Chapter 1: The Bedroom Wallpaper
The key jangled in the lock, a cheap, tinny sound that somehow summed up the entire damn day. Jake Peralta threw his shoulder against the door, and it swung open with a groan, revealing what was possibly the most depressing hotel room in Brooklyn, which was saying something.“Whoa,” Jake said, blinking. “I think I just caught a contact high from the seventies.”
Amy Santiago shouldered past him, her nose already wrinkling. The room smelled of mildew, stale coffee, and the faint, floral ghost of industrial-strength air freshener. A single, queen-sized bed dominated the space, its burgundy bedspread worn thin in the middle.It sagged, a testament to countless sad nights. The lone window looked out onto a brick wall.A flickering fluorescent light bathed everything in a sickly greenish hue.
“One bed,” Amy stated, her voice flat. She dropped her go-bag on the rickety chair by the desk with a thud. “The reservation specifically said two doubles.”
“I tried, Ames!I turned on the full Peralta charm for Gladys at the front desk. Told her she had eyes like a koala.Gave her my ‘hurt puppy’ look. Nothing.” Jake flopped onto the edge of the bed, which emitted a loud, tragic sigh. He bounced a little. “I think the springs are writing their suicide note.”
“Don’t do that. You’ll disrupt the ecosystem.” Amy was already in motion, a whirlwind of efficiency in the stagnant room.She peeled back the bedspread with two fingers, grimacing. “The sheets seem… structurally sound.Alright.We’re adults. We can handle this.”
“Totally.Platonic buddies. Like cops in a buddy cop movie, but without the awesome car chases.Or the camaraderie.” Jake watched her. Her perfume—something clean and sharp, like lemons and rosemary—cut through the staleness.It was unsettlingly nice.
Amy grabbed the two spare pillows from a closet that smelled of mothballs and regret. She marched back to the bed, positioning them with geometric precision down the exact center. “This,” she announced, patting the pillow wall, “is the Demilitarized Zone.No crossing.No limb drift. No passive-aggressive blanket theft.”
Jake’s mouth quirked. “You’ve given this a lot of thought.Do you have a binder? ‘Binder 47: Sharing Quarters with Immature Colleagues. Subsection A: Pillow Fortification.’”
“It’s common sense. Which is a foreign country to you, but welcome.” She smoothed the pillows, then fluffed her own, her back to him.
The flickering light caught the subtle tension in her shoulders.Jake stood up, the worn carpet scratchy under his shoes. “Look, it’s fine.I’ll take the floor. Captain Yoga over here.” He struck a wobbly tree pose.“My body is a temple. A weird, bendy temple that doesn’t need lumbar support.”
Amy turned, her arms crossed.“Don’t be ridiculous. The carpet is approximately two nanometers thick and probably home to microbial civilizations we haven’t discovered yet. You’d wake up looking like a crime scene photo.”
“So what’s the plan, Santiago? We share the bed like sensible, mature adults who definitely don’t find each other even slightly attractive?” The words hung in the mildewy air, a joke that landed with the subtlety of a grenade.Amy’s eyes widened a fraction. A beat of silence pulsed, loud in the quiet room, broken only by the buzz-flicker of the dying light. “We share the bed,” she said, her voice clipped, “like professionals following protocol during an extended stakeout.We sleep back-to-back, respecting the DMZ. We get up at oh-six-hundred hours.We catch our perp. We go home.”
“Back-to-back,” Jake repeated, nodding slowly.“Like angry spoons.”
“We’re not spoons. We’re two detectives utilizing available resources.” She sat on the far edge of the bed, her back ramrod straight, and began meticulously untying her shoes.Each movement was precise, controlled.
Jake sighed, the bravado seeping out of him. He toed off his own sneakers, which landed with a less dignified thud. He switched off the main light, plunging the room into near-darkness, save for the sickly green EXIT sign glowing from the hallway under the door and the orange numerals of the alarm clock. He padded around to the other side, the mattress dipping drastically under his weight.Amy swayed slightly, then steadied herself.
They both lay down, rigid, staring at the stained ceiling. The pillow barrier between them felt both ludicrous and utterly necessary.Jake was hyper-aware of the heat of her body, mere inches from his. He could hear her breathing, slow and deliberately even.“So,” he said to the ceiling.
“So.”
“Big day of watching a warehouse tomorrow.”
“Thrilling.”
“You know,” Jake said, shifting, the springs crying out beneath him. “In the movies, this is where we’d have a deep conversation about our fears and our childhoods. I’d reveal I’m afraid of porcelain clowns. You’d confess your love for boy bands from the nineties.”
“I have no such fear or love.And you are afraid of porcelain clowns. You screamed in the evidence locker last week.”
“It was smirking at me, Amy! Its smile was a lie!”
A small, almost imperceptible laugh escaped her. It was a quiet puff of air.Jake felt a weird, warm spark in his chest.
Silence settled again, thicker this time.The space between them in the big, saggy bed felt like a canyon. And a very narrow ledge.
“This is weird, right?” Jake whispered, after five minutes that felt like an hour.“Extremely.”
“Good.Just checking. I thought maybe I was overreacting.I do that sometimes.According to my performance reviews. Which I don’t read.”
He heard her turn onto her side, facing away from him, the sheets rustling. “Just go to sleep, Peralta.”
“Right.Yes.Sleep. The thing you do with your eyes closed.” He turned onto his side, facing her back. Her dark hair was fanned out on her pillow, a few strands brushing against the makeshift barrier. The lemon-rosemary scent was stronger now.It was nice.Really nice.Distractingly nice.He closed his eyes. The old building creaked.A siren wailed in the distance. Every nerve ending felt tuned to the woman lying beside him, a universe contained within the careful space between them.
Amy’s voice was soft, almost lost in the dark. “You’re not actually going to sleep on the floor, are you?”
“Nah. The microbial civilizations would stage a coup.”
“Good.”
Another minute passed.
“Jake?”
“Yeah?”
“The DMZ is non-negotiable.”
“Duh.”
He listened to her breathing slowly even out, deepening into sleep. He stayed awake, staring at the silhouette of her shoulder under the thin blanket, thinking about canyons and ledges and the terrifying, exhilarating feeling of being so close to the edge of something, with only a pile of pillows to stop the fall. The flickering light from the hallway bled under the door, a steady, rhythmic pulse in the dark, like a countdown.
The flickering light from the hallway bled under the door, a steady, rhythmic pulse in the dark, like a countdown. Jake focused on it, a desperate attempt to anchor his mind somewhere other than the line of Amy’s back, the slight rise and fall of her breathing under the blanket. His own body felt like a live wire, tense and sparking with a stupid, hyper-awareness. Every shift of fabric, every sigh from her, was a seismic event.He thought about the case.The perp’s stupid face. The Dodgers' batting average.Anything.Gradually, the rigidity in his shoulders began to soften. The muffled city sounds from outside the window blended into a low drone. The cheap mattress, which had felt like a trap, started to feel just like a crappy, uncomfortable bed. The scent of lemons faded into the general stale atmosphere, becoming just part of the room. Exhaustion, a heavier weight than any awkwardness, won out. His thoughts unraveled, blurred, and dissolved into nothing.A garbage truck beeping its reverse signal somewhere in the alley was what did it. A loud, unromantic, Brooklyn alarm clock.Jake opened his eyes. The room was grey with early morning light, the details sharpening from shadows into just plain shabby. He was on his back. The pillow barrier was still there, but it had clearly lost some structural integrity during the night, listing to one side like a shipwreck.
He heard a small, sharp intake of breath beside him.Amy was awake. She was staring straight up at the ceiling, one hand pinching the bridge of her nose. “I feel like I’ve been in a tactical training exercise where the primary obstacle was this mattress,” she said, her voice husky with sleep.
Jake turned his head on the pillow.Bad move.His neck gave a painful twinge.“Ouch.Yeah. I think my spine is now in the shape of a question mark.”
“A fitting shape for you.” She sat up slowly, wincing, and rubbed her neck. Her hair was adorably, messily tangled on one side. Jake quickly looked away, focusing instead on the sad, deflated pillows.
“What is this, a pillow for ants?” he grumbled, punching the limp cushion under his head.It offered no resistance whatsoever. “It’s like sleeping on a lightly stuffed grocery bag.I could feel the actual bed frame through it. My ear is numb.”
Amy scoffed, but she was also kneading her own pillow with scientific disapproval. “The thread count is obviously nonexistent.The filling is clearly a mix of recycled air and despair. It provides zero cervical support. I’m going to have to note this in my Yelp review.”
“You’re writing a Yelp review for the ‘Stakeout Suites’?”
“Someone has to warn people, Peralta. This is a public service.” She swung her legs out of bed, putting physical space between them with a swift, efficient motion. The momentary ease of the waking banter tightened again.The room was once again just a small, cheap room with one bed.
Jake got up too, the thin carpet doing nothing to soften the chill of the floorboards. They moved around each other in a silent, careful dance, gathering toiletries, avoiding eye contact. The normalcy of the morning complaint had been a brief truce. Now, the unspoken thing was back, thicker in the daylight, humming in the space between their carefully casual shoulders as they got ready to go watch a warehouse for eight hours.