Mister Tender's Girl

by Carter Wilson

  “Yeah, I know that word.”

  He nods. “So I had this chat with Jimmy, and he didn’t have anything left. But you both owe me. With interest, I’ve rounded the figure off to ten thousand. Now, Jimmy, being the strung-out, wormy piece of shit he is, can’t afford a used condom in a whorehouse. But he tells me you were with him that night, so using my master investigative powers, I tracked you down. Here you are, owner of this fancy coffee shop, with a nice little house in the better part of this shithole city, and it’s got me figuring you could come up with the ten thousand. Oh, and I’m adding in five thousand for the loss of my dealer. You know he’s dead, right?”

  He says it so casually, but the news punches me in the stomach. Oh God. I always wondered what happened to Nick, and now I know. Oh God, oh shit.

  “Jimmy killed him, and you were there, so that makes you what they call an accessory to murder. Now, I know who killed Nick, but the police still don’t. They didn’t investigate real hard, Nick being a dealer and all. But a murder is a murder, Alice. It doesn’t ever go away. The police will arrest someone if they think he—or she—is a suspect. So if you have it in your mind you want to go to the police now, you do what you gotta do. But I’ll make sure they know all about what you and Jimmy did that night. So the way I figure it, fifteen thousand dollars is an awful cheap price to pay to avoid either prison or whatever I decide to do with you. A bargain, really.”

  “The police will never believe you,” I say.

  “As far as you should be concerned, honey, I am the police. And judge. And jury. Now it’s up to you to determine if I’m also your executioner. And I don’t even give a shit about Nick—I’ve got a dozen guys like him—but he was my property, and you destroyed something that belonged to me. I’m going to get my fifteen grand from you.”

  “I don’t have that kind of money.”

  He smiles, and I wish he hadn’t.

  “Well, now, that’s exactly what Jimmy said. Things didn’t end up well for him. Do you want to see a photo?”

  He pulls his phone from his jacket pocket and starts swiping along its screen.

  “No, no, I don’t,” I say.

  “You sure? It’s amazing how a lack of teeth changes the way a person looks. You really gotta see this.”

  “No, please.”

  “You sure?” He lowers the phone, and his smile disappears. “Look, Alice, I’m a busy man, and fifteen thousand is a small amount of money for me to be spending my time on. But the thing is, I like retribution. I would be doing this even if you only stole a dime bag from me. So I’m not going anywhere. It would behoove you to put together that money. You’ve got two days, and I’ll be close by during that time.”

  Close by. Like watching me through my bedroom window. Sketching me.

  The question just comes out.

  “Are you Mister Tender?”

  “What?”

  I repeat my question, though I can already see from his face he has no idea what I’m talking about.

  He spins his cup around so I see Brenda’s handwriting.

  Freddy.

  “You should already know my name.”

  He walks around me toward the entrance. I turn my head as he opens the door, but before he walks out, he turns and says one more thing. This time it’s loud.

  “And your coffee? It’s a little bitter, Alice.” He holds up his hand and pinches his thumb and index finger together. “Little bitter.”

  Thirteen

  As the fear drains, it’s replaced by prickly, heat-generating anger. I want to chase after Freddy, sweep his legs out from under him, smash his face with my fists.

  Fucking Jimmy.

  My chest pounds, and I force myself to draw in long, slow breaths in an effort to calm myself. Brenda and Dan are watching; I can feel their gazes heavy on me. Though I doubt they could make out most of what Freddy said to me, his body language spoke volumes.

  I turn and walk back toward them, trying to appear like everything is fine. Just fine.

  “Who was that guy?” Brenda asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. Which at least is the truth. “Freddy, I suppose.”

  “What did he want?”

  “I don’t want to discuss it.” I figure that’s the best way to discourage further questions. And it works, though both of them keep staring at me, wanting more, until finally accepting my silence with visible disappointment.

  I go to my office, thinking, I don’t have fifteen thousand dollars.

  Well, technically I do, but it would leave me very tight. I have a cash reserve of about eighteen thousand I use for my monthly expenses, the idea being that, hopefully within the next six months, the Stone Rose will finally be a source of income rather than a drain on it. With my share of my father’s money, I had enough to buy my house and the coffee shop. If I got rid of fifteen thousand now, I’d have about two months of reserve left to cover what the coffee shop and my tenant’s rent doesn’t. If I paid the creep fifteen grand, I’d have to seriously look at a second mortgage on the house or a business loan.

  But…no. Even if I did have the money, no.

  I didn’t shoot anyone or steal anyone’s money. I left that night. That was all Jimmy, and I’m done paying for the mistakes of others.

  Also, I have a feeling that if I give Freddy everything he wants, he’ll keep coming back for more.

  Still, all my resolve will hardly make Freddy leave me alone. He’s here now, and I have to figure out what to do about him.

  Goddamn it.

  I shut the door, and the room closes in on me. As my mind reels, I force myself to breathe. Deep and slow. Deep breath in, count to four, hold, count to four, let it out, count to four. I do this until I feel back in control, if even just a little. Out of control is the last place I ever want to be, but lately that seems to be where I exist the most.

  I turn to my computer, as if the answer might be as simple as a few clicks away. I check the balance in my bank accounts, seeing exactly what I expect.

  Then I have an impulse, one that I’ve pushed down for a long time. But this time it comes on hard, almost painfully. I don’t even have control over my fingers as I type, and in a dizzying, desperate way, I feel like I’m shooting heroin again.

  I stare at the five words I’ve typed in the Google search bar:

  sylvia melinda glassin mister tender

  For years, I’ve managed to avoid searching out information on the twins who stabbed me. Since testifying against them as a fifteen-year-old, I haven’t wanted to see their faces or know anything about their miserable lives. I remember them sitting in the defendant’s docket, their expressionless faces, smooth skin, bright, lifeless eyes. I could barely tell them apart, but to me that hardly mattered anyway. They never spoke, they never defended themselves, and Sylvia even cracked a smile when they were found guilty. They were whisked from court, and I never again saw their faces, except nearly every night when I close my eyes.

  Attempted murder is treated as the same as murder in England, with a mandatory life sentence. The minimum requirement of prison time before the possibility of parole is up to the discretion of the judge, and though English judges are often viewed as too lenient, this was not the case for the Glassins. The judge deemed the twins’ crime “heinous, willful, and most particularly vile.” They were ordered into detention at Her Majesty’s pleasure for a minimum term of twelve years before even the possibility of stepping outside prison grounds. A harsh punishment for their age, or so I was told. Good.

  The case was sensational in England and had traction around the world, but once I assumed a new name in America, none of my few friends or coworkers ever knew my connection to the Glassin twins. So it’s been easy to avoid any news about the twins; all I have to do is not seek it out. Once in a long while, my mother will make some comment about an article she’s read concerning them, b
ut presently I know nothing more than they are slowly aging within concrete-block walls.

  My index finger hovers over the Enter button for a moment, as if it’s the trigger of a gun pointed at my own head. Then I fire.

  There are over one million results, but the one grabbing me immediately by the throat is the very first news-feed result, dated just three days ago.

  Glassin Twins Seek Privacy after Prison Release

  The article is from the Daily Mail, and the thumbnail photo accompanying the teaser is one I’ve seen before, one I remember from the papers in the days leading up to the trial. In it, the adolescent twins wear matching summer dresses (apple-red with mustard-colored flower petals) and they’re standing shoulder to shoulder in a park, the sun shining brightly on their pale, smooth faces. Their long, brown hair falls flat and straight past bony shoulders. Neither of them is smiling. There’s a chill to this image, and the casual observer would likely use the word creepy rather than cute, even before they were told what the girls did.

  I click on the story.

  Sylvia and Melinda Glassin were convicted of attempted murder in the famous “Mister Tender stabbing” in London’s Dollis Hill suburb in 2001, and on Thursday, the twenty-eight-year-old identical twins walked out of prison for the first time in fourteen years. They had first been eligible for parole in 2013.

  Both women were paroled under strict terms, including rigid curfews, frequent check-ins with their supervising officers, and a permanent surrender of their passports. Their crime was sensational not only because of its brutality and the ages of all involved, but also because of the victim. Alice Hill, also fourteen at the time of the attack, was the daughter of Reginald Hill, the creator of the vastly popular Mister Tender series of graphic novels.

  In the series, the eponymous main character had the ability to convince his victims to commit violent crimes, usually with the promise they would be rewarded with whatever they most wanted. Life imitated art when Sylvia and Melinda—themselves devoted fans of the series—attacked Alice Hill with a kitchen knife in a deluded attempt to please the fictional character and be rewarded.

  At their trial, the defense attorneys sought to convince the court the girls both suffered from temporary delusions brought about by the ingestion of psychotropic mushrooms. However, they were found criminally sane and were sentenced to life in prison.

  In their time in prison…

  I stop reading when I see the photo of the adult Glassin twins. It’s a hurried image showing them stepping into opposite sides of a car immediately after their release. Both have long hair, well past their shoulders, and are draped in similar gray overcoats. One of them—Sylvia, if I had to guess—has her face half turned toward the camera and seems startled, like a nocturnal animal suddenly caught in the beam of a flashlight. Melinda looks down into the car, her focus clearly on just getting out of there. And as I look at this photo, I wonder, Who are these women now? What’s inside them? Is there anything that’s carried over from their teenage selves?

  The rest of the article says the twins had both been model prisoners, a primary reason for their early parole, and that each had expressed genuine remorse, blaming drug use for their actions.

  They did offer me mushrooms that night. I refused.

  A few paragraphs on me, my family, my father’s murder. But not my new last name. The article states I am now living in the United States and did not respond to requests for commentary on this story.

  No one ever tried to contact me.

  I scroll to the comments, of which there are a few. Most say something to the effect that the Glassin twins should be boiled in oil, and I’m not going to disagree with this. One person inexplicably writes how he’s had sexual fantasies about the twins for years. The final comment, which chronologically was the first one posted, was placed there by a user named Mr. Interested.

  Alice is beautiful and Alice is scarred. She is the embodiment of all of us.

  God, who are these people? I hate that there are creeps talking about me through internet commentary.

  Then I remember something from the book I received. The website. I type into the address bar:

  www.mistertender.com

  Do I want to go down this rabbit hole?

  I hit Enter. The page loads instantly.

  All white, with one sentence in a beautiful and familiar swooping script.

  Alice, what did the penguin always tell you?

  Exactly as it appears in the book sent to me from London. Nothing else on the home page. Then I hover my mouse over the words and see they link to something. I click again.

  A small dialogue box pops up, asking me for a password to continue. I remember the word written beneath the web address in the book. How could I forget the name of the park where I was stabbed?

  gladstone

  I press Enter.

  A new page.

  On it are the same colored panels as in the book, the ones drawn by my father. The little versions of Thomas and me, flying on the back of Ferdinand, demanding entrance into Cloud City.

  I doubt my father made this website.

  Scroll down the page, no links to anything else. Back to the top. There I notice a word in an impossibly small font in the corner of the screen. I lean toward the display and squint to read.

  Tendertalk

  I’ve gone this far; I may as well keep going.

  Click.

  A message board, one dedicated to all things Mister Tender. The top of the page tells me there are close to two hundred active members of the board, and further down are forum topics with titles including MT Discussion Thread, Where to Buy, and Fan Fiction. But the one that gives me immediate pause is at the bottom of the list, and it simply says Alice.

  Another click, and now I’m in a world I never actually believed existed, but always feared.

  Fourteen

  My new name.

  My address.

  The name of my coffee shop. My gym.

  Photos of me.

  Fucking photos of me.

  Two hundred people keeping tabs, as if I’m some kind of freak who needs to be studied. A science experiment.

  Alice Hill is now Alice Gray.

  She lives alone.

  Here’s her house. Her bedroom is on the second floor, window on the right.

  Alice at the Stone Rose. See the scar on her shoulder?

  Sharp stings in my chest, needles of an impending panic attack. My hand shakes as I scroll through the pages, the book of my life as seen through the eyes of stalkers. They know everything about me. Perhaps I even know them. Maybe they are regulars at the Rose.

  All these years of paranoia. But it’s real. It’s all desperately real.

  These people. What are they, some kind of fans? Does the victim of every sensational crime have their own cult following?

  Most posts are from one person, this Mr. Interested. His latest just three days ago.

  She is beautiful. Her scars only make her more so.

  That’s the extent of the post, no comments following it. I read a few others, as many as I can stomach. Posts from Mr. Interested usually consist of one sentence, often followed by a photo. Most have a creepy protective undertone.

  We should do more for her.

  Alice is lonely.

  I want to hold her. Keep her safe.

  I study each picture, try to think where I was in that moment. Most photos are me walking outside, taken from a distance. There is even one of me outside the movie theater a couple of weeks ago, the exact image that was later drawn into the book I received. Each photo is a candid one, and I have no memory of anyone being near me in those moments.

  Only Mr. Interested posts photos. The others simply comment.

  Mr. Interested must be here. In Manchester.

  Yet the book I received was from Eng
land.

  What is happening?

  I look closer at the picture of my house posted a few months ago, my nose an inch from the screen. Trees in full bloom, my lawn green and lush, the sky a brilliant blue. Middle of the day, I’m guessing, so I’m likely at the Stone Rose. Everything seems perfectly normal about my house, but as I look closer, there’s something off. It takes me a moment to realize what it is, and then I see it. In the Perch window, the curtain is pulled to the side. Richard’s room. His curtains are always closed. But the picture is too small, and I can’t zoom in on the message board. So I right-click and save the photo to my hard drive, hoping Mr. Interested uploaded a large version. I open the saved photo and zoom in using the photo viewer app. The photo becomes grainier, but not so much that I can’t see what’s in that upstairs window.

  It’s Richard.

  He’s looking down. Directly at whomever took this photo.

  I can’t take any more. I’ve only been in this world for twenty minutes, but I can’t survive another minute in it, at least not now.

  I slam down the lid of my laptop, which I toss into my bag. Then I grab my coat, leave my office, and tell Brenda I’ll be gone for the rest of the day.

  “Is it because of that guy?” she asks.

  “No,” I tell her. “I mean, yes and no.” I’m out of breath.

  She stands in front of me with Hepburn eyes full of worry. “Alice, you can share with me, you know. You’re so…coiled up all the time. Maybe it’d be good for you to talk.” Then she breaks eye contact and looks at the floor. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to pry. Obviously it’s your life. I just want you to know I’m a good listener, is all.”

  I look at Brenda and suddenly want a friend more than I’ve wanted anything in the world. I do want someone I can talk to. Share my worries, so that maybe they’ll erode just a bit. Maybe it’s okay to tell people what happened to me. Hell, apparently there’s a whole community out there already feasting on every detail, so why not let someone of my own choosing into my life?