London from My Windows

by Mary Carter

Yes. She would take two boxes. They were on sale this week for only two pounds! She could get two bottles of selected wines for ten pounds. A tab at the top read: Favourites. She scanned the list.

  Loyd Grossman Pasta Sauce

  She didn’t know who Loyd Grossman was. Should she? Oh, what the heck. If he was important enough to have a sauce named after him, why, she was going to try it. If they named one after her would it be Septic Sauce?

  Round Pound Deals

  Who didn’t want a good round pound deal? Ava certainly did.

  Colour Persil. Small and Mighty.

  Ava hadn’t given a single thought to laundry. Mainly because she’d been raiding Beverly’s closet. Looked like she’d be washing all her clothes in the sink for the near future. Might as well get a bottle or three of Colour Persil.

  Heinz Ketchup and Beans

  No thanks. The last thing a shut-in needed to do was eat a load of beans. If she did, she’d definitely have to open the windows.

  Brioche Pasquier Croissants

  Hell yes! Eating foods she’d never heard of was educational. She was being a tourist. She could eat a Brioche Pasquier Croissant while looking out her window at all of London, sipping on Earl Grey tea. Watch the London Eye rotate. Take in the crowds in the West End. Ava didn’t care what anyone else thought. She was in a new and foreign place. She was observing life. Memorizing the points of interest, the shape of the buildings. She watched the world at sunrise when the first glint of morning light bounced off windows, and at sunset when the night sky leaked behind the skyline seconds before it started to glow. It was riveting. Sparkling. Exciting. New. Ava felt alive. A true show, morning and night, and Ava had a front-row seat. It changed day to day, never the same shades, or shapes, or pace. Life was ever constant, and there was something profoundly comforting about that.

  “If you knew how much I appreciated this, you’d let me stay,” Ava said aloud. She paused, in case Aunt Beverly wanted to rattle a teacup or the windows. “For an actress you’re awful quiet.” Ava suddenly had an urge to sketch Beverly. She’d find every picture she could of her aunt and sketch her. That’s how she got to know people. But she’d have to do that later; right now she needed to finish her food shopping.

  Emma’s Plain Creamed Fairies

  Now that sounded a bit homophobic. She ordered them anyway.

  Emma’s Rock Buns

  Personally Ava would have called them Emma’s Rock-Hard Buns. She ordered them.

  Flora Original Spread

  Copella Orange Juice with Juicy Bits

  They all sounded like porn. She was going to order everything that sounded foreign and dirty.

  Good 4 U Alfalfa & Radish Shoots

  Well, maybe not everything.

  Ginsters Cornish Pasty

  Now she was thinking of strippers and tiny chickens. Seriously. These people were sexed out.

  Gu Zillionaires Puds

  WTF? Where did she begin?

  Quorn Meat-Free Mince

  Minced what? Not meat, but still a mystery. No thanks. She’d stick with the beef.

  Sainsbury’s British Beef Roasting Joint. Taste the Difference.

  Ava would taste the difference all right; she would taste London. She could see London out her window and taste it. That was an adventure. That was progress. And British Boneless Pork Crackling Leg Joint. Large. Less than five pounds a kg. How much was a kg? Damn her lack of metric system upbringing. She’d just get it. Queenie could eat some; didn’t he say he was on a protein diet? Maybe she could order him an entire pig, roast it on a spit in the flat. I’d like to make amends. Have a sow.

  Here we go. Sainsbury’s British Whole Chicken with Pork, Sage & Onion Stuffing. Ooooh, Sainsbury’s Beef Sandwich Steak. They had everything. They were just begging her not to leave the flat.

  Mr. Brain’s Faggots

  What in the wide world of London were those? Mr. Brain’s Faggots. It sounded gross, and once again homophobic, and somewhat Jekyll and Hyde–ish, and there was no way she could resist buying them. She wished her father were here to laugh with her. Ava froze. She hadn’t thought so fleetingly of her father before. Not in an upbeat way like that. Strange. Maybe it was being here in Aunt Beverly’s home. Her mother was probably worried too. Ava should call her. She had been waiting until she’d actually successfully gone out and done something. She didn’t want to hear: I told you so. Mr. Brain’s Faggots. She definitely wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

  Ice Lollies

  Then again, maybe she was.

  Weight Watchers Beef Hotpot

  Now that was the way to lose weight.

  Duck and Game

  Bacon and Gammon

  What the hell was gammon? Ava was starting to get dizzy. Whatever it was, you could get it smoked, unsmoked, with pineapple and cheese, sticky honey glaze, or rosemary and thyme. Heck, maybe Simon and Garfunkel would come over and sing while you cooked. British this, British that. They were very patriotic about their food. Saute British Gems with Rustic Salsa Verde. FruitBroo Elderflower & Lime Iced Tea. British Gems Potatoes. The words on the site were starting to blur. Somewhere she remembered reading: From Field to Fork in 48 Hours. How about from field to flat in two hours, Sainsbury’s?

  Sainsbury’s Kiwi Fruit, Ripe & Ready. British Sweet Chili Chicken Wings—She was ordering too much, but she couldn’t stop clicking. She checked her cart. Over four hundred pounds. Four hundred pounds! Nearly half her credit limit. Wait. She’d order some of their canvas bags, too, for surely her order could choke a flock of seagulls. She didn’t know how many bags it would require, so she ordered twenty. Yowza. She’d just stop looking at the credit card total. It was for later anyway. Wasn’t that the whole point of it? Buy now, worry later? Oh, God. Over six hundred pounds now. Those damn gulls better appreciate it. Oh, she missed the red velvet cake with buttercream icing. She’d always wanted to try red velvet cake. It sounded so royal.

  Gobshite. Now this was British porn. She shouldn’t have ordered two of everything that sounded dirty. Or so much meat. Would they talk about her? That mysterious woman who orders boatloads every single time. We hear she never leaves the flat. Maybe she has a broken leg like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. If only Jasper would have lifted that wheelchair like she asked him to. She’d have to look into getting another one. She could probably do it online. Craigslist. As part of the experiment she could compare how people treated the Ava they thought was normal to the Ava in a wheelchair. It would be an eye-opening exposé. They would never glare at her, or shove past her, or whisper about her, or judge her, or ignore her, or scream at her if she were in a wheelchair. She alone would dare to throw open the velvet curtain and show the world the true Wizard.

  More aptly, she would sit on her stool eating red velvet cake. Sure beat “curds and whey.” Not an agoraphobic, but a social experimenter. Thank you, Ava, for doing what we could not. I hear she’s vowed to stay inside her flat for three hundred sixty-five days in a row, ordering everything off the Internet. Can you believe that? Poor girl, how ever will she manage? I would go stark raving mad. She’s so brave. So brave. I wish I had her fortitude.

  CHAPTER 20

  Vic showed up at the door, her face obscured behind a mountain of groceries. Behind her stood Deven, equally burdened.

  “You came,” Ava said. Deven glared at her, then dropped his bags and headed back down the stairs. Ava picked up the bags and stared after him. That was odd. “Is he mad at me?” She looked around Vic and yelled down the stairs, “I saved a lot of seagulls today!”

  “He said you could feed his entire village with your order,” Vic said. “The trolley’s overflowing. We couldn’t get it up the stairs.”

  Vic shoved her way in and dumped groceries on the kitchen counter. She put her hands on her hips. “Are you having a party?”

  “A party for one,” Ava said.

  “You’re a pig,” Vic said.

  Ava took a step back. Vic just said whatever came to her mind. Not a clue that it might hu
rt her feelings, or was it . . . not a care? Ava wasn’t a pig. Was she? “I’m conducting a social experiment.”

  Vic reached into her Sainsbury’s apron and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She went to the window and threw it open. “Mind if I smoke, luv?” Ava did mind. But she didn’t want Vic to leave.

  “Make sure you blow it out the window,” Ava said.

  Vic lit her cigarette and sat on the windowsill without any hesitation. She turned to Ava and studied her.

  “What kind of social experiment?”

  “The kind where you stay inside your flat for an entire year and order everything online.”

  “Christ. That’s idiotic.”

  “And brave.”

  Vic shook her head, then blew smoke out her nose. “Where’d you disappear to the last time? One second you’re kissing the ground, and the next, poof. Vanished.”

  “I ran into Jasper.”

  “Jasper?” Vic’s voice rose an octave.

  Ava wanted Vic to leave. Where was Deven with the rest of her groceries? She headed for the kitchen to start putting them away. “My barrister.”

  “Ooo la, la. I didn’t realize you had your own barrister.” Vic pushed herself to a standing position and began walking about the kitchen as Ava put away groceries. Vic touched everything, with nail-bitten hands, infecting every surface with snaky trails of smoke. What had Ava been thinking? She didn’t know this girl from Adam. She wasn’t very nice. Not nice at all. Where was Deven? “Whose flat is this?” Vic held up a carving knife and ran her finger along the blade. Ava wanted to yell at her to put it down.

  “Sort of mine,” Ava said. Vic’s head snapped to attention. Uh-oh. Had Ava said something she shouldn’t have? Don’t talk to strangers, don’t talk to strangers, don’t talk to strangers.

  “Sort of? It’s either yours or it’s not, isn’t it?”

  “Can you please put down the knife and smoke the rest of that out the window?”

  Vic put the knife up to her own throat as if she were holding herself captive. “If you tell me how you sort of own this flat.”

  The Mob was alive and well in London. “My aunt Beverly owned this flat. She’s bequeathed it to me—but there are conditions.”

  Vic tossed the knife in the sink. Even though Ava had seen it happening, the clatter still made her jump. Vic stepped toward the window, never taking her eyes off Ava. She sat on the sill, inhaled, and blew the smoke out her nose. Ava wondered if the smoke would eventually rust her nose-piercing. “What conditions?”

  Deven entered, arms outstretched like Frankenstein, four bags hanging on each limb. He stared at Ava as he let his arms drop and the bags slid to the floor.

  Ava put on a bright smile. “Thank you.”

  Deven did not smile back. “This would feed my village for a month.”

  “It’s for science,” Ava said.

  “You said it would feed your village for a week!” Vic yelled from the windowsill.

  Deven shook his fist. “Possibly one year.”

  “Doesn’t quite have the hang of bartering, does he?” Vic winked at Ava.

  “Would you like some water?” Ava asked Deven. He nodded, then went to the kitchen sink, turned on the faucet, and drank directly out of it.

  “I have glasses,” Ava said.

  He held up his hand and waved her away.

  “What conditions?” Vic said.

  Ava kept staring at Deven. She wanted him to stop that. She got out a glass and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, swallowed, and then started to cough.

  “You’ve choked ’im,” Vic said. “For every seagull you save you lose one poor Indian boy from across the street.”

  Ava pounded him on the back. “Sorry. Sorry.” Deven wiped his mouth with his sleeve and walked over to Vic. The water was still running. Who were these people? She shut it off and put the glass away. The entire floor was covered with groceries. She ordered all this? Deven was right. There was enough here to feed a village for a month. What kind of person was she? She couldn’t eat all this.

  “Bloody hell. If you don’t tell me what conditions I’m going to jump out the bloody window,” Vic said.

  “Me too,” Deven said.

  Oh, please do. Ava didn’t want to tell them now. But she didn’t see a way out. “This is going to sound silly.”

  “Oh, believe me, it already does, luv.”

  “If I want to keep this flat I have to live here for one year—”

  Vic slapped her thighs and jumped off the window. Deven stared at her ass. “Is that all? I could live in a bathtub full of urine in the middle of Sussex for a year if it meant I owned a flat like this.”

  “I as well,” Deven said. “I would even supply the urine.”

  Ava wrinkled up her nose. “There’s also a list.”

  “A list?”

  The more Ava tried to make things sound like no big deal, the more Vic zeroed in on them. “A list of things I must do within ninety days—well, sixty-six days now, or is it sixty-five? Or Queenie will inherit the flat instead.”

  “Who the hell is Queenie?”

  Ava had spent the past few weeks wondering the same thing, but it sounded kind of mean when Vic said it and she felt bad. “He’s my flatmate.”

  “You’re competing for this flat with your flatmate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is this going to be on telly? Like Big Brother?”

  “God, no.”

  “Pity. Show me the list.” Ava hesitated. She didn’t like how intense Vic was getting. “Go on.”

  Ava held up her finger. She went to the bathroom where the list was taped to the mirror above the sink. She hoped reading it every time she was in there would somehow reinforce it, help her visualize doing it, seep into her skin and erase all her fears. God, this was a mistake. Vic was going to chew her up and spit her out. Then again, maybe that’s what Ava needed. A little tough love. A kick in the butt. Ava grabbed the list, took it to the kitchen, and handed it to Vic.

  One by one Vic read the list items out loud. Deven nodded along, smiling in approval. Vic finished the list, then crumpled it up and tossed it across the room.

  “Hey,” Ava said. She ran to retrieve it.

  “You’re joking me, aren’t you?” Vic said. She stubbed out her cigarette on the windowsill and left it there. Ava wanted to swat it off. If she happened to push Vic out the window at the same time it would be purely by accident. “What kind of a competition is this? You could knock these out in one day.”

  “No. I couldn’t.” She just had to ask them to leave. That was it. She never had a problem asking Cliff to leave, so why was she finding it so hard with Vic? She was afraid of her, that’s why. Vic was scrappy. She’d probably gotten in a million physical fights in her life. She could bust Ava’s lip open.

  “Two days at the most then,” Vic said.

  Ava eyed the pack of cigarettes. “Can I bum one?”

  “Ah course,” Vic said. Ava didn’t normally smoke, but what a brilliant idea. Smoke out Queenie. Payback for emptying out the fridge and cupboards. Ava lit a cigarette, inhaled, and choked. The coughing went on forever.

  “Crikey,” Vic said. “You’re a virgin.”

  “I just want to smoke out my flatmate,” Ava said. The instant she said it, she realized that it wasn’t true. A few minutes in Vic’s presence and she missed Queenie. Fond of him even. She rushed to the kitchen and ran her cigarette under water. “I forgot. He’s allergic.”

  “The guy competing for your flat?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you care then? Even more reason to smoke, isn’t it?”

  “It’s probably better to get along while we’re living under the same roof.”

  “This is because of your problems, isn’t it? Your panic attacks?”

  “Yes,” Ava said. Vic had known this all along. She was trying to force Ava to say it out loud. She suddenly remembered Queenie’s lucky charm. “Did you find a gold coin on a chain?”


  “A gold coin on a chain?” Vic repeated.

  “The day I came into the store.”

  “Sounds important,” Vic said. “Valuable?”

  “No,” Ava said. “It’s just a lucky charm.”

  “It’s not real gold?” Vic said.

  “No,” Ava said. “It’s not.” Did that mean Vic had it? “There’s a reward.” Ava studied Vic, but the girl didn’t move a muscle. Not so much as a blink or a twitch. “Have you seen it?”

  “The coppers might have it,” Deven said.

  “Have what?” Ava said.

  “Your lucky charm.” He glanced at Vic. “They almost took my fertilizer.”

  Vic smiled. “That’s shit. Get it?”

  “I don’t understand,” Ava said.

  “Fertilizer is shit,” Vic said. “Horse shit, cow shit, pig shit—”

  “Not that. I don’t understand why the coppers would have my lucky charm.” Ava looked at Deven. He tried to stare back but ended up blinking ferociously.

  “Vic called them and told them I could be a terrorist,” he blurted.

  “You did what?” Ava said.

  Vic grinned. “I wanted to see if they’d come.”

  “They did,” Deven said, nodding. “Quick and in force.”

  “I ran away,” Vic said.