No Memes of Escape

by Olivia Blacke

  “I didn’t know that Todd could text,” I admitted. Todd liked to call people. And leave voicemails. I had never even set up my voicemail before taking the job at Untapped. Even my own parents eventually learned I responded quicker to texts.

  “I taught him that, too. You know what would be fun? I could set up a Tinder profile for you, too. It would be nice, having someone to double date with. You, me, Vince, and your internet love match. Won’t that be a blast?”

  “No thank you,” I said emphatically. “I already meet enough weirdos on the internet without actively looking for them. Besides, I’m only in town for another six weeks,” I continued. “Once Aunt Melanie gets back from Europe, I’m on the next Greyhound back to Louisiana. What’s the sense in getting involved with someone knowing I’m leaving soon?”

  “I’m not talking about getting involved,” she said with a lighthearted laugh. “Just a date. What would it hurt?”

  “I’m happy being single,” I told her, and I meant it. My last serious boyfriend had dumped me when he went off to college and I stayed in Piney Island. According to Facebook, he was clerking for a law office in Oklahoma City and was married to a tall, leggy blonde. They had a chubby little toddler and another baby on the way now.

  I was still slinging plates and lived with my parents.

  We paused at a busy intersection and I glanced down the wide sidewalk. A girl was walking seven dogs of varying sizes on a tangle of leashes. A trio of au pairs were pushing double strollers. An older woman sat on a lawn chair on her stoop, reading a worn novel in the flickering light of the porch lamp mounted over her head. An oversized pigeon swooped down to pick up something one of the stroller parade babies dropped, but was beaten to the prize by a brown rat twice its size. All around us, horns blared, bicycles whirred, and a siren wailed. Over the constant cars and hundreds of disjointed conversations, I could almost make out the faint sound of the East River crashing against its rocky banks.

  I grinned and shifted my messenger bag so it was out of the reach of a man who stood a little too close to me on the sidewalk. Tired of waiting for the crosswalk light to go green, he spotted a break in traffic and dashed across the intersection.

  “What’s up with that smile?” Izzy asked. “You reconsidering my offer to set you up?”

  “Nah, I’m just glad I’m not raising a bunch of kids in Oklahoma City on a clerk’s salary,” I admitted.

  “Random,” Izzy responded with a questioning look. We’d been walking faster than normal. I was out of breath, but at least I wasn’t dwelling on the scene back at the escape room as long as I was struggling to keep up with Izzy.

  She did everything quickly. She talked quickly. She walked quickly. And apparently, she recovered quickly. Izzy had been a hot mess when she left the interview room, but by the time we got to work, she was fine. Better than fine, to be honest. She was practically giddy. “I get it, Odessa, you’re old-fashioned. You don’t like dating apps? Why don’t we go out and meet people? Hit a couple of bars. Pick up a guy or two.”

  “I don’t know about that. Seems unsafe.”

  “Come on, live a little.” She hooked her arm through mine. “We’re young and live in the greatest city in the world. We might as well enjoy it!”

  She had a point.

  “Can we at least go home and change first?” I looked down at myself. I’d changed back into my tank top, so I wasn’t wearing the bright neon polo shirt anymore. My outfit was comfortable, but even though I meant it when I told Izzy I wasn’t interested in dating anyone, if we were going out, I might as well put on something a little fancier.

  “Of course.”

  We let ourselves into my aunt’s apartment building. Up until a decade or two ago, Williamsburg had been a wasteland of defunct industrial factories and warehouses overlooking the Manhattan skyline. Then some forward-thinking developers had come in, gentrified everything, and turned it into the hottest neighborhood in New York City. The streets were lined with electric car charging stations and valet stands. Abandoned warehouses were transformed into multimillion-dollar condo buildings. Graffiti was covered up with murals commissioned by the city council.

  Unlike Manhattan, my neighborhood still supported mom-and-pop shops, although chain stores were slowly encroaching and leaching away some of the local flavor. Williamsburg had been such a success that the developers were pushing their way farther into Brooklyn, taking over one neighborhood at a time. As a result, affordable housing within biking distance of the Williamsburg Bridge was getting scarcer by the day.

  I was lucky. When my aunt Melanie needed someone to watch her place for a few months, she called me. Sure, she could have boarded her cat at some fancy pet spa and asked the building concierge to keep an eye on her unit, but she’d asked me instead and I was incredibly grateful. I never would have had an opportunity to explore the magnificent city without her offering a place to stay, rent-free, for the summer.

  And Izzy? When I met her, she was living in a classroom in an abandoned schoolhouse with a junkie and half a dozen feral cats that more or less kept the rats at bay. When the schoolhouse had been temporarily closed for fumigation, she’d had nowhere else to go and ended up crashing with me. She got free room and board for a few weeks, and I got a roomie and friend who knew her way around Williamsburg.

  Win-win.

  As we waited for the elevator—a luxury in itself—in the well-lit, air-conditioned lobby, I thanked my lucky stars. There was nothing like stumbling across a murder victim and spending half the day in a police station to remind me how good I really had it. And the icing on the cake was that Earl, the elderly concierge who normally manned the front desk, wasn’t at his post.

  Earl didn’t like me much and never bothered to hide that fact. I had no idea what I’d done to get on his bad side—I went out of my way to be nice to everyone—but it seemed like nothing I did could change his mind. On a good day, he glared at me without getting up. On a bad day, he’d call my aunt and tattle on me about something he disapproved of me doing. He was one of the few things in New York I would not miss when I left.

  The elevator door dinged, and when it opened, Earl was standing inside. “Good evening, Miss Izzy!” he said, beaming at her. Whatever grudge he held against me apparently did not extend to my roomie. “Miss Odessa,” he deadpanned.

  “Evening, Mr. Earl,” I said as brightly as possible.

  He stepped forward, holding the door open for us. “Have fun,” he smirked.

  “I wonder what he meant by that?” I asked as the doors closed behind us and the elevator lurched upward.

  Aunt Melanie’s apartment was on the top floor. We got out of the elevator and stepped into the carpeted hallway. Unlike some apartment buildings, this one always smelled faintly of lavender and cleaning products, and the lightbulbs all worked. The floors were clean and even the walls were free of handprints. Between the security door downstairs and the concierge, it was a relatively safe building in the nice part of a pricey neighborhood.

  But when I saw my apartment door ajar, my heart thrummed in my chest.

  “Did you leave the door unlocked?” I asked Izzy in a whisper.

  She rolled her eyes at me. “I’m a New Yorker. I don’t even leave the bathroom door unlocked.” She stepped in front of me, reached into her pocket, and pulled out a little metal rod. It was a self-defense thing. Even though she’d shown me how it worked, I was still skeptical that something that small could do any damage against an attacker, much less an intruder.

  I grabbed her arm. “Let’s just call the cops. Or at least go downstairs and get Earl.”

  Izzy grinned. “Oh, please. The cops got their hands full. I’ve got this.”

  “Seriously . . .” I pled with her, but it was too little, too late.

  Ignoring me, Izzy took three steps forward and flung the door open, screaming like a banshee.

  Then t
here was a high-pitched woman’s yelp, followed by the sound of something crashing and breaking. My aunt’s cat, a tricolored orange, white, and gray curly-haired cat, streaked through the open door, hissed, and dashed down the hall away from us. “Rufie!” I yelled after him, but he ignored me.

  “Odessa?” a familiar voice called.

  I dashed toward the open door. Inside the apartment, Izzy was pinned against the wall by the end of a crutch. I knew the older woman leaning against the underarm brace of the medical crutch well. “Aunt Melanie? What on earth are you doing home?”

  7

  Odessa Dean @OdessaWaiting ∙ July 12

  Tweeps! Settle an argument—how many pillows is 2 many pillows? Also, anyone wanna loan me a pillow? & maybe a bed? &, like, an apartment? #surprise #familydrama #imseriousaboutthatpillow

  Izzy dropped her self-defense wand, and Aunt Melanie rocked backward. Seeing that she was about to lose her balance, I rushed past the kitchen island and helped steady my aunt, noticing for the first time that one of her feet was encased in a chunky walking boot. Once she was no longer in any danger of toppling over, I helped her hobble over to the couch.

  She slid down onto the couch cushions and rested the crutches on the armrest where my pillow lay. When Izzy moved in, I’d decided to take the couch and gave her the bedroom. She’d offered to swap out every week, but it had seemed like too much of a hassle. Besides, Aunt Melanie’s couch was comfortable.

  And now that Aunt Melanie was here, in the flesh, sitting on her couch in her apartment, I realized that I had no idea where me or Izzy would be sleeping tonight.

  But there was a more pressing problem I needed to deal with first. “I’ll be right back,” I said to the room in general. I dashed out to the hallway after Rufus the cat. I needn’t have worried.

  The hallway to my aunt’s floor was long and lined with doors on both sides. It stretched down the length of a city block before doubling back to access the apartments on the other side of the narrow courtyard. It continued past two sets of emergency stairs before winding back to the elevator. My aunt’s cat, officially Rufus, but more often Rufie, was sitting in the middle of the hallway just a few doors down. He was industriously licking his paws, occasionally looking up to glare at me as if it was my fault that he was reduced to the indignity of being “outside” like a common, well, cat.

  Rufus was on the small side for a cat. Half of his face had brown fur and the other half orange with a patch of white fur running up over his chin, nose, and forehead. His multicolored hair had a hint of curl as if he’d stuck one of his adorable toe beans in a light socket. He was a quiet cat and the absolute perfect pet for a New Yorker, even if sometimes a little switch flipped in his kitty brain that made him momentarily act like a dog.

  “Come on, little buddy,” I said, scooping him up into my arms. Sometimes he wanted to be picked up, and loved cuddling. Other times, he would hiss if I so much as looked in his direction. When he was in one of his doggy phases, he would follow at my heels as well as any puppy on a leash. Today, he was all about the snuggle, despite the drama that had forced him out into the hall. Or maybe because of it.

  I cradled him as I carried him back to the apartment, and nudged the door shut behind me with my foot. Rufus immediately sprang out of my arms and launched himself at my aunt, who was as happy to see him as he was to be seen.

  “Aunt Melanie, I guess you’ve met Izzy Wilson.”

  “Yes, dear,” my aunt said. “We were introducing ourselves while you went to fetch the cat. He looks amazing, by the way. I was afraid he would refuse to eat while I was gone. He’s such a picky eater and gets depressed when I’m away.”

  “Actually, I’ve been making him some of my own blend,” Izzy said, looking proud of herself.

  The bodega on the corner stocked Rufus’s normal cat food. That wasn’t good enough for Izzy, or her creativity in the kitchen. This week, Rufus got fresh chicken mixed with celery and carrots. Last week was beef, eggs, and spinach. For a vegan, Izzy really enjoyed experimenting with meaty cat food recipes. She was a pretty good cook for human food, too, but it leaned more toward tofu and quinoa—two foods I had never even tried before leaving Louisiana but I was now firmly pro.

  Aunt Melanie picked Rufie up and blew out a huff as if she strained herself. “He must be liking it. He’s put on a pound.” I hadn’t noticed, but then again, I wasn’t exactly weighing him every day.

  “Homemade cat food is a little extra work,” Izzy explained, “but the ingredients are healthier. It’s nice to know what he’s eating, don’t you think?”

  “Not to mention he’s using the litter box less,” I added. Not that I was complaining. Cleaning a litter box was a small price to pay for living in a bougie building like this free of charge. The apartment itself was enormous, with wide windows and a floor-to-ceiling glass door that led out to a balcony large enough to hold a small table and two chairs, overlooking a narrow courtyard. The inside was decorated with enormous bookshelves crammed with more books than an average school library, along with unique knickknacks ranging from the size of a quarter to a seven-foot-tall giraffe statue.

  Aunt Melanie collected local art, along with being an artist herself. Not that her apartment displayed any of her paintings, but she had her share of renown in art circles. Personally, I wished I’d inherited even a pinch of her talent. Sure, I could make a gorgeous ball gown out of an old burlap sack, but the last time I tried drawing a stick figure, it was mistaken for a carrot.

  I sat on the other end of the couch and studied my aunt. My mother’s sister was only a few years younger than her, but seemed closer to my age than hers at first glance. While my mom’s hair was a short, silver bob, my aunt’s hair was long enough to reach the middle of her back, with a hint of wave as it transitioned from blonde to reddish brown to purple at the tips. Unlike my mother, and myself, Aunt Melanie was rail-thin. She never looked old before today, but there were new thin lines on her forehead and dark bags under her eyes, in addition to the enormous contraption on her foot. “But enough about Rufus. What on earth happened to your leg?”

  “Long, rambling story,” she said, sitting back and closing her eyes. “It’s good to be home.”

  Izzy was busy pulling dishes out of the drying rack and putting them in the cupboards where they belonged. Unlike the rest of the eclectically decorated apartment, the kitchen was bland by comparison with beige cabinets and gray countertops. I wasn’t even sure anyone had ever cooked in it before Izzy moved in, if the collection of takeout menus and standard cookware still in the original packaging was any indication. If it weren’t for the assortment of complementary but unmatched homemade plates, bowls, and glasses, I wouldn’t believe that the kitchen was part of my aunt’s space at all.

  Izzy slid a stack of plates onto the shelf and ran a dish towel over the counters. Even knowing she desperately needed a place to stay, I’d been apprehensive about inviting her to move in, and only partially because it wasn’t my apartment. Growing up with no siblings and still living in my parents’ house meant I’d never had to share my personal space before. But it turned out that Izzy was the perfect roommate. She loved to cook, but even more important, she loved to clean. Dishes. Laundry. Vacuuming. Even cleaning litter boxes. She said it was her jam, and I was more than happy to indulge her.

  Izzy carefully folded the towel over one of the drawer handles. When she moved in, one of the first things she did was put away the paper towels and napkins, replacing them with colorful reusable towels she made herself with a little help from me and my faithful sewing machine. “Well, I can see you two have a lot of catching up to do. Gimme a sec, and I’ll be outta your hair.” With a curt nod, she disappeared into the bedroom and I could hear the crinkly sound of clothes being hastily shoved into plastic garbage bags.

  I followed her and stood in the doorway. I knew this day was coming, but didn’t expect it for another month and a half
. When Izzy first showed up on the doorstep, a pile of mismatched boxes, a suitcase held together with hope and duct tape, and laundry bags bursting at the seams with her meager possessions, I’d been reluctant to let her inside. But now I couldn’t bear to see her leave. “Where are you gonna go?”

  “I’ll figure something out,” she said brightly. “I’ll probably crash with Vince for a day or two until I come up with something more permanent.”

  Izzy didn’t seem concerned, but I was. She hadn’t opened up about what happened in the interrogation room, but if Castillo’s interview with her had been half as uncomfortable as it had been with me, they were in for an awkward evening. Besides, with him working long shifts to solve Vickie’s murder, I doubted that he would be interested in playing house tonight. “At least call him and let him know you’re coming,” I urged her, although I couldn’t think of an alternative place for her to stay off the top of my head.

  “Nah. Never give them a chance to say no. Worked for you, didn’t it?” She flashed me a toothy grin. She was right about that much. I never would have agreed to taking on a roomie in my aunt’s apartment if Izzy hadn’t shown up with a bunch of bags and nowhere else to go. “Have you seen my purple hat?”

  “It’s in the bathroom,” I told her.

  “Thanks!” She slid past me and headed to the bathroom, dragging her makeshift luggage behind her.

  “Can I at least call you an Uber?” I offered. I made just a fraction of minimum wage at the café, but between a sunny smile and Untapped’s collection of local craft beer, I earned a decent haul in tips. Even with free rent, I’d barely been able to make ends meet before Izzy moved in and showed me how to stretch every dime even further. As a result, I could afford a few little luxuries in life, like a pair of shoes at the local consignment shop that I had my eyes on, but I’d much rather use my meager savings to help Izzy.