When No One Is Watching

by Alyssa Cole

My gaze fixes on the amount paid and any composure I had evaporates.

  “Only five thousand? Do you think I’m fucking stupid? I could whip up something better in Photoshop.” My voice is rising but I can’t help it. He’s just here trying to take everything. Everything. No. “I could find out where you live, make a fake deed and say it’s mine, if that’s how this works. You wanna wake up and find me in your damn living room with my feet on the couch? This is bullshit.”

  The man’s smug patience suddenly snaps, and he lunges toward my face until his nose is almost up against mine. “Look, bitch, I don’t want any problems from you. The lot is ours. If you wanna fuck with us, if you wanna try to hold things up, you’re gonna regret it. I will make you fucking regret it.”

  “Bitch?” My face is hot, and I reflexively pull my braids back into a ponytail with the hair tie on my wrist in one smooth motion. “Who are you calling a bitch?”

  “What are you gonna do, bitch? Hit me?” He lifts his face toward mine so his nasty breath blows in my face. His eyes are flashing with an anger disproportionate to the fact that he’s the one who started this shit. “Try it. Try it. I’ll have your ass locked up so fast your fucking head will spin.”

  “Officer, sir, are you going to let this man threaten her like that, sir?” Len asks, distress in his voice. The officer looks in his direction and takes a step toward him.

  “Officer!” I call out, and his attention shifts back to me. “Officer, please. At least let us get our things. This is some kind of misunderstanding, but until it’s resolved, let us please just get our equipment and whatever we have—”

  “No,” the man says from behind them. “No entry to the property.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the officer says, shrugging with a slight grin. “I have to adhere to the property owner’s wishes.”

  The second officer turns to the crowd and starts shouting. “Everybody disperse! You, put that phone away! Nothing to see here! Nothing to see here!”

  “But—”

  Behind him, two of the men inside start pulling up plants. The others start piling up gloves and buckets and gardening tools, overturning the wooden benches Mr. Perkins and some of the other neighbors made at the beginning of the summer to replace the old rotten ones.

  “Why?” I croak out. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Ma’am, are we going to have a problem?” The second officer rests his hand on his holster and my stomach turns.

  Yes! I want to scream. I want to scream until my throat is raw and bleeding. Instead, I stand there silent and shivering even though it’s so hot that my shirt is soaked through with sweat. I’ve failed my mother again. I imagine her face when we toured the retirement home, how she’d looked at me and said, “You know you’re going to have to take over the garden for me if I come here, right? You better watch some YouTube videos so you don’t kill my plants.”

  “Come on, Sydney.”

  The voice seems far away, but someone takes my arm and pulls me back. The grip is strong and reminds me of my mother, trying to keep me from danger.

  “But Mommy’s—”

  “Sydney, let’s go!” Ms. Candace squeezes my arm harder and pulls me away, and Len comes up from behind; I realize he’s covering my flank, and that’s enough to get me moving.

  I look back one more time. The officers and the man who stole my mother’s garden are laughing. They’re laughing and I can’t do a damn thing about it.

  I reflexively take out my phone, pull up my log, and dial the last person I’d called: Mommy. I just need to hear her voice, to apologize.

  The phone stops ringing and I wait for her voicemail to pick up, but there’s only silence. Then . . . an exhale.

  The dread in my body constricts to a sharp pain in my chest.

  “Hello?” I whisper.

  No response, but someone is there—I know with the surety of a child who refuses to let their feet hang off the edge of the bed.

  “Hello?” Tears well in my eyes.

  They hang up on me.

  Ms. Candace rubs my back when I grasp the rim of a trash can in front of Etta Mason’s house and throw up.

  “Etta will understand,” she says over and over again. “Anyone would understand.”

  Gifford Place OurHood post by Candace Tompkins:

  I think we should all discuss the loss of the community garden. There’s no way that man is the rightful owner. We need to know what happened and how.

  Asia Martin: Who has the money to prove him otherwise?

  Jenn Lithwick: Oh no! I heard what happened! How awful. Is Sydney okay?

  Jen Peterson: Can someone really lie about that? I mean, the police were with him? They would know if his claim was real, right? Maybe I’m being naive but the alternative is . . .

  Asia Martin: . . . business as usual, Jen. That’s all it is.

  Jen Peterson: I’m sorry, Asia. I just can’t believe something like this could happen in Brooklyn.

  Jenn Lithwick: Honey . . .

  Chapter 15

  Theo

  AFTER THE RIESLING INCIDENT, I’M STAYING WELL AWAY FROM booze, which is a pretty abrupt change of pace for my body. I’d wanted a beer pretty badly after the weird spat with Sydney outside the corner store, and even more after going to see a room for rent a few train stops away. As expected, it was someone’s curtained-off living room, but it will be fine as a temporary base while I figure out what the next step will be.

  Instead of cracking open a cold one, I go to the gym, needing to work out the feelings bobbing around recklessly now that I’m not drowning them with booze or distracting myself with Sydney.

  Some people get to a zen place while working out, but my thoughts race as I swing my arms on the elliptical. Life had been stalled for months, it seemed, but things have kicked back into gear with a vengeance—my world is entirely different than it was a week ago. I made a friend, found a purpose—however temporary—then lost my girlfriend, my new friend, and my purpose. Oh, and also my house.

  Now I’ve made the dubious decision to room with a seventy-year-old Polish ex-con who’s way too interested in my cooking skills and wanted to know if I could get the viruses off his computer.

  William, the weird guy from the real estate place, suddenly steps in front of the elliptical. He doesn’t say anything, just looks up at me expectantly like we were already in midconversation and he’d just made a dirty joke.

  “I’ll be done in five minutes,” I say.

  “It’s cool. I’m more of a weight room guy.” He purses his lips, then frowns. “You never called me.”

  “Called?”

  “About the job offer. It’s not like they take on just anyone at BVT, and I thought you had what it takes. You look like . . .” He considers me with a kind of detached amusement, like I’m a ukulele or something. “. . . Like a guy who doesn’t have scruples, when it comes to making money.”

  I don’t let my rhythm show it, but his words jar me. I slow a bit, unsure of what turn this situation is about to take.

  “What makes you say that?”

  He shrugs. “I’m not judging you. We could use guys like that because things are starting to get intense. Did you hear about the community garden on Gifford?”

  The question is gleeful and a little gossipy.

  My stomach drops as an image of Sydney on her hands and knees, miserably tending her plot, pops into my head.

  “Hear what?”

  “Some developer ganked it,” he says. “Slid right in with a new deed and was like, ‘Yeah, this is my shit now. In your face, bitch!’”

  I consider just knocking my fist right into his mouth to shut him up.

  No. I’ve backslid a lot in the last few months, but I don’t do that anymore.

  “For a second it looked like things might go sideways. The cops talked sense into everyone so things panned out, but that’s the part where we need more guys like you.” His hyperfriendly expression shifts just subtly enough around his mouth and eyes to becom
e hateful. “I wish I could’ve been there. I’ve put up with months of attitude from that—”

  “I thought the community garden already belongs to somebody,” I say. “Wouldn’t a developer just make an offer to whoever owns it?”

  William shakes his head. “I guess they could do that. There was a provisional deed given by the city because the lot had been vacant for years and was an eyesore. Blah, blah, blah. You can pay the person who owns it. But if you want to get it for cheap, all you have to do is find the original landowner or their next of kin, and buy it from them. They don’t even have to stick around. They can pop up, take a quick five K for prime Brooklyn real estate, and then return to wherever it is they’ve been lurking for years.”

  I’m no longer moving on the elliptical, just glaring down at the smug asshole standing in front of me and also kicking myself. “You saying this is a scam?”

  “People might call it that, but no one can prove anything. Or maybe they don’t want to prove anything.” He shrugs. “You know how it goes.”

  I stare at him.

  “Oh, you don’t? Okay, I’ll play along.”

  I hate this feeling, of someone dangling a threat in front of me and not just getting to the part where I can either hit them before they hit me, or run. “Did you want something?”

  “I know you need money. And a place to stay.”

  I should be surprised, but it seems Kim told multiple people that I was a bum and she was going to leave me. Why not the realtor?

  “I can’t make you do anything, but you need to really think about your future here. Don’t let your pride, or your penis, get in the way of getting paid, bro. Call me.”

  He holds up an imaginary cell phone beside his ear, then changes it to a thumbs-up pushed in my direction, and then walks off toward the weight-lifting room.

  I stand there, sweating and trying to connect two pieces of information that I really hope are not connected. Anyone could have taken an interest in the garden, right?

  I clamber off the elliptical, shower quickly, and jog back out into the gross humidity.

  When I get to the community garden, it looks like one of the old pictures of Brooklyn I’d seen, back when the empty lots were used as garbage dumps. All the plants have been ripped up. The benches and flower boxes and planter pots are in a pile against the wall of the adjacent building. Bits of chewed-up-looking leaves spot the ground with green, and absolute dread fills me.

  I think about Sydney’s voice cracking when she talked about not being able to maintain the garden. How over the last few days, she’s wilted like the plants she tried so fruitlessly to keep alive. How earlier today she sent me away because I was a bumbling idiot who didn’t understand how things worked around here.

  She must be wrecked right now.

  I suck in a deep breath and head to her front door. As I get to the bottom step, something sharp grazes the back of my ankle and tugs at my shoe. I turn to find Terry viciously tugging at his dog’s leash.

  “Toby, you little bastard!” He tugs hard again. His face is screwed up with anger, like the dog being a little monster is someone else’s fault and not his.

  “Hey, Terry,” I say out of reflexive politeness even though his dog just sank its teeth into the foam of my New Balances. He looks up at me, his gaze jumping back and forth between me and Sydney’s door. He grins.

  “I knew it.”

  This is a weird way of saying Sorry my untrained dog bit you.

  “I told Josie that you needed to just get this out of your system and then you’d be able to think straight. Even if you and Kim don’t work out, it’d be a shame if our numbers went down. We have an apartment for rent, you know.”

  “Okay.” I scratch my head and start turning to head up the stairs.

  Two Black guys walk slowly across the street and Toby surges forward, barking like he wants to take a chunk out of them. Terry loosens the leash instead of pulling it back, and the men decide to walk in the street. Terry nods his chin toward Sydney’s door again.

  “Look, just go get it out of your system. Don’t worry, we’ve all had that phase. Hell, Josie and I still travel down to the Caribbean every year to scratch that itch, though now that we live here . . . well, you clearly understand the convenience.”

  “What?” I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  He inclines his head toward the house. “Is she any good? I mean, that mouth looks like it could suck the shellac off a—”

  I drop my duffel bag to the ground, though the strap is still loosely between my fingers. “Watch what you say next, man.”

  Another thing I’d worked on while trying to fit in with Kim’s life was my temper, but my limits are being tested hard today.

  “Hey, hey, I was just being neighborly, no need to get touchy. Have fun!”

  He trots up the stairs with his dog.

  After taking a minute to get my anger whack-a-moled back into its proper place, I ring the doorbell to Sydney’s apartment a couple of times.

  No answer. Maybe I should just leave. But I’ve seen her crying alone in her apartment as life in the neighborhood went on around her too many times. She’d never invited Drea down, or gone to Mr. Perkins or Ms. Candace. Sydney always tries to soldier through alone—maybe she needs someone to come barging in, to know that someone cares enough to try, even if it is the annoying neighbor from across the street.

  I ring the doorbell one more time, telling myself that if she doesn’t come out, I’ll go home. The better to peep into her window and make sure she’s okay.

  There’s the sound of a dead bolt unlocking down the hall and then a sliver of light expands into a diffused glow, and Sydney steps into the hall. Her braids are in a sloppy ponytail on the side of her head and she’s wearing old basketball shorts and a white tank top.

  She’s walking slowly, hesitantly, and I can see the surprise in her face when she makes out it’s me.

  Surprise, but not disappointment.

  She opens the door halfway and says, “Hi,” with a voice that sounds like a bruise.

  “I just heard what happened,” I say. “To the garden. Are you okay?”

  She pushes past me a little to look back and forth down the street, and she’s warm and smells like some kind of vanilla-laced pastry and cigarettes. Sweet and bitter. The scent lingers as she pulls back. “Come in.”

  “Huh?”

  “Come in,” she says with an edge of annoyance that reassures me.

  She closes the door after me and locks both locks, then pads past me and moves through the hallway toward her apartment. I follow, the scent of cigarette smoke growing stronger the closer I get to the door.

  When I get inside the apartment, she repeats her closing and locking routine, jerkily tugging at the doorknob afterward as if checking the sturdiness of the locks.

  “You’re alone?”

  “Yes. Drea isn’t answering my calls. Mr. Perkins isn’t answering either, even though the block party is only a couple days away. Ms. Candace tried to come in, but I—I couldn’t talk to her.” She plods to the kitchen table and picks up the cigarette that sits balanced on the edge of a white ceramic ashtray with Coney Island written in tiny starfish along the side.

  Sydney smokes like the femme fatale pacing the hapless detective’s office in a noir film. She stares into the distance with unfocused pain in her eyes, lifting the cigarette to her mouth in a smooth arc and closing her lips around it, something that doesn’t seem practiced or contrived given her current state.

  I’m reminded that even though they stink and cause cancer, a cigarette is sexy as hell in the right hands.

  “Did you see the garden?” she asks on the exhale, then rolls her bottom lip with her teeth.

  “Yeah.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “It’s bad.” I try to break this as gently as I can while not giving her even a smidgen of hope. “They ripped up all the plots and piled up all the wood and other stuff. The garden is gone.”

&
nbsp; She sits down at the kitchen table—more like her legs give out and she slumps into the chair that was already pulled out. Tears well up in her eyes and her hand is shaking when she raises the cigarette this time.

  “Sydney?”

  She inhales and tears slip over her cheeks, suddenly, as if she’s been just holding them back this whole time. She doesn’t sob or make any sound, just sucks at that cigarette, then reaches for a napkin from the holder in the middle of the table and wipes roughly at her face as she sniffles.

  “Fuck, I’m tired.”

  “You’ve mentioned that.” I pull out a chair next to her at the table. “Tell me what’s going on, Sydney. Or if you don’t want to, just tell me what you need right now.”

  She looks at me, her eyes still glossy and her expression something like stoic.

  “Get the scotch out of that cabinet. Top shelf.” She doesn’t say please and I feel like that’s part of what she needs right now, too, so I just stand up and do it. I grab two glasses without her asking, then place them down and pour.

  “Why did you really get fired? For real?” Her mouth trembles, but her hand is steady when she raises the cigarette again. “I know you weren’t telling me the whole truth. I’m used to accepting half-truths from men. But right now, with all of this mess going on, I need to know.”

  I purse my lips and exhale hard through my nose, take the gulp of booze she didn’t.

  Then I tell her the truth.

  “They caught me trying to steal,” I say. “Because I got greedy. It wasn’t enough that I’d grifted a position people bust their asses for years to get. It didn’t matter that I was making more semihonest money than anyone in my family had ever made through any means, dishonest or otherwise. Once I had a little, I thought, ‘I can get more. And I’m gonna take it.’ Typical, if I’ve learned anything from you the last few days.”

  “Completely typical. Except you were stupid enough to get caught.” She giggles and I wonder if she wasn’t already drinking before I got here.

  “So you should know that my name isn’t Theodore, like you told Candace,” I say. “Well, it is. In Russian. Fyodor. Named after my dad, who was tangled up with stuff considerably more dangerous than white-collar crime. I went to live with him after I got into some trouble and had to drop out of high school, lay low. I worked construction with him, but also got tangled up with the stuff he was tangled up with. I guess this thing with Kim was my way of going straight.”