by Riley Sager
It was Leslie Evelyn, also a seventh-floor resident, who ended up calling 911. She smelled the smoke, went into the hall to check, and saw the plumes rolling from Mr. Leonard’s open door. Because of her quick thinking, the rest of the Bartholomew remained mostly unscathed. Just water damage in the seventh-floor hallway and slight smoke damage to the hallway walls of the seventh, eighth, and ninth floors.
I learned all this once residents were allowed back in their apartments two hours later. Because the elevator can fit only so many people at a time and no one was in the mood to take the stairs, a gossipy crowd formed in the lobby. Some of them I recognized. Most of them I didn’t. All of them, save for Nick, Dylan, and myself, were well past sixty.
“I meant emotionally,” Chloe says.
A slightly different story. Although I’ve calmed down since last night, a faint anxiety lingers, just as stubborn as the traces of smoke inside the apartment.
“It was intense,” I say. “And scary. And I can’t say I slept very well, but I’m fine. This was nothing like what happened at my house. How did you find out about it?”
“The newspaper,” Chloe says. “Your picture’s on the front page.”
I groan. “How bad do I look?”
“Like the chimney sweep from Mary Poppins.” I hear the tap of fingers on a computer keyboard, followed by a mouse click. “I just sent you something.”
My phone buzzes with an email alert. I open it to see the cover of one of the city’s daily tabloids. Filling two-thirds of the front page is a photograph of the Bartholomew’s front door, taken just as I emerged with Greta and Rufus. What a strange sight we are. Me still wearing the rumpled jeans and blouse I’d worn all day, and Greta in her nightgown. Both of our faces have been darkened by smoke. By that point Greta had lowered the bandanna, revealing a swath of white skin from nose to chin. Then there’s Rufus, sporting a collar that might be studded with real diamonds. We look like extras from three different movies.
“Who’s the woman with the bandanna?” Chloe asks.
“That would be Greta Manville.”
“The woman who wrote Heart of a Dreamer? You, like, adore that book.”
“I do.”
“Is that her dog?”
“That’s Rufus,” I say. “He belongs to Marianne Duncan.”
“From that soap opera?”
“The very one.”
“What a strange alternate universe you’ve stumbled into,” Chloe says.
I glance again at the image on my phone, rolling my eyes at the awful headline the tabloid came up with.
GARGOYLE CHAR-BROIL: BLAZE AT THE BARTHOLOMEW
“Wasn’t there anything else to put on the front page? You know, like real news.”
“This is news,” Chloe says. “Remember, Jules, most New Yorkers see the Bartholomew as the closest thing to heaven on earth.”
I move from the kitchen to the sitting room, where I’m greeted by the faces in the wallpaper. A whole army of dark eyes and open mouths. I instantly turn away.
“Trust me, this place is far from perfect.”
“So you read that article I sent you,” Chloe says. “That’s some scary shit, right?”
“It’s more than the article that’s bothering me.”
Concern sneaks into Chloe’s voice. “Did something else happen?”
“Yes,” I say. “Maybe.”
I tell her about meeting Ingrid, our plan to hang out each day, the scream from 11A and Ingrid’s insistence it was nothing. I finish with how Ingrid is now gone and not answering her phone and my suspicions that someone caused her to flee.
Left out are all the worrisome parts, specifically the note and the gun. Hearing about those would prompt Chloe to come to the Bartholomew and drag me from 12A. Which I can’t afford to do. Receiving my latest unemployment check has left me with slightly more than five hundred dollars in my account. Definitely not enough to help me get back on my feet.
“You need to stop looking for her,” Chloe says, just like I knew she would. “Whatever her reason was for leaving, it’s none of your business.”
“I think she might be in some kind of trouble.”
“Jules, listen to me. If this Ingrid person wanted your help, she would have called you by now. Clearly, she wants to be left alone.”
“There’s no one else looking for her,” I say. “If I vanished, you’d look for me. I don’t think Ingrid has a Chloe in her life. She has no one.”
There’s silence on Chloe’s end. I know what it means—she’s thinking. Choosing her words carefully in an attempt not to upset me. Even so, I know what her response is going to be before she even says it.
“I think this has less to do with Ingrid and more to do with your sister.”
“Of course my sister has something to do with it,” I say. “I stopped looking for her. And now I can’t stop thinking that maybe she’d be here now if I hadn’t given up so easily.”
“Finding Ingrid won’t bring Jane back.”
No, I think, it won’t. But it will mean there’s one less lost girl in the world. One less person who vanished into thin air, never to be seen again.
“I think you should get away from the Bartholomew,” Chloe says. “Just for a few days. Crash at my place this weekend.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t worry about imposing. Paul is taking me to Vermont for the weekend. He booked it last week, when he thought . . .”
Chloe leaves the sentence unfinished. I know what she was going to say. Paul booked it when he thought I’d still be crashing on her couch. I’m not offended. They deserve a weekend alone.
“It’s not that,” I say. “I’m not allowed to spend any nights away from the apartment.”
Chloe sighs—a crackling hiss in my ear. “Those fucking rules.”
“No more lectures, please,” I say. “You know I need the money.”
“And you know I’d rather lend you some cash than see you be held prisoner in the Bartholomew.”
“It’s a job,” I remind her. “Not a prison. And don’t worry about me. Go to Vermont. Have fun. Go moose watching or whatever it is people do there.”
“Call me if you need anything,” Chloe says. “I’ll have my phone with me the whole time, even though our B-and-B is, like, in the middle of nowhere. Literally in the woods on top of a mountain. Paul already warned me there might not be cell service.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?” Chloe says.
“Positive.”
When the call ends, I remain in the sitting room, staring at those faces in the wallpaper. They stare right back, eyes unblinking, mouths open but silent, almost as if they want to tell me something but can’t.
Maybe they’re not allowed, just as I’m not allowed to have visitors or spend a night away from 12A.
Or maybe they’re too afraid speak.
Or maybe—and this is the most likely scenario—they’re just flowers on wallpaper and, like Ingrid’s departure, the Bartholomew is starting to get to me.
22
At twelve thirty, there’s a knock on my door.
Greta Manville.
A surprise, although not an unpleasant one. It’s a nice break from looking for jobs that don’t exist and checking my phone every five minutes for a response from Ingrid. Even more surprising is that Greta’s dressed for an outing. Black capris and an oversize shirt. Sweater preppily tied around her neck. Slung over her shoulder is a worn tote bag from the Strand.
“To thank you for your assistance last night, you may escort me to lunch.”
She says it with benevolent pomp, as if she’s bestowing upon me one of life’s greatest honors. Yet I detect another emotion lurking in the back of her throat—loneliness. Whether she wanted it or not, I’ve dragged her out of her cocoon of books and sudden sleeps. I also suspect that
, deep down, Greta likes my company.
I loop my arm through hers. “I would be happy to escort you.”
We end up at a bistro a block away from the Bartholomew. A red awning covers the door, and fairy lights twinkle in the windows. Inside, the place is bustling with so many locals on their lunch breaks that I fear we won’t get a table. But upon seeing Greta, the hostess leads us to a corner booth that’s remained conspicuously empty.
“I called ahead,” Greta says as she picks up one of the menus left for us on the table. “Also, the owner values loyalty. And I’ve been coming here for years, since the first time I lived at the Bartholomew.”
“How long has it been since you moved back?” I ask.
Greta gives me a stern look across the table. “We’re here to have lunch. Not play twenty questions.”
“How about two questions?”
“I’ll allow it,” Greta says as she snaps her menu shut and beckons the nearest waitress. “But let me order first. If I’m going to be interrogated, I’d like to make sure sustenance is on the way.”
She orders grilled salmon with a side of steamed vegetables. Even though I assume she’s treating, I get the house salad and a water. Frugal habits die hard.
“The answer to your first question,” Greta says once the waitress departs, “is almost a year. I returned last November.”
“Why did you come back?”
Greta sniffs, as if the answer is obvious. “Why not? It’s a comfortable place within close proximity to everything I need. When an apartment opened up, I jumped at the chance.”
“I heard it was difficult finding an open apartment there,” I say. “Isn’t the waiting list huge?”
“That’s your third question, by the way.”
“But you’ll allow it.”
“I’m not amused,” Greta says, even though she is. There’s a noticeable upturn to her lips that she tries to hide by taking a sip of water. “The answer is yes, there is a waiting list. And before you ask the predictable follow-up, there are ways around it if one knows the right people. I do.”
When the food arrives, it’s a study in contrasts. Greta’s meal looks scrumptious, the salmon steaming and smelling of lemon and garlic. My salad, on the other hand, is a bowl of disappointment. Nothing but limp romaine lettuce smattered with tomato slices and croutons.
Greta takes a bite of fish before saying, “Has there been any news regarding your recently departed apartment-sitter friend? What was her name again?”
“Ingrid.”
“That’s right. Ingrid with the abominable hair. There’s still no indication where she went?”
I shrug. Such an ineffectual gesture, when it comes right down to it. All that tiny rise and fall of my shoulders against the booth’s vinyl does is remind me how little I really know.
“At first, I thought it was because she was afraid to stay in the Bartholomew any longer.”
Greta reacts the same way Nick did—with muted shock. “Why on earth would you think that?”
“You have to admit something feels off,” I say. “There are websites, entire websites, devoted to all the bad things that have happened there.”
“That’s why I avoid the internet,” Greta says. “It’s a cesspool of misinformation.”
“But a lot of it’s true. The servants killed by Spanish flu. And Dr. Bartholomew jumping from the roof. That doesn’t happen at average apartment buildings.”
“The Bartholomew isn’t an average apartment building. And because of its notoriety, things that happen there become exaggerated to the point of myth.”
“Is Cornelia Swanson a myth?”
Greta, who had been lifting a forkful of salmon to her mouth, halts mid-bite. She lowers her fork, folds her hands on the table, and says, “A word of advice, my dear. Don’t mention that name inside the Bartholomew. Cornelia Swanson is a topic no one there wants to discuss.”
“So what I’ve read about her is true?”
“I didn’t say that,” Greta snaps. “Cornelia Swanson was a lunatic who should have been living in an asylum, not at the Bartholomew. As for all that utter nonsense—that she consorted with that Frenchwoman and sacrificed her maid in some bizarre occult ritual—it’s nothing more than conjecture. What I told you just now is the same thing I said to your friend.”
“Ingrid specifically asked about Cornelia Swanson?”
“She did. I suspect she was disappointed by my answer. I think she came looking for all the gory details. But, as I’ve said, there aren’t any to give. In fact, the strangest thing I’ve seen at the Bartholomew lately is the behavior of a certain young woman who helped escort me from the building last night.”
I stab my fork into the salad, saying nothing.
“When the elevator was stopped on the seventh floor, you acted . . . unusual. Would you care to explain what happened?”
I’d noticed the way she watched me once I returned to the elevator with Rufus. I should have seen this lunch for what it really is—an attempt to understand what she had witnessed. Although I don’t necessarily need to talk about it, I find myself wanting to. Maybe because Greta wrote Heart of a Dreamer, I feel the need to repay her somehow. A story for a story. Only mine doesn’t have a happy ending.
“When I was a freshman in college, my father got laid off from the place he had worked for twenty-five years,” I begin. “After months of searching, the only job he could get was a night shift stocking shelves at an Ace Hardware three towns away. My mother worked part-time at a real estate office. To make ends meet she got another job waiting tables at a local diner on weekends. I tried to lighten their load by getting two jobs myself. Plus additional student loans. Plus a credit card I never told them about so they wouldn’t have to worry about sending me money. That kept us afloat for the better part of a year.”
But then, at the start of my sophomore year, my mother was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which spread like wildfire to her kidneys, her heart, her lungs. My mother had to quit her jobs. My father cared for her during the day while still going to work at night. I offered to leave college for a semester to help. My father refused, telling me I needed a good education to get a good job. That if I quit, I’d likely never return and end up just like them—two broken people in a broken town.
My mother’s medical expenses soared, even though there was no hope of remission. Everything was about keeping her comfortable until the end came. And my father’s meager health insurance plan covered only so much. The rest was up to them. So my father took out a second mortgage on the home he had just finished paying off a few years earlier.
I came home every weekend, my mother slightly smaller at every visit, as if she were shrinking right before my eyes. My father was the same way. The stress sapped his appetite until shirts hung like laundry from his clothesline arms. In the evenings, when he was getting ready for work, I’d hear him crying alone in the bathroom. Deep, guttural sobs that couldn’t be drowned out by the running sink.
We lived like that for six months. Then the final blow came. The Ace Hardware my father worked at closed its doors. There went his job and health insurance. I was at school when it happened. A sophomore on the verge of flunking out because I was too frazzled with worry and bone-deep exhaustion to focus on my studies.
“Not long after that, my parents died,” I say.
Greta gasps. A shocked, sorrowful sound.
I keep talking, too far into the tale to stop now. “There was a fire. It was the middle of the spring semester. The phone rang at five in the morning. The police. They told me there had been an accident and that both of my parents were dead.”
Later that day, Chloe drove me home, although there was nothing left of it. Our side of the duplex was a charred ruin.
“Smoke rose from the wreckage,” I tell Greta. “It was an awful throat-coating smoke I hoped I’d never smel
l again. But I did. Last night at the Bartholomew.”
The only thing that survived was my parents’ Toyota Camry, which had been parked as far from the house as the driveway would allow. Sitting in the driver’s seat was a ring with three keys on it. The instant I saw those keys, I knew the fire hadn’t been an accident.
One key was for the Camry itself.
The other two opened storage units at a facility a mile outside of town.
One unit contained all my belongings.
The other held all of Jane’s.
My father had emptied both of our bedrooms, which told me that even in their darkest hours, my parents still clung to a faint sliver of hope. That Jane would be found. That the two of us could muddle forward together. That things would turn out okay for us in the end.
The storage units would have been enough to tip off investigators, if the insurance policies hadn’t already. My father had purchased two in the months before the blaze.
Life insurance for him.
Fire insurance for the house.
So began the investigation that confirmed what I already knew. On the night of the fire, my father and mother shared a bottle of wine, even though she shouldn’t have been drinking with her kidneys on the verge of failure.
They also shared a pizza ordered from the very same place they went on their first date.
And a slice of chocolate cake.
And a bottle of my mother’s strongest painkillers.
Arson experts concluded the fire began in the hallway just outside my parents’ room, spurred on by lighter fluid and some balled-up newspapers. The bedroom door was closed, meaning it took some time for the fire to reach the bed where my parents were found.
They knew this because only my mother died from the overdose.
My father was killed by the smoke.
“I tried to be mad at them,” I say. “I wanted to hate them for what they did. But I couldn’t. Because even then I knew they did what they thought was right.”
I don’t tell Greta how when I’m feeling happy, I sometimes get the need to flirt with fire. To feel its heat on my skin. To have the flame singe me just enough to know what it feels like, so that I can understand what my parents went through.