The Woman In the Mirror: (A Psychological Suspense Novel) (Alexandra Mallory Book 1)

by Cathryn Grant

“It’s a process,” he said.

  “Why not a studio apartment? Facing an alley or the side of a warehouse. A panoramic ocean view isn’t representative of simplicity.”

  “The ocean is pure and cleansing. Also, part of Buddhism is respecting other beings, so I thought it would be a good spiritual practice to have roommates. It’s a small house, which means a certain amount of pressure on the relationships.”

  “We’re your religious props?”

  He dragged the hoe through the dirt, unearthing more weeds. He knelt and picked them up, one by one, placing them carefully outside the perimeter of the dirt rectangle. It looked as if he was praying, and for a moment, it seemed as if he wanted me to think that.

  “Do you have to commute over the hill for work?” I said.

  “I’m between jobs.”

  In less than twenty-four hours, my life had brushed up against one guy who strolled away from his partial ownership of an ocean view home, and another who drove a new BMW and didn’t feel the need to generate income. They seemed to care nothing for money, and yet, they had far more than necessary. “If you’re not tied to a job,” I said, “Why aren’t you at a retreat center or something like that?”

  “I just told you.”

  “There are other beings at a retreat center.”

  “This is a better fit for my needs.”

  “What are your needs? Besides acquiring annoying roommates to help you seek tranquility.”

  He didn’t smile.

  “What are you going to do with all the vegetables you grow?”

  “We can eat them.”

  “Noreen and I are pasta addicts. I suppose chopped tomatoes on top of fettuccini are nice.”

  Even though his face was turned toward the ground, I saw the quiver of a smile.

  “What are you planting?”

  “Tomatoes. Zucchini…”

  “Everyone plants zucchini.”

  “It’s easy to grow.”

  “So you’re a lazy Buddhist?”

  “No. I’m also planning carrots, lettuce, and green beans. You can help.”

  I stubbed out my cigarette. “I think I’ll have another smoke.” I scooped out a small hole and dropped the butt into it.

  “She doesn’t want any smoking.”

  “She’s not here.” I went into the house. I pulled a cigarette out of the package. I went into the hallway, headed back toward the front door. I paused, overcome by an urge to look into his room. He was obviously busy on his knees and I was curious. The Buddhist thing piqued my interest. I wanted to see what simplicity looked like. The narrow closet in my room was so full of clothes I couldn’t move the hangers along the pole. The closet floor was piled with shoes and purses and my stuff wouldn’t fit in my dresser. Maybe if he was stripped down to essentials, I could store some of my overflow in his closet. It was more than that, though. I was curious to see inside his life. I turned quickly and went back to the front porch.

  He sat back on his heels and didn’t try to hide the fact he was watching me light the cigarette. “Why don’t you want to help? Growing things feels good,” he said.

  “For you.”

  “Have you ever done it?”

  “No.” I inhaled and settled back into the cloud of smoke.

  “Just because she’s not here, and just because she only specified no smoking inside the house, doesn’t mean it’s okay.”

  “So why the sudden desire to step out of the frenzy and dig in the garden after buying a Beemer?” I said. “Job burnout? Bad breakup?”

  He stood up and brushed loose dirt off the knees of his jeans. “I think burnout is the best description. Life is short.” He stared at me as if I’d been the one to speak last and he was waiting for me to finish the thought.

  The silence grew.

  Three crows flew toward the tree that clutched the side of the cliff. They settled into the upper branches, cawing and nodding their heads as if they were arguing. A car turned down the street and drove past, but neither of us looked in its direction. I took another drag on my cigarette.

  “You’re a gorgeous woman,” he said.

  I put the cigarette between my lips, pressing them around it, knowing it reduced my supposed gorgeousness. His comment seemed a rather abrupt departure from burnout and Buddhism. I sucked on the cigarette and blew out a thin stream of smoke, watching him watch me.

  “Most women would smile. Or say thank you,” he said.

  “I’m not most women.”

  “So I’m beginning to realize.”

  He hacked at the dirt. The hoe clanged on a large rock. He picked it up and cradled it in his hand for a moment before tossing it to the side. “I could really use your help.”

  “It was your idea. And it’s your religious trip.”

  He nodded. He raised the hoe over his head and lowered it fast, sinking the blade in the soil. He moved backwards slowly, raising the hoe and gouging it into the earth with each step. It was beginning to make me think of a madman, slamming an axe into someone’s head, the soil like soft brain matter, broken apart into something fresh and new. I closed my eyes and took another drag on my cigarette.

  “I think your beauty will enhance my spiritual practice.”

  “How so?”

  “Increase the intensity of my awareness of attachment and aversion.”

  “So I am your religious prop.”

  His hoe clanged on another rock. He removed it with the same gentle care as the previous one. Watching him was addictive. He made lifting and carrying rocks look like the most pleasurable experience in the world. He gave the impression there was something to the Buddhism thing. Although he’d said he was a newbie at it, so maybe it was just him, and the sleek muscles in his forearms. “I didn’t know Buddhists had to be celibate,” I said.

  He grinned. “They don’t.”

  I really wished I’d brought the entire pack of cigarettes out with me, because I could tell I was going to want another.

  The silence swelled around us. The crows had stopped their chatter. I glanced toward the tree to see whether they were still there, but couldn’t see them from where I sat on the porch.

  The silence ate at the inside of my head, stirring up all kinds of thoughts about how good looking he was and how just because there’d been a few bad experiences with roommates didn’t mean the pattern was destined to continue. Talking about celibacy had spun the conversation in another direction and most guys would interpret that as an open door to start with the innuendo, or an outright suggestion. He said nothing.

  The crows started up again. A few more flapped to the tree and joined them, equally raucous.

  I raised my voice slightly. “How long until you need to look for another job?”

  “As long as I want.”

  “You have an endless supply of cash?”

  “I have enough.”

  “Because you’re all spiritual and don’t need a lot? Except for your Beemer payment?”

  “Something like that.”

  I put out my cigarette. I stood and shoved my hands in my pockets and stepped onto one of the flagstones that formed a ragged path from the driveway to the front door. I turned and looked up at the tree. The crows were still there. They were watching us. Maybe they knew what all the hoeing was about and realized that they were going to be given a smorgasbord of veggies soon. Although I wasn’t sure crows ate veggies. I think they mostly eat dead things.

  “Where are you going?” Jared said.

  “Nowhere. Just checking out the crows.”

  He tossed the hoe to the side, sat down, and returned to pulling out weeds. I was tempted to help him, just because it looked like too much work for an afternoon, but the temptation for another cigarette was more intense. I wanted to keep talking, but I didn’t want him to think it meant anything.

  7

  The agreement — mostly Noreen’s idea, greeted by shrugs from Jared and me — was that each of us would cook one meal a week, and rotate grocery shopping respon
sibilities every five days. If one of our lists wasn’t ready for the shopper on the scheduled day, that person was SOL.

  It was my day to shop. It was also my turn to cook. After several nights of Jared’s spaghetti and meatballs, and Noreen’s angel hair pasta with tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and jalapeños, a night without pasta was called for. Passion needs to be mixed up once in a while.

  The cooking and shopping arrangements were a little too cozy. Everything was getting too cozy — food prep, mealtime, martinis with Noreen. It seemed as if Noreen wanted to create a fantasy family. For my contribution, I planned to make a dinner that announced — I’m not your BFF. I’m doing what was asked to carry my weight in our fourteen hundred square foot house where it’s impossible to avoid one another.

  When he was home, it was especially hard to avoid tripping over Jared coming and going in our shared bathroom. In order to keep myself to myself, I’d bought a white plastic caddy to drag my shampoo and body wash and other stuff back and forth, storing it on the floor of my closet, which forced more shoes and boots out into the room. I was drowning in clothes and shoes and purses. It had been that way for all of my adult life, and my pre-adult life, from the time I first had a job and could buy clothes that my mother deemed unnecessary. I love clothes. I love changing clothes and love that I can become a completely different person through a change of clothes and the style of my hair. I could put on a different outfit three times a day, and I often do — a neon pink or green crop top and black, skin-hugging capri pants for running, silky pants and a pleated jacket with a white shirt for work, and skinny jeans with a baggy sweater over a camisole in the evening. I suppose it’s not unusual for a woman to wear three outfits in a day, but I do even more on weekends, sometimes changing clothes four times before dinner. It’s a hobby. I like being surprised when I walk past a mirror and see something different that what had been reflected the last time I passed by.

  Barbecue would have been an easy dinner choice, but that suggested party. Meatloaf was too homey and nurturing. I mentally ran through a few more ideas, but they all conveyed a message I didn’t want to send. I finally settled on grilled cheese sandwiches with chicken noodle soup made from a box. It indicated a lack of effort, impersonal and unoriginal.

  The store was a large, anonymous supermarket. It felt good to walk down the aisle without glancing over my shoulder, watching for someone watching me, trying to maneuver a cart at a high speed, trying to get lost in a crowd. A grocery store shouldn’t be a terrifying experience, but there was a time when it had been. The simplest things can turn into nightmares when you’re trying to figure out an escape route. I pushed those thoughts away, smiled lovingly at the symmetrical aisles and the organized shelves of food. So much food, so many choices, restocked the moment there’s an empty space — reflecting life itself where one creature dies and another moves into its place, the tide of humanity closing over the spot as if it were never there.

  I wheeled the cart to the back of the store and grabbed a large block of cheddar cheese. I tossed in butter and four tubs of yogurt — Noreen’s addition to the list. Jared hadn’t given me a list, which had the effect of making me think non-stop about him as I wandered through the store, grabbing bread, fruit for Noreen’s yogurt, granola for Noreen’s yogurt, sliced turkey and a bag of greens for Noreen’s lunchtime salads.

  Jared didn’t eat breakfast at the house. Possibly, he didn’t eat breakfast at all. He made a cup of tea which he took to the back deck every morning. He stared out at the ocean, sipped his tea, and didn’t move except for his hand lifting the mug to his mouth every two minutes. I suspected he was doing some sort of tea-sipping meditation. The raising and lowering of the mug looked so much like clockwork, I timed it. Sure enough, the stopwatch on my phone hit 120 seconds every time the mug went up toward his mouth.

  I had no idea what he did during the day while I was at work. Wherever he spent his time, maybe they fed him, or he ate nothing but a piece of fruit, fitting with his striving for a simple lifestyle. He’d eaten Noreen’s pasta dish and his own spaghetti, but other than that, there was no evidence of him eating at all. Maybe he was waiting for the produce from his epic vegetable garden. I couldn’t stop obsessing over his eating habits. I was annoyed with myself, and annoyed with him because it seemed like he wanted me to think about his food, by failing to give me a list.

  An hour before dinner I took out a stick of butter to let it soften.

  As I was spreading butter across a slice of bread for the grilled cheese, Noreen came into the kitchen. She watched my hand gliding like the hand of a painter. “What are you making?”

  “Grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup.”

  “Jared is vegetarian.”

  “He made spaghetti.”

  “It was fake meat. He didn’t tell you?”

  “Fake meat?”

  “Made from soy or something.”

  “Well the soup is fake chicken noodle. There’s no actual chicken, just broth.”

  “I don’t know if he can eat that.” She carved off a slice of cheddar cheese and popped it in her mouth.

  “Then he can eat a sandwich.”

  “That’s not very nice.”

  “Nice is irrelevant. I didn’t know he was vegetarian.”

  “It was on his form.”

  I couldn’t imagine why she thought I would know that. Maybe she thought she’d told me, but I hoped she wasn’t feeling free to pass around information she’d lifted off the forms. Even if mine was light on truth, I didn’t want it repeated. It was a violation.

  “It’s not very dinner-like,” she said. “Sandwiches.”

  “Sandwiches with soup are filling. And good. And sort of healthy.”

  “But it’s sandwiches.”

  “So?”

  “I just thought you’d put forth a little more effort.” She sliced another piece of cheese.

  “Stop eating the cheese.”

  “I ate one slice.” She put the cheese in her mouth. She smiled. “Okay, two.”

  I picked up the cheese knife and started slicing thin strips for the sandwiches. She moved closer, her hands drifting aimlessly as if she were planning to snatch another piece. As her hand approached the cutting board, I moved the knife so it was poised above her finger.

  “Watch the knife,” she said. “You almost nicked my finger.”

  “Why don’t I finish making dinner and I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”

  “I thought you wanted company.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Meal preparation should be a community effort.”

  I disagreed, silently. “Music would be nice.”

  She went into the living room and started scrolling through her phone.

  I set the oven to preheat and sprayed vegetable oil on a cookie sheet. I began building the sandwiches — a slice of bread with the butter side down, eight thin slices of cheese layered over each other, another slice of bread with the butter facing up. Water was boiling for the soup. I tore open two packets at once and dumped the powder and bits of dried noodle into the pot, stirred, and turned down the heat.

  Noreen was still scrolling through her phone. Before she could decide on something, the sound of a mandolin came from Jared’s room. He walked into the living area, carrying his own player wedged into a small speaker stand, a half smile on his lips. “This okay for dinner music?”

  “It’s beautiful,” Noreen said.

  “Dinner music?” I said.

  They both stared at me. The timer buzzed. I pulled out the cookie sheet and flipped the sandwiches. While the opposite sides were browning, I lined up plates and bowls on the counter.

  I raised my voice over the mandolin. “Jared, Noreen said you’re vegetarian. Is chicken noodle soup that has never met a chicken except for the flavoring in the broth okay?”

  He came into the kitchen. He stood close. Very close. The heat of his presence was displacing the heat coming from the oven. “Act
ually, I’m vegan.”

  “Told you.” Noreen spoke in a stage whisper.

  “You said vegetarian.” I opened the oven and pulled out the sandwiches.

  “Same thing,” she said.

  “It’s not. Vegan means no animal products,” Jared said.

  “Is that a Buddhist thing?” I said.

  “Are you Buddhist?” Noreen came into the kitchen area. Now the heat was too much — his body, the open oven, Noreen’s burning crush.

  “It’s a health thing,” he said. “And yes, I’m investigating Buddhism.”

  “Oh. But…why would you think that fat dude with the silly grin is on the same level as Jesus?”

  “Buddhism’s not a religion,” Jared said. “It’s a philosophy.”

  “Still, Jesus…”

  “Tea is fine. I had a big lunch.” Jared took the kettle off the stove, filled it, and set it on the burner beside the soup pot, turning the gas to high.

  “It’s not right for you to have to sit here and watch us eat,” Noreen said. “I’ll make you something.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want anything.”

  “You need to eat,” she said.

  “Actually, I don’t. None of us need to eat as much as we think we do.”

  She laughed and pulled out her chair. “Are you calling us gluttons?”

  “Not at all. I’m speaking generally. It’s what I think, for me. It has nothing to do with you, unless it speaks to you.”

  “Well you said none of us,” Noreen said. She pouted. “I don’t mind making something. Even yogurt and nuts…”

  “Animal product,” Jared said.

  “Oh, right.”

  She and I started eating our sandwiches. Jared remained by the stove, waiting for the kettle to boil. He pulled a teabag out of a container he kept in the cupboard, unwrapped it, and put it into a mug.

  When the kettle whistled, Noreen slapped her half-nibbled sandwich on her plate. She shoved out her chair and carried her soup bowl to the sink. She poured the soup down the drain. She turned. “I cannot sit here and eat in front of this kind-hearted man who provided angelic music and is now going to starve with nothing but a cup of tea.”