Wanted: Single Rose

by Skye, Mav

  Where were the other residents? With all the ruckus, he’d expect folks to be out, snooping around, wondering what all the racket was. But even then, he didn’t see them much, even on a normal day, not even the dramatic Mrs. Chow. The ones who’d stayed at Spindler’s Roost after the demolition announcement were either too broke to care or mentally ill.

  Velva squeezed his hand occasionally and strolled like a lover in a garden. She pointed at this and that, making a remark about the lovely shell pink painting, the hall lights and how they cast a tempting demonic glow.

  Sir Sun sweat beneath his best shirt—sleeves covered in vomit—and tie, retied and arranged by Velva. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. Demonic glow? Who says that?

  On she chattered, about the TV noise coming from the apartment down from Mr. Fiddler’s. About how she’d heard there’d be a Halloween party there on the ground floor and if he knew the college student who lived there.

  Sir Sun wanted to take Velva by her shoulders and shake her. Right here, right now like they did in the old noir 50’s flicks. This is about survival of the fittest, baby. This is about those who get out alive and those who get out dead. Mr. Fiddler was most likely dead, and the madman was closing in on them as they dawdled in the hall. They needed to run to their freedom—to the normal streetlights and the normal people driving home from restaurants and working late from jobs. The normal people with their normal girlfriends and normal boyfriends cuddled on the couch reading poetry or fiddling with iPads or whatever it is normal people do these days.

  Finally, they reached the building’s main entrance. The two glass doors no longer reflected the streetlights outside, but a manic yellow glow. A nearly full moon sat above the city in pure radiance. Sir Sun wondered briefly if he would turn into a werewolf at midnight, and reached for the door handle.

  “What if that door is locked, too?” Velva laughed. “What if they’re all locked, Timothy?”

  Sir Sun raised his eyebrow at her. “Not funny.” He grasped the door handle and yanked. It didn’t open. He pulled again. Again with two hands.

  Velva patted his shoulder and pointed with her blood red nail.

  A cardboard sign had been taped to the door. In bright red marker it said:

  Sir Sun laughed, took out his hanky and wiped the sweat at his forehead. “Of course, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Velva.

  He tugged at the other door. But, it didn’t open either. He used two hands and yanked, pried. It didn’t budge.

  Velva snickered.

  He yanked again, and again, feeling panic. “Look, is this some type of joke?” As the words popped out, he saw something moving behind him in the reflection of the glass. A pale figure in sunglasses and a black trench coat. It held something in its hand.

  Velva spun around. “Timothy!”

  And that is when he heard a loud thunk! All the streetlights went dark. The moon melted away. Sir Sun felt a numbness creep down the back of his neck to his spine, spreading down from one limb to another.

  He collapsed to the floor. His shirt and pressed pants definitely done for. The back of his head throbbed and pulsed loudly beneath the veil of his half drawn eyes, Velva’s face appeared.

  She leaned over him like a blade of grass overwrought with dew. She smelled of strawberries and cream.

  “Oh God, Timothy? Are you okay? That man popped out of nowhere!” Her face closed over his. Her red lips drew back. Her teeth gleamed like sharp white petals.

  But only questions played on repeat in his mind, over and over. He breathed, “How did you know it was locked?”

  Her smoky voice whispered in his ear. “Game on, Darling.”

  His eyes closed, and Sir Sun’s world went dark.

  7

  Mum’s the Word

  Sir Sun awoke to the sound of a telephone ringing, over and over. He stirred and opened his eyes. His first thought: Where was she? Where was his violent violet?

  The room was dark. He lay on a bed. With the bedroom door ajar, the hallway light peeked through, highlighting the framed photograph of bleeding hearts above his dresser. He recognized his housecoat hanging on the back of the door.

  Perhaps it all had been a dream, but by the throb in the back of his head, he knew it wasn’t. How had he gotten here? And most importantly, where was Velva?

  The telephone rang and rang in the living room. He tried to sit up, but anxiety built in his chest. He gasped for breath, fearing he was having a heart attack. He clenched and unclenched his fist and focused on the photograph—the bleeding heart. He let his gaze slip down the red heart shaped petals, the pink sheathed underneath and finally the white slippers surrounding the pistil, shaped like an upside-down champagne bottle.

  His hands relaxed and breathing slowed. Sir Sun remembered one of his customers telling him about anxiety once, how it feels like your heart is exploding inside your chest. Little by little, his heart slowed. He closed his eyes, counted to ten, then rose from the bed and stood. He flipped on his bedside table lamp and peered at the clock, 11:15 p.m. He’d been out for two hours. He eyed the room. No Velva, but, man did he have a headache.

  He stumbled to the bedroom door, through the hallway, glanced in the kitchen (empty) and swung around into the living room.

  His 1920’s vintage candlestick phone sat prim and proper on an end table beside his favorite green chair. He rushed to it, sat in the chair and paused before answering. What if it was Velva? Had she smacked him upside the head at the door? Or was it the shadow man he’d seen in the glass’s reflection? Sir Sun couldn’t remember much. Perhaps…perhaps it had all been an accident. A misunderstanding?

  He tapped his finger on his jaw. What if the person on the other line wasn’t Velva, perhaps it was the police looking for the Super. What would he say? The phone rang again, and he drew the receiver from the switch hook and held it to his ear. He spoke into the small microphone. “Hello?”

  “Timothy?”

  It was her, his Velva. “Sir Sun,” he corrected.

  “Mister Sunshine, whatever, listen—are you okay?”

  He paused a beat, wiping a speck of dust on the table away with his thumb. “Why’d you hit me?”

  “Hit you? Why, Darling, don’t be ridiculous. Why would I do that? It was that man in the trench coat! He came running down the hall and clobbered you over the head with a flashlight. You passed out at the entrance door.”

  Okay, so the shadow man had been one of the men in the trench coats. “Did you see his face?”

  “He was wearing dark sunglasses and a brimmed black hat. I could tell he was a man. That’s all. I tried to smack him with my purse, but he was quick as a ninja and was on the elevator in a blink.”

  He spoke louder than he had intended into the speaker. Sir Sun tried to recall the last moment before it went dark. “But… but I remember you saying, ‘Game on.’”

  “Oh, Sir Sun! What shall I ever do with you, you naughty man?”

  Sir Sun sat back in his green chair. He had remembered it. What did she mean? And the Super… “Did you call the authori—?”

  Velva spoke over him. “Now, listen up, you. I called the police, and they found the Super.”

  “Mr. Fiddler?” Sir Sun breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, oh thank heavens. Thank you, Velva. Thank you.” The fuzzy gray-haired man in the red cap appeared in his mind’s eye. He might have been a grump, but he was always prompt and attempted to fixed what he could in a timely manner, save the elevators. According to Sara from the diner, Mr. Fiddler had worked at Spindler’s Roost for over thirty years. The upkeep had taken its toll. It wouldn’t have been right for Mr. Fiddler to be harmed in the very place he kept with such loving care.

  Velva paused on the other end of the line. “Well, they didn’t find all of him.”

  Sir Sun choked into the speaker. “What?”

  “They found Mr. Fiddler’s hand in his own freezer. I was there. I saw it.”

  Sir Sun was speechless.

  �
�Look we need to talk. Can I come up?”

  Sir Sun ran his hand over his bald spot and scanned the apartment. Velva’s wine glass still sat on the dining table, which made him think of Mr. Fiddler’s butcher’s knife. He felt his back pocket.

  “Timothy? Are you still there? Hello?”

  The knife was gone. Had it fallen out of his pocket when he had passed out, or had someone removed it? Perhaps that same someone was still in the place. Chills shot down his spine. Poor Mr. Fiddler—what had that note on his TV said? Mr. Fiddler bled the cat, he will soon you.

  But Mr. Fiddler was dead. Velva had said she’d been there when they found him. Or was he dead, maybe his kidnapper was sawing off chunks of him, leaving them around as clues? He shivered at the thought. He didn’t want to think of Mr. Fiddler dead—not just yet.

  His mind flicked to other questions, how did Velva get him back to his apartment? Too many questions, not enough answers.

  Velva persisted. “Timothy? Answer me. Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” He shook his head. “No.” They needed to meet. It was too dangerous for her to come to Spindler’s Roost. He thought about the entrance doors. Would they be locked again? Or was that an illusion before he passed out. “Let’s meet at a diner. I don’t think it’s safe here.”

  “Diner? You’re so old fashioned, Timothy.”

  Sir Sun blushed. Her voice was smooth feminine honey. He thought of bees and nectar, sunshine and—photosynthesis. Photosynthesis turned him on. “Yeah, I get that sometimes. How about around the corner from here, Sara’s. She’s open ‘til two.”

  “Sara’s it is. Midnight. And Sir Sun?”

  “Yes?” He pictured her dark, dark eyes, almost violet. A mystery.

  Her voice, all sultry sunshine, purred, “Bring protection.” She hung up.

  He slowly slid the receiver back to the switch hook. Protection? His first thought, naturally, was a condom. But, he didn’t think that was what she meant. There was a killer on the loose; sex should be the furthest thought from his mind.

  He stood and pushed his hands into his trouser pockets. He didn’t own a gun. Never felt the need. He paced the living room, tapping his jaw, thinking, then strode straight to his bedroom.

  He went to his dresser and pulled the top drawer open. Under his carefully folded tighty-whities (as the sales women at Penny’s gently teased him) were his prized Felco pruning shears sheathed in black leather.

  He reached in and touched the smooth leather holster his Uncle had given to him years ago. Uncle Jeff had been a prize-winning gardener, exalted by botany lovers and critically acclaimed by Better Homes and Gardens back in the fifties. Uncle Jeff had given them to Sir Sun when he was eight, carefully explaining the privilege of owning such a valuable object. How the Felco could trim the most precious honeysuckle bush, and shear the deadheads off a delicate columbine stem.

  He hadn’t much need for it these days. He stayed away from gardens as much as possible.

  Sir Sun’s hands quivered at the touch. His botany obsession began with this object. He picked it up. The picture underneath caught his attention. A photograph he’d snapped of Miss O’Hara from the trampoline of his family home. She had been bent over her prized impatiens and begonias. Her denim shorts had riden up her butt cheeks, exposing long, pale thighs. Her petite gardening apron was slipped about her small waist. It didn’t hide her open coral blouse or the teal bra beneath. She glanced backed toward the camera, her crimson curls tousled about her cheekbones, a secret smile on her full lips, in her eyes. She had brought a finger to her mouth as if reminding him to keep it a secret.

  A secret he’d always wanted to unveil.

  And so did the detectives when they found the picture. He’d told them he’d been jumping on the trampoline taking pictures of things like the sky, the trees, oh and the neighbors. And it was true, as they would soon discover. He had taken several pictures that day while on the trampoline. He was just a kid with a camera jumping his heart away. He could tell they didn’t completely buy it, but with his parents to vouch for him (He’s such a good boy, Officer!), they didn’t have any grounds to accuse him of murder or even make him a person of interest.

  Sir Sun could still make out details in the old, worn picture. A smudge of dirt smeared across her brow. The red, pink, and purple impatiens—lush and vivacious as the soft inner lining of a woman’s—he breathed deeply.

  In Miss O’Hara’s hand were the shears, his Felco shears, the one his Uncle gave him, the ones Sir Sun had let her borrow.

  Sir Sun unbuttoned the top of his shirt and loosened his silk tie. He touched the picture, swiping Miss O’Hara’s face as he had done so often before, and as he did he could hear the impatiens screaming their tortured cries at him. Their voices rising, rising to a high-pitched howl. He felt himself harden and rise: an opera of pain and guilt, pleasure—building to a release of waterfall, sea, and sun. Of stabbing and purging, a pocket watch winding, time rising, the present falling, all falling into Miss O’Hara.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  The rapping drew him out of the fantasy.

  Knock, knock, knock. The front door.

  Sir Sun opened his eyes and released the picture between his fingers. Miss O’Hara still smiled, but this time it was a knowing smile. As if she knew what he had been just thinking. But she had known, hadn’t she? All those years ago.

  He flipped the picture upside down and hid it back beneath the stacked underwear. He snatched out his sheathed shears and quickly buckled it onto his belt. He untucked the front of his black shirt to cover it, and then approached the front door, cautiously.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  He glanced into the peephole, saw no one, and stepped back from the door waiting.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  He flipped open the buckle on the holster and wrapped his fingers around the red grips of his shears. He knew the keen razor edge of its inner blades, the crisp ride line, the savage tippy top point, sharper than any skinning knife. The shears were like a gun; something to treasure, to be in awe of, and to wield very, very carefully.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  Silence on the other side of the door.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  “Velva?”

  No response.

  It had to be the men in sunglasses and trench coats. They were back to finish what they started.

  Sir Sun was ready for them this time.

  He unlocked the top bolt and peered through the door. Ready to stab the kitty murderer, the Fiddler snatcher, the….

  Pale skin and midnight hair peeked back at him through the crack in the door. Dark eyelashes blinked. She said, “Mis’ Sun? You there, Mis’ Sun? It is Ah Lam, Mis’ Sun.”

  Sir Sun sighed, holstered his shears, and opened the door. Ah Lam looked cute as a raspberry chrysanthemum in the throws of October frost.

  “Sheesh!” Sir Sun laughed. “You gave me a fright there. It’s like what? Almost midnight?”

  Ah Lam giggled, her dark purple eyeliner smudging at the corner of her large brown eyes. “Ah, Mis’ Sun. You is scared. That is funny!” She patted his shirtsleeve and walked in.

  Sir Sun shut the door behind her and locked it. “Sir Sun, actually.”

  Ah Lam clapped her hands and giggled again. “Si’ Sun, yes, yes. I know this.” Decked in a short tight black shirt that said RAWR in bright red ninja slashes across the chest and a tight mini skirt with leggings, Ah Lam looked like kitty cat killer bait.

  Sir Sun smiled and nodded with her, then glanced about nervously as he often did in her presence. He wrung his hands together and shifted his collar uncomfortably. “I uh, um… haven’t seen your mother around lately. Is she okay?”

  Ah Lam moved about the room, touching his stuff. The painting of the Lily of the Valley in the hall, then his lovely antique Victor Victorola in the corner. She opened the wooden door containing the record player and oohed as she lifted the needle and touched it.

  Sir Sun went to st
op her, but then she said, “My mudder is bitch. She leave me. She no want me go to college. I—” she turned and pointed at her chest (RAWR) as if she meant it. “I want education. Whore without education.”

  “Oh,” Sir Sun said and shrugged. “Yes, every one should, um, you know.”

  Ah Lam dropped the needle. “What Mis’ Sun?”

  “Uh, that’s Sir.”

  “Oh yes, I knowed that. You so funny! Anyhows, my mudder moved across hall to the empty apartment. We no tell, Mr. Fid’ler though. He make us pay double rent, you know? It’s secret.” She put a finger to her lips and laughed again. She moved to the dining table and fingered Velva’s empty wine glass. “Oh, Mis’ Sun, you have woman here?” She wiggled her eyebrows.

  “Um, no. Not now. But yes, earlier.”

  “Where she at? I meet.” She moved toward his bedroom. “She in bed?”

  “Ah,” he chased after and grabbed her hand in the hallway.

  She stopped and turned. Sir Sun bumped into her. They stood face to face in the dim light from the bedroom. She blinked and gazed into his eyes. “Yes, Mis’ Sun?”

  Sir Sun tried to glance away. He felt flushed and warm.

  She cocked her head. “No woman?”

  “No, no there’s no woman in there.”

  Ah Lam tilted her head to the other side, teasing him. She put her black fingernails on his chest. “Do you not like woman?”

  Sir Sun’s breath caught in his throat before he grabbed her hands in his. “Ah Lam, what are you doing here? It’s almost midnight. Is everything okay?”

  She sobered, her amber eyes growing huge. “I hear woman screaming.” She turned from him and entered the bedroom. “I hear woman screaming from here.”

  Sir Sun shrugged and waited in the doorframe while she examined the room. “You like flower?” She pointed at the bleeding heart photograph above his dresser.