Chapter 1: The Leaky Sink and a Dirty Old Man
The drip was the only sound in the apartment. A steady, maddening plink into the puddle that had formed on the granite countertop, just past the basin of the undermount sink. Paula aimed her phone at it, the camera light flaring against the polished stone. She captured three seconds of video, her manicured thumb hovering over the delete button before she sighed and posted it to her story.
“Home alone with a broken sink… and a broken heart! Derek’s away on another business trip. 💔 Send help… or a cute plumber? 😜” she typed, adding a laughing-sobbing emoji. It was performative, a slice of curated relatability. The reality was simpler: she was bored, the drip was annoying, and the plumber was forty minutes late.
When the intercom finally buzzed, her mood lifted. She checked her reflection in the dark oven door—a quick pat to her hair, a slight adjustment of her ivory silk camisole. She was presentable, approachable, the perfect blend of sexy and sweet for an unexpected doorstep interaction. Potential content.
She swung the door open with a practiced, bright smile. It faltered for a microsecond, just long enough for her brain to process.
He was older than she’d imagined. Much older. Sixties, maybe. His belly, a solid hemisphere beneath a stained blue work shirt, led his body into the doorway. His jeans, heavy with tools, sagged perilously low, revealing a crescent of pale, wrinkled skin above a frayed belt. A thatch of gray, scruffy beard covered his jaw, and his eyes, a watery blue, slid from her face down to her toes and back up again, slow as syrup.
“You the sink trouble?” he asked, his voice a gravelly rumble. He didn’t smile. His teeth, when his lips parted, were the color of old piano keys.
“Uh, yeah. Yes. Come in.” Paula stepped back, the citrusy-clean scent of her apartment meeting the wave of old sweat, motor oil, and stale cigarette smoke that followed him in. She gestured weakly toward the kitchen. “It’s just… leaking. Underneath.”
Gary grunted, heaving his toolbox onto her floor with a thud that made the decorative vase on her console table shiver. He didn’t look at the kitchen. He looked at her. “Name’s Gary.”
“Paula.”
“Paula,” he repeated, as if tasting it. He nodded, finally turning to survey the open-plan living space. His gaze lingered on the large print of her and Derek from their engagement shoot in Bali. “Nice place. You live here with… him?”
“My fiancé, yes.”
“Fiancé. Fancy.” He ambled into the kitchen, his presence making the sleek space feel suddenly cramped. He stopped at the sink, peering at the faucet. Then, slowly, he bent at the waist to look underneath, a groan escaping him. The back of his jeans dipped further, revealing more of the plumber’s crack. Paula looked away, focusing on a particular whorl in the marble countertop.
For a minute, the only sounds were his shuffling, the clank of a pipe, and that incessant plink… plink… plink.
“Gasket’s shot,” his voice echoed from under the sink. “Seen it a thousand times. Cheap builder-grade crap. They use the same junk everywhere.” He slid out, sitting back on his heels on her floor. He wiped his hands on a rag from his pocket, his eyes finding her again. She was leaning against the far counter, arms crossed.
“So, can you fix it?” she asked, her influencer lilt returning, smoothing the edges of her discomfort.
“Easy fix. For me.” He didn’t move. He just looked at her, a slow appraisal. “You’re Filipino, right?”
The question was so direct it threw her. “My family is, yes.”
A grin spread through his scrubby beard. It wasn’t friendly. It was knowing. “Knew it. Got an eye for it. Spent a lot of time in the Philippines. Thailand, too. All over that part of the world.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Paula said, the words automatic, hollow. She uncrossed her arms, then crossed them again.
“Nice? It was a goddamn paradise.” He pushed himself up with another grunt, standing to his full height, which wasn’t much taller than her. He leaned a hip against her counter, invading the psychic space of her kitchen. “The women there… unbelievable. Pretty as a picture. And so damn sweet. Accommodating.” His watery eyes drilled into hers. “You got that look. Real delicate. Smooth skin, just like ‘em.”
Paula felt a heat creep up her neck. It was part flattery—a twisted, rotten part of her brain recognized a compliment on her aesthetics—and part sheer, skin-crawling revulsion. “You should probably just focus on the sink,” she said, but her voice lacked force. It was a suggestion, not a command.
“I am. I’m just makin’ conversation. No need to be cold.” He turned and rummaged in his toolbox, pulling out a new gasket. “The girls in Bangkok, Patong Beach… they knew how to treat a man. Make you feel like a king. And for what?” He laughed, a short, barking sound. “Twenty bucks. Sometimes less. I’m not kidding. A beauty like you walking down the street there, you’d be… what? Thirty, maybe forty dollars for the whole night? A real bargain.”
The air left the room. The metallic smell from the open pipes under the sink seemed to intensify, coating the back of her throat. Paula stared at him. He had just priced her. He’d looked at her home, her clothes, her ring, and translated her into a currency of nighttime bargains in a red-light district.
“You can’t talk to me like that,” she whispered. It sounded pathetic.
Gary didn’t even blink. He was watching her reaction, his head tilted like a scientist observing a specimen. “I’m just telling you how it is over there. It’s a fact. You’re from that stock, you gotta know it. Pretty little thing like you? You’d make a fortune.” He said it almost admiringly. He took a step closer. The smell of him was overpowering. “Your fiancé… he a big guy? Treats you good?”
Paula couldn’t formulate words. Her heart was a frantic bird in a cage. This was wrong, all wrong. She should order him out. Call the company. But a paralyzing cocktail of shock, politeness, and a terrifying curiosity kept her rooted. What if he got angry? He was in her home. The door was closed.
“He treats me very well,” she managed, her voice thin.
“I’ll bet he does.” Gary’s gaze dropped, explicitly, to the swell of her breasts against the silk. The augmentation had been subtle, tasteful, but under his look, they felt garish, obvious. “They all go for that over there, too. The ones who can afford it. Makes ‘em look more… Western. More valuable.”
He reached out, not for her, but to pick up a tea towel she had neatly folded on the counter. He wiped his hands on it, leaving dark smudges on the linen. “So, you want me to fix this leak or not? Gonna take me another twenty minutes. We can keep talking. I got stories that’d curl your hair.”
Paula’s eyes flicked to the front door, then back to his grinning, yellowed smile. The drip of the sink was gone, replaced by the pounding of her own blood in her ears. The kitchen, once a stage for her perfect life, now felt like a trap with recessed lighting. She swallowed, her throat tight.
“Just fix it,” she said, the words barely audible. “Please.”
Gary nodded, as if she’d passed a test. He turned back to the sink, bending over again. “That’s a good girl,” he murmured, the praise slimy and condescending. “Real accommodating.”
Paula didn’t move from her spot. She watched his broad, stained back as he worked, the words twenty bucks echoing in the silent, perfumed air of her apartment, now permanently fouled.