No Mary Janes stick out from beneath them. She finds a small dose of relief, but it fizzles fast when she looks off to one side. The doll is on the floor.
Several feet away from the table.
Facedown, limbs splayed.
As if someone gave it an angry shove.
She has to take action. She hurries downstairs to Aileen’s office and explains about the door graffiti and other frightening incidents.
“Did you call the police?” Aileen asks.
“This last thing just happened.”
“And the other times?”
Riley hesitates for a beat, then lies. “All they did was take a report.”
Aileen’s lips collapse into a hard magenta line.
Riley says, “If you don’t believe me, check it out for yourself.” She glimpses her watch. “Look, I’m going to be late for an interview. You’ve got a security issue and property damage upstairs, and something needs to be done about it. I’d like to have my lock changed after your people remove the graffiti.”
Aileen lets out a dramatic sigh as if having to take care of the matter, and do a little extra work, might kill her. “Fine,” she grudgingly yields. “I’ll have someone go up and have a look.”
Riley takes off, hoping she can still make it on time for her interview.
45
The job opening is for a waitress, all right.
A waitress at Francine’s Pancake House. As in everything covered in sticky syrup. As in the place is dark, dingy, and outdated. Orange vinyl clings to booths fronted by faux wood tables of a peculiar color that doesn’t grow on trees. Even within the closed doors of this rear office, the odor of burned pancake grease and stale syrup hangs heavy on the air.
But it doesn’t appear as though Francine enjoys her own pancakes. The woman is rail thin, so much that the flesh hangs off her arms like sleeves on a distressed leather bomber jacket. Wiry hair the color of an old gray T-shirt washed too many times and no particular style. Beady eyes, round and gleaming. If there’s any joy to be found, it’s trapped beneath the skin on her weather-beaten body.
Riley stretches an arm across the desk to shake Francine’s hand, which feels much like grasping a twig. So far, Francine doesn’t seem to recognize Riley. Not many have lately, which gives her hope that the media coverage may indeed be falling away.
“A friend mentioned you’re looking to hire,” Riley starts off.
“And your friend would be?”
“Samantha Light.”
Francine’s beady eyes get squinty. “I don’t know who that is.”
“She told me you were friends.”
“I don’t know who that is,” Francine again says, this time like she’s correcting an obstinate child.
Good Lord.
“In any event,” Francine goes on, “the job is minimum thirty hours per week, but you can fit in forty if you’d like.”
How about zero?
“Do you have experience waiting tables?”
“Yes. I did it all through college.”
“When can you start?”
She’d rather not start at all. This place is the worst. But at the moment, being picky is not an option. The bills are piling up, and next month’s rent will be due soon. So Riley tells her she’s available to start right away.
“Very well, then,” Francine says, her smile unpleasant, as if the only thing holding it open is a sour lemon wedge. She stretches her arm to a metal cabinet a few feet away from her desk. She takes out an orange polyester uniform with a brown zipper running down the front and the most hideous floral collar Riley has ever seen. Francine says, “Your shift starts at noon.”
“You mean today?”
“Did I say tomorrow?”
“No, of course not . . . I was just making su—”
“Do you want the job or not?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
Francine shoves the uniform at her.
Riley accepts it. She walks toward the door.
“One more thing.”
She turns back.
Francine nods at Riley’s purse. “We have no lockers here for belongings. Unless you want them to get ripped off, I’d recommend bringing only your ID and keys onto the premises. You can keep them in a pocket during your shift.”
Great. All this wonderment and a band of thieves working beside me.
46
Francine’s Pancake House is very noisy, very chaotic, and, of course, very sticky.
And Riley’s stomach feels achy, probably no coincidence.
Only hours into her first shift and she knows that she’s living a new nightmare. Nobody seems to recognize her, so there’s that, but it still doesn’t diminish how disgusting the place is.
“Excuse me!” a woman sitting with her family shouts, hands flailing. “We’ve been here for twenty minutes! What do we have to do to get some service?”
Riley knows for a fact that they walked in five minutes ago. Still she nods and hurries toward them. The couple’s children are playing under the table, ramming their bodies into the legs and giggling and screeching. Silverware rattles. Syrup dispensers shuffle and knock together. The parents ignore the unruly behavior, even as a spoon shoots out from under the table, then a fork with a wodge of bright-purple chewing gum stuck to it. Next comes another round of tiny giggles.
Riley draws a breath. She puts a pen to her pad, waits for the adults to order, but has serious doubts whether she’ll be able to hear anything over the racket those kids are making. Not a problem. The woman is—without any effort at all—fully capable of shouting over her children’s commotion. The ones she’s still ignoring. Between the banging, and the mother’s loud mouth, Riley’s ears start to ring. Two orders of pancakes and two of the Captain Flapjack Meals later, she can’t walk away from that table fast enough.
“Hey, lady!” a guy yells from the corner table.
Riley bustles over.
The man points to his young boy. The child is in tears, practically hyperventilating while simultaneously blowing snot bubbles through his nose. Brown syrup oozes from both corners of his mouth like viscous motor oil. His fingers are glued to the table by a gooey mess.
“You see him?”
She’d have to be blind not to. She nods.
“My kid’s upset!”
Hard to miss that, too.
Dad shoves three empty syrup dispensers across the table at Riley. “There’s no mango, rhubarb, or banana left.”
Mucus Monster has stopped his hysterics, now pacifying himself by sucking on three fingers from each hand while a string of drool slides down one wrist and lands on the table. It makes Riley queasy. She takes the dispensers, tells the man she’ll be right back with refills.
And immediately hears someone holler her name. She whirls around and loses her grip on one of the empty syrup jars. It hits the ground running, rolls along the carpet, and finds a new home under another table. The two women sitting there look at the jar, look derisively at her, then go back to their meals.
“Riley!” she hears again. It’s Francine, the Pancake Queen, who has obviously witnessed the Lone Syrup Jar Carpet Race, as evidenced by her pinched lips and reprimanding scowl. Pointing her twiggish finger at the table beside her, she says, “The busboys are busy at other stations. I need you to wipe this down. Right away.”
“In a moment,” Riley says. “I have to find more syrup for—”
“Now,” Francine barks.
Riley considers the man and boy still impatiently waiting for their syrup. She raises an index finger and mouths, I’ll be right back, then rushes toward the table in need of cleaning.
It’s a mess. Not only has someone spilled an open jar of syrup onto the table, but the stuff has also managed to hit the chair and gunky carpet on its descent. Riley throws down the only rag she’s got, then hustles toward the kitchen to grab another. On her way there, two tables filled with customers try to flag her down. Unable to tolerate this pancake pandemonium any longer, s
he ignores them and keeps moving.
Instead of the kitchen, Riley speeds into the employee bathroom, closes the door, and tries to recapture some stability.
This special place in hell is beyond tolerable. She feels as if she’ll die if she has to suck in another breath of the sugary, grease-spattered air. But she can’t afford to quit. Not yet, anyway. Not unless she finds something better. Until then, she’s stuck in this ptomaine tavern.
“Where are you? There are customers waiting!” Francine demands from outside the door.
Riley has never heard of anyone being fired for using the bathroom. It falls somewhere under the header of human rights.
Hopefully, this place at least adheres to those guidelines.
47
By early evening, Riley’s feet are numb. A blister is emerging behind one ankle.
And she smells like a pancake.
Arriving at her apartment, she’s relieved to find the graffiti has been removed. The locks have not been changed, but at least Aileen has stepped up to take some action. Since the office is already closed, she’ll need to follow up on the new locks tomorrow. In the meantime, she’s safe for the night, thanks to her security bar.
As soon as she’s inside, she checks the side table. The doll is where she left it, but that still doesn’t explain what happened earlier today.
Out of fear or paranoia or . . . she doesn’t even know anymore, she goes to her window, grabs her binoculars off the chair, and tries to see if anyone suspicious is lurking around her building. Nothing out of the ordinary.
She lowers the binoculars, then lurches backward.
It’s the apartment across the way, the one where the curtain snatcher lives, that has caught her attention. She loses her grip on the binoculars, dropping them onto the floor.
Is that someone standing and looking at me?
She doesn’t know, can’t be sure. The sun is setting, and its reflection forbids a clear shot, revealing only shadows behind the glass.
The figure moves closer to the window, and Riley barely makes out an outline of someone, possibly male.
Wait . . . What’s on his head?
For no apparent reason, the watcher nods.
And ice water spills down Riley’s spine.
The person changes stance, and something a lot like hot, tempered steel, something that could slice to the bone, cuts through her. The watcher’s head position, the overall body language—a hand planted firmly on each hip—leave her with an unsettling sense the guy is looking boldly, defiantly, right at her.
Then he leans in and, with a fell swoop, closes the drapes.
That apartment is on the second floor and the opposite side of the building from Samantha’s. So whose is it?
She needs to find out.
She runs out her door, locks it up, and flies down the hallway.
Outside, Samantha’s car sits in its spot, which will make this mission more difficult. She’ll need to work quickly, invisibly, to avoid running into her. She looks up at the mysterious apartment, sees light behind the closed drapes, and her heart pumps out a driving beat.
After punching in the security code, she enters the building. In the lobby, she makes a quick visual sweep to be sure Samantha isn’t anywhere around. At the elevators, she runs into a maintenance guy—or, rather, the maintenance guy’s butt crack. He’s trying to fix a light socket on the wall. She observes the leather tool belt lying near his feet. She sidles closer, makes sure nobody’s watching, slips a screwdriver out from the belt, and sidles away some. She shoves the tool into an inside pocket of her jacket as Maintenance Guy turns his head to look at her. She gives him a disarming expression, then enters the elevator.
She walks out onto the second floor, then cautiously advances toward the apartment in question. She grips the screwdriver under her jacket; whoever’s in there could be extremely dangerous.
At the doorway, she notices a flicker of light from the bottom, then the peephole turns dark, and the hairs on her scalp rise. A pervading sense of fright follows. With mere inches between them, her watcher stands on the other side, observing her.
A blast of warm air grazes the back of her neck. She gulps and whirls around in time to see a man advancing past her. He smiles a hello. She acts as if she belongs there, purses her lips, and scrutinizes him with mistrust.
The man throws her a befuddled look, and she watches him disappear around the next corner.
She returns to the darkened peephole and finds her attitude has shifted. No longer is she frightened—she’s indignant. The watcher is a problem, and she has to take care of this.
“I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE!” she shouts, pounding on the door. “COME OUT AND SHOW YOUR COWARDLY FACE!”
No response, so she pounds harder, yells louder, but still nothing.
She considers the opening beneath the door. She crouches down to peek under it and finds what looks like a pair of black work boots aimed directly at her. Her lungs go airless. She stands in time to see a security guard exit the elevator and head in her direction.
Time to go.
The guard notices her as he comes down the hallway.
She speed-walks away.
48
Another restless night.
Riley’s stomach hurts again, sleep deprivation is becoming a way of life, and stress is taking a toll on her body.
Pull it together.
She has to get a grip on herself.
Get out. Stay strong. Trust your truth.
Take action.
She hops out of bed, tries to tame her hair, then throws on some clothes.
Downstairs, she makes a crosscut toward Aileen’s office. The door is open, so she enters.
Aileen sits behind an old industrial tanker desk, bulky and gray. She rapidly keys in numbers on an office calculator that spits out paper just as fast. While it seems that Aileen is aware of Riley’s presence, the woman doesn’t seem particularly interested by it.
Riley makes noise with her feet.
Aileen stops, raises her gaze, and says, “Ms. Harper. How can I help you?”
“I want to thank you for taking care of my door so quickly. I really appreciate it.”
Aileen doesn’t answer that one. She only looks confused.
“For removing the graffiti?” Riley reminds her.
“Oh.” Aileen places one hand over the other and rests them on her desk. “I did send the janitor up to take care of it, but he said there was nothing there.”
“Of course there was.” Riley lets out a nervous, irritated laugh. “It was written across the door in blazing red. I can’t see how anyone could have missed that.”
Aileen steeples her penciled-in brows, shakes her head.
“Well, someone removed it,” Riley says, “and I doubt it was one of the neighbors.”
Aileen gives her a condescending look, and Riley suppresses the urge to lash out.
“I know what I saw. I’m not making it up,” she insists, realizing that, in retrospect, she should have taken a picture of the damned door, but she was too worked up at the time to think about it.
“Well, whatever did or didn’t happen,” Aileen says, “it no longer seems to be a problem, so I guess we’re all good, right?”
“No, we’re not all good. I requested a lock change. Someone’s been breaking into my apartment.”
“And I’m going to deny that request.”
“What? Why?”
Aileen tosses up her hands. “Because there’s nothing to prove a break-in has occurred. That’s why. Besides, you’ve already changed the lock on your own. Without prior approval. Incidentally, I’ll need a copy of the new key immediately.”
“But that lock isn’t doing any good. I changed it before this latest incident.”
Aileen rotates her head almost completely sideways. “You mean the graffiti that appears to have never happened, that nobody else witnessed?”
“I saw it. Isn’t that enough?”
Aileen’s cynical exp
ression asks Riley if she really wants an answer to that question.
“I can’t believe this! If you refuse to change the lock, I’ll have no other choice but to do it again myself.”
“You most certainly will not,” Aileen says so sharply that her lipstick-stained dentures clack. “And any further unauthorized alterations to the apartment will result in a citation.”
“Then what am I supposed to do? Wait until someone breaks in and actually hurts me this time?”
“If you can document that a break-in has occurred, I’ll be happy to reexamine the situation.” She looks at the door, looks at Riley. “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”
Riley’s only response is a scowl.
On her way back toward the stairs, she angrily mutters, “My living conditions are shitty. My job is shitty. And my life? That’s a complete mess.”
A passing neighbor observes Riley’s external self-debate and slips her an uneasy glance.
She pays him no mind. She wants to scream. Cry, even.
But instead she decides that it’s time to take a leap, make some changes.
I’m also trying to help you recognize you can become empowered in situations where you feel powerless.
Patricia said it. Now Riley’s putting it into action.
49
Riley sits in Zoey’s chair and stares at her reflection in the mirror. Scissors flutter and snap while clumps of hair drop to the floor all around her—hair that’s no longer familiar, hair with a completely new color.
Samantha’s color.
Though she at first resisted the idea of having the same style, recent circumstances and events have changed her thinking. At the time, she wasn’t able to consider anything other than defending herself. But now she realizes that Samantha actually made a few good points. It was her delivery that stank.
There’s no question that Samantha is beautiful. There’s also no question that she has great taste and style. Riley wants to feel the way Samantha does, feel that air of confidence. No, she doesn’t just want it; she craves it. If this new style makes her feel even a fraction better about herself, then why not give it a try? Samantha told Riley she needs a fresh new start, and these last few days have been lousy enough to prove the point. A drastic hair departure could feel like hitting the reset button.
What She Doesn't Know: A Psychological Thriller Page 13