossed lovers, but there is nothing romantic about me. And I know better than to let my thoughts go down this road.
I walk back to my desk, passing the workstation on my way.
On the desk lays a plain white envelope, my name written on the front. The hand writing matches the one on the parcel I received the day before.
I turn and look around me, instinctively, wondering if I am being watched.
The envelope is sealed and I slide a finger under the flap, pulling out the single piece of card.
“Tick tock. You can’t stop me, if you don’t know who I am.
Your launch is in four weeks… I wonder when I should schedule mine?
The day before yours? Next week? Tomorrow?
Guess you’ll just have to wait and see.
J.”