by Erin Huss
My only real option was to keep my job, and I was prepared to do whatever it took.
I closed the office door and squeezed past the boxes working as my kitchen table. It was late. Lilly had long since gone to bed, allowing me time to finish up work. I'd kissed her sweet face earlier but didn't dare check on her now for fear of waking her up. I zigzagged through my unpacked apartment, toward the blue glow of the television. Amy was nestled on the couch watching an episode of The Real Housewives from somewhere. She had arrived on my doorstep late Monday night in complete ruin after giving her boyfriend of two years the "marriage ultimatum." He ultimately decided he'd rather date a model from the Valley named Jessica instead.
I did what every best friend would do: I removed all social media outlets, hid her phone, provided an ample supply of ice cream, trash-talked her ex, kept my problems to myself, and allowed her to watch my kid while I worked.
Really, she's lucky to have me.
"You're the one with a drinking problem," one blonde housewife on the television yelled at another blonde housewife. All the other blonde housewives gasped, their diamond-encrusted fingers clutching tight to their pearls and champagne-filled flutes.
"I'm so confused. I thought she had a drug problem. Or is that the other one?" I asked Amy. She didn't answer. "You awake?" I leaned over and put my chin on her shoulder. "Amy! I said no." I plucked my phone out of her hand. "I've been looking for this. I told you, online stalking is only going to make things worse."
She sat up and tucked her skinny legs under her, pouting. "I wasn't stalking him." We made a pact to never say her ex-boyfriend's name again. "I was looking for you."
"Here I am."
She rolled her puffy eyes. Her pink and blue greasy hair had dreadlocked, looking as if it were trying to escape from her head. The sleeves of his sweater were pulled down over her hands, working as a Kleenex when needed. "I was looking for you. I was trying to find this Chase guy so we can get more info. I want to see what he looks like."
"Why?" I squeaked. "I don't think of him as anything but the maintenance man, and even that's a stretch." Not to mention I'd already looked him up on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and every other social media site I could think of with no luck. As it turned out, Chase J. Hudson was a popular name (I may have also looked at his employment file—he lived in Long Beach, had no criminal history, good credit, and excellent references. Which was odd because he was terrible at his job).
"Sure you don't," she said with a wry twitch of her lip as she tossed a throw pillow at me. I caught it with my face. "I've never seen you so googly-eyed over a boy before, and I love it." She laughed for the first time since "Jessica from the Valley."
"Gee, thanks," I said.
"You know what I mean." She wrapped a dreadlock behind her ear. "For the longest time you've been stuck on Tom, whom we both know is never going to settle down, and when he does, it will probably be with some model named Jessica, like, from, like, the Valley. Tramp."
"I told you I don't like Chase. He's a colleague…ugh." I may be able to lie to myself, and I may be able to lie to my parents, but there was no lying to Amy. She knew me too well. I buried my head in the pillow and face-planted into the couch. "Why are guys who aren't attracted to me so attractive?"
Amy wrapped her long, bony arm around my waist and dropped her head next to mine. Spooning me in his snot-covered sweater. "If I knew the answer, I wouldn't be here," she whimpered, digging her face into my shirt and snarfing up a snot bubble. "Why do I need this stupid boy?"
I flipped to my back. "You don't need any boys," I said with conviction. "You were Burn Victim Number Three in a Grey's Anatomy episode and Dead Girl Number Four in Zombie Time Machine. You don't need any boys. You deserve a man."
Amy sat up. "You're totally right." She ran her hand under her nose, leaving a streak of snot on her left cheek. "We're hot, strong, independent, confident women. We don't need boys. Boys who are going to say how much they love us then follow their peckers to younger pastures." An evil smirk spread across her blotchy face. "Let's get revenge."
I'd underestimated my pep-talking abilities. I laughed, happy she'd finally entered the anger stage of the breakup grief cycle. Hopefully the "get off my couch and resume personal hygiene" stage came next. As it stood, I was one day away from giving my best friend of twenty years the "shower ultimatum."
"Funny you should mention revenge." I spoke slowly, drumming my fingers along my chin. "I just so happen to have recently learned how to remove door locks and disassemble a toilet."
Bam! Bam! Bam!
A pounding on the window forced me off the couch and onto the floor, wedged between two boxes, where I assumed the fetal position. It was Spencer and his druggy friends. They came to take our wallets, zip-tie our hands, and impregnate us.
I was sure of it.
Amy poked her head over the side of the couch. "Some lady is crying outside your window. I think she wants to speak to the manager."
"Is she pregnant?"
"Would you like me to ask?"
I thought about it. "No, it's probably the washing machines." Or so I hoped. "People take their laundry very seriously around here." I crawled out of my barricade, slipped on a pair of sandals, and found the tear-stain-faced woman pacing outside my window. She wore an off-the-shoulder black shirt with Pink written in pink lettering across the front, showing off the stars tattooed down her neck and across her shoulder. She ran up to me and wrapped her thick arms tight around me, soaking the front of my shirt with tears.
I'm a human Kleenex.
I patted her back, unsure of what to say.
She took a step back. Mascara horseshoed her dark eyes while tears slithered down her cheeks. "I'm so glad you're home. I'm locked out, and I called the emergency line and had to leave a message. I tried getting in, but I can't get the window to open, and the locksmith is still an hour out. I know the lease says I'm not supposed to bother you unless it's an emergency, but I really need to get in." She drew a shaky breath. "Can you let me in? It's Apartment 39."
"Of course." I was readily accommodating to anyone who had actually read the lease. "I'm so sorry. I didn't have my phone on me." Damn it, Amy. "Let me grab my keys, and I'll meet you there."
She nodded a sorrowful nod. I'd locked myself out numerous times and never cried about it. She did live next to Kevin though. He could come outside naked, and she'd have nowhere to hide. So I got it.
I grabbed my keys and hurried to the third courtyard, bypassing many a disgruntled tenant along the way. I slipped on imaginary blinders and trudged through the battleground, dodging the sideways glances, glaring eyes, and under-the-breath insults hurled at me. Narrowly making it to the back staircase unscathed.
Up the stairs I went, past Kevin's door, and found the woman on her knees, her cheek pressed against the faded brown door. "I'm so sorry, lumber," she sobbed, stroking the weathered wood slowly with her fingers. "My lumber…"
Umm.
She was apologizing to the door.
Made sense. Kevin's neighbor would have to be crazy to still live there. I leaned over the woman's head and used the master key to unlock the door. She hurried to her feet and pushed it open, revealing a brown-eyed toddler on the other side.
"There was a kid in there?" I asked, shocked. Wouldn't that have been worth mentioning?
"Lumber!" she scolded the little boy. He was covered in marker and flour and makeup and chocolate (hopefully chocolate), like the rest of the apartment. Black lines were scribbled down the lower half of the walls and continued across the carpet. Flour mounds clumped together in doughy blobs all over the couch and the television and the kitchen table that, coincidently, looked to have received a fresh coat of pink nail polish.
The mom in me felt terrible. The apartment manager in me began tallying up the charges…paint $250, carpet $800, linoleum $450… It would have been cheaper to break the window. "You don't ever lock the door on Mommy like that, ever… My television!" She
released a high-pitched yelp. I cringed. The commotion could summon Kevin. He'd been quiet all day. It was quite nice. "My table!"
I stood in the doorway, rocking from heels to toes. Probably not the best time to let her know about the repairs she'd need to make. "Er…I'm going to head back now…" She didn't notice me. She was too busy inspecting the finger painting on the wall. "I'll just…close this door for you. Have, er, a good night."
I tiptoed to the stairwell, placing as little weight on each foot as possible to prevent the walkway from creaking. The old building made it difficult to get anywhere unnoticed. I held my breath as I passed Kevin's door and ever so carefully dropped my foot onto the first step.
Still quiet.
Next step.
Golden silence.
Another step.
Nothing.
I released my withheld breath. The black door remained closed and quiet. Almost too quiet. A calm-before-the-storm type of quiet.
The only sounds were coming from Lumber's hysterical mother and muffled yells from below. Alice and her Boo were arguing. I strained to make out what they were screaming about, because I'm nosy. Intense fluctuations, shrieks, and thunderous grumbles then the slamming of a door.
"You think I wouldn't time you," Boo yelled.
At least I think that's what he said.
Then another voice, possibly Alice. "You're…planting…ducks."
Hmmm, that can't be right.
My snooping skills needed some work, but it sounded like things were working out for Alice about as well as they were for me.
Then came the loud, wet rumbling of someone about to eject a wad of phlegm. It came from below the stairwell.
Crap.
I pretended I was examining the railing, shaking it to be sure it was sturdy, and not eavesdropping on tenants, because that wouldn't be right. Especially if I were to be caught by another tenant.
Leaning over the railing as part of my "inspection," I found a shoeless, shirtless mass of white muscles with a buzzed head shooting a snotball into the flowerless flowerbed beside him.
I crouched down and shoved my face between the bars of the now-determined-to-be-sturdy railing. Teardrops were tattooed under the guy's eyes, semiautomatics and revolvers down the man's arms and across his chiseled abdomen, stopping at the waistband of his basketball shorts and continuing down the exposed skin of his hairy calves. He had surprisingly dainty feet for a man his size and well-groomed toenails.
I'm not generally one to judge a book by its cover. However, if I were a judging-a-book-by-its-cover type of person, I would say this book was a murder-mystery, nightmare-inducing, unhappy-ending thriller. This guy was scary. He was scary all the way from his "I'm gonna kill you" stance to his "I can kill you with these" muscles to his "I'll kill you with one of these instead" tattooed artillery. Was it a coincidence I found a gun in the dumpster much like the one pictured on his left pectoral? Was it by happenstance that this guy stood in the same location where all of Spencer's clients had arrived and left? Was it a coinkydink that (according to an episode of CSI) teardrops under the eye could represent murders committed or murders attempted?
Methinks not.
I gulped, trying desperately to coat my suddenly parched throat. Scary Guy brought a nearly burnt-out cigarette to his mouth, took in a long draw of nicotine, and discarded the butt in the aforementioned flowerless flowerbed. In paragraph six on the eighth page of the House Rules, it states I can serve anyone caught littering on the property with a twenty-five-dollar fine.
He stuck his sausage finger up his nose and dug around until he found what he was looking for and, after a quick inspection, flicked it into the flowerbed as well. Next he folded a stick of gum into his mouth and tossed the silver wrapper into the flowerbed.
That makes fifty.
I dashed down the remaining steps. Confronting the man was the best idea since I'd left my phone in the apartment and logic was still trotting its way to my brain.
I waltzed up to Scary Guy, who turned his head, puffed his chest, and flexed his guns. Two tiny pupils glared down at me. He'd been much shorter from my aerial view. I cleared the imaginary mucus from my throat to buy time. Surely, a smarter person would have thought this out prior to advancing. "What apartment are you in?" I asked in a shrilly voice. I was going for authoritative, but I sounded more like SpongeBob.
"Who are you?" he grunted, blinking, as if I were a side dish he hadn't ordered.
I balled my fists to keep them from shaking. "I'm the apartment manager. Now, what apartment do you live in, or who are you visiting?"
"I'm visiting Mike," he said quickly, without missing a beat.
There were at least five Mikes who lived here—that I knew of. "Mike? Really? Which one?"
"Mind your own business Mike, that's who." Scary Guy was getting mad.
"Mind my own business?" I was getting equally mad. "Does the name Kenneth Fisk mean anything to you? Missing a backpack by chance?"
The donkey finally trotted in with my logic. What the hell are you doing, Cambria? This guy is twice your size!
Scary Guy locked his jaw and squared his shoulders. He stopped looking at me as the side dish he hadn't ordered and more like the main entrée he wanted to devour. Crap.
I took a big step back, crashing into whoever stood behind me. A pair of arms wrapped around my chest, pinning my arms to my side. My adrenaline pumped, thrusting my heartbeat into overdrive. Half a dozen self-defense YouTube videos began playing through my memory.
Thumb into trachea.
Head to nose.
Back kick to balls.
Fingers into eye sockets.
Got it.
I went into attack mode.
My attacker pivoted, bobbed, and bounced around behind me like some kind of super ninja warding off all my attacks. Hands grappled at my flailing limbs until they landed on my lower back and pushed me forward.
I fell into a wooden pillar holding the upstairs walkway up and wrapped my arms around it, the splintery wood clawing at my forearms as my momentum swung me around to face my attacker.
Our eyes met.
I froze, stock-still and confused and scared and seconds away from peeing my pants.
Deep breath in and ahh!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
No alcohol permitted in Common Areas.
"Why are you screaming?" Chase asked between breaths. He picked his black hat up off the ground and slapped it back onto his head.
"Why am I screaming?" I huffed, still hugging the pillar, scared to let it go and unsure if my legs were capable of holding me upright. "You were attacking me!"
"Calm down, everybody." Larry zigzagged in slow motion between us, flipping his stringy gray hair over his shoulder. "Everyone needs to calm down. Caaalm dooown. Let's figure this out diplomatical-baly…diploma…just be at peace before we start throwing punches." He wobbled to the right and to the left then spun around. "Why were you beating on the maintenance man?" he asked me.
"Me?" I gasped and pointed to Chase. "He grabbed me from behind!"
Chase rolled the sleeves of his black hoodie up to his elbows, shaking his head. "You ran into me and started flapping around."
"It's true!" yelled a tween standing on the upstairs walkway. She had blonde pigtails and wore a green shirt doused in sparkles and shorts the same size as my underwear. She leaned over the railing, holding out her phone, and snapped her gum. "I totally got it all on video."
"You what?" I let go of my pillar.
Larry gave me a look of warning and pointed his finger in my general direction. "Shhhtay in your corner," he said.
I went back to my pillar and looked over Larry's head at Chase. "What are you doing here?"
"Number 38 is locked out, and her kid is inside. The emergency line forwarded to me because you didn't answer." He took a step closer.
Larry cut him off, his arms outstretched like a drunken bird about to take flight. "Shhhtay in your corner," he slurred.
; "I already got sixty views on Snapchat!" the tween yelled. "Oh, wait! Make that seventy. They all totally think the chick is having some kind of seizure, and the guy is way hot."
I rolled my eyes. "Of course they do." Larry kept bobbing his head like a chicken, blocking Chase from my view. "Honestly, Larry, I'm fine. We're fine. Feel free to go home and sleep it off."
Larry gave Chase a sideways glance. With a nod of his head, he cleared the space between us by stumbling to the side. Chase and I exchanged a should-we-escort-him-home-or-continue-arguing look.
I went for the latter. "I was talking to… Crap!" I looked around the courtyard Teardrops of Death (my new nickname for Scary Guy) was gone, and Larry looked to have fallen asleep.
"She was talking to crap!" Sparkly Tween screeched with laughter and stretched her arms over the railing with her phone tight in her hand. "This is totally going viral."
"No more video," Chase warned in a deep, stern voice.
The tween blushed and brought the phone to her chest, pouting her pink, glittery-specked bottom lip.
"Tell me you got video of the guy I was talking to before?" I asked her.
"What guy?"
"No!" I ran out to the carports and down the uneven driveway, looking into every stall as I sprinted past. If Sparkly Tween hadn't seen him, he must have slipped out the back. Except he was nowhere to be seen.
"Cambria, stop!" Chase grabbed my arm and spun me around. "What are you doing?"
I yanked my arm out of his grasp, panting, and plopped my hands onto my thighs, catching my breath. That was a lot of running. "You let that guy get away! He…could…have…come…" Ouch, side cramp.
"Dammit, Cambria. Despite what you may think, watching crime shows does not make you a cop. That guy had prison tats all over him, and you decide to confront him? As if he's going to do what? Confess to a murder? You have no idea he's done anything. A couple of days ago, you had Spencer pegged as a criminal. Really, Cambria? Common logic told you that you should get into this guy's face? He's twice your size!"