I mix into the throng for safety but still find myself glancing over my shoulder a lot. I pause before the window of an electronics store and spot an answering machine. Mike hated answering machines, so we never bought one. But some creep is calling me, and Mike is gone. I go in and lay down some plastic for the lady behind the counter.
When I leave with the slim machine in a plastic bag, I expect to feel better, as if I’m doing what I can to protect myself. But I feel exactly the opposite. The purchase makes the threat all too real. I feel scared.
I walk through the square quickly, looking around at the office workers walking tiredly home. At this hour, relatively early for the super-professional crowd, we’re talking paralegals, not lawyers. Secretaries, not bosses. Almost all of them are women, the vast underclass of pink-collar workers who keep America word-processed, executive-summaried, and support-staffed. I fall in step with one of the older women. She has a sweet, rounded face and wears a hand-knit sweater. A saleswoman, I think, or a librarian’s assistant. We stop together at the edge of the square in front of the Dorchester, waiting for the traffic to give us an even break.
“There should be a light here,” she says, slightly annoyed. “Or at least a stop sign.”
I scan the cars whizzing by. “I agree.”
“They’ll kill you to get home five minutes faster.”
A Cadillac driver waves us across the street. I lose the saleswoman on Twentieth Street, after the high-rises that demarcate the residential west end of town. I look behind me. The people on the sidewalk look normal. I check back again half a block later, and only two are left. One is a teenage girl with a backpack slung over her shoulder and the other is a flashy woman with lots of shiny shopping bags.
Something catches my eye at the corner of Spruce and Twenty-first. Not the people, the cars. Two white cars are stopped at a light, and after them is a brown one. A brown Cadillac, an older model, somewhat beat-up. An Eldorado or Toronado, one of those.
I squint at the car. Is it the same Cadillac that let me go by in front of the Dorchester?
I can’t remember, but try not to leap to conclusions. There are a million Cadillacs in the world, I tell myself, moving quickly to cross.
I turn onto Delancey and can’t help but glance back over my shoulder. The Cadillac is coming toward Delancey, cruising slowly. Close up, it looks like the same car.
Chill, as Judy would say. So what if it’s the same car? Maybe it’s someone looking for a parking space. I used to do it all the time, driving pointlessly around and around the same block. Now I pay a fortune to park in a garage nearby. It’s worth every penny.
I stride down Delancey Street, remembering the magazine articles I’ve read about crime. Don’t look like a victim or you’ll be one. Stand tall, walk fast. I hoist the plastic bag up and barrel ahead. As I do, I hear the smooth acceleration of a powerful engine coming down the street behind me. I pick up my pace for the half block that’s left and check over my shoulder at the corner.
I feel my stomach tighten.
It’s the Cadillac, blocked by a station wagon that’s trying to wedge itself into a parking space. I catch my breath. I feel like bolting across the street, but there’s too much traffic. A limo rolls by, then a clunker and an endless parade of Hondas. I’m only a block from home.
I look back. The Cadillac has freed itself. It’s moving forward, speeding to the corner without effort.
I feel panic begin to rise in my throat. “Come on, come on,” I say to the traffic. I spot an opening in front of an empty school bus and run for it, my briefcase banging against my thigh. The bus driver protests with a startlingly loud haaaannk. I almost drop the briefcase but make it to the other side of the street, breathless.
Run, says the Mike-voice, softly. Run.
I glance backward at the top of my street. The traffic screens most of Delancey from view, but glinting at me from between the moving cars is the shimmer of a battered chrome grill. The Cadillac’s still there. My heart begins to race. I can’t see the driver. The windshield reflects a cloudy sky.
Run. Run. Run for your life.
So I do, a dead run, without looking back. Instantly, I hear the Cadillac gun its engine as it crosses onto my street. I speed up. The Cadillac speeds up. It’s almost at my heels as I tear down the street like a madwoman.
Run, run.
The Cadillac’s right behind me.
I hear someone screaming and it’s me. “No! No! Help!” I keep running until I reach my front door.
Christ! My keys! The answering machine clatters to the sidewalk as I rummage furiously in my bag. Where are my fucking keys?
The Cadillac screeches to a stop behind me, right in front of my door.
“No!” I turn and scream at the car. My back is plastered against the front door, my breast heaving. “You fucking asshole, leave me alone!”
In my fear and panic, I see the driver.
A woman, dark-haired, Hispanic. The Cadillac is loaded with kids. The oldest one, a boy in the back seat, is in hysterics.
I can’t quite believe it. I blink at the sight.
A mother and children. She looks upset, but I don’t know why, since I’m the one having the coronary. Like my grandfather used to say, my heart attacked me.
The mother leans over an infant in a plastic car seat. “Ah, I scare you,” she says, in highly flavored English. “I so sorry. I scare you, poor lady. I no mean.”
I almost cry with relief. My briefcase falls to the ground with a leathery slap.
The mother turns to the boy in the back, who’s still laughing, and says something to him I can’t hear. He leans out of the open window with a smirk. The trace of a mustache covers a prominent lip.
“My mutha says she’s sorry she scared you. We’re lost. We got off the expressway too soon. She shoulda stayed on. I told her to stay on, but she wouldn’t listen.” He laughs again. “I told her not to keep after you too, but she wanted to tell you not to be scared. She don’t listen to nobody.” He points at his temple, and his mother cuffs him lightly on the shoulder. “Get offa me!” he shouts at her, muy macho.
They just wanted directions. Christ. I try to recover as they talk again.
The boy leans out of the car. “She wants to know if you’re awright, you want to go to the hospital. I told her you don’t go to the hospital for this, but she don’t listen.”
“Tell her thank you for me, will you? I’m fine. Tell her it’s okay. It’s not her fault.”
They talk again, but the mother looks doubtful.
“It’s not your fault!” I yell into the car, but she gets distracted by the little girls in the back, fighting over a troll doll. She snatches the troll from them and they begin to wail, identically. They look to be the same age. “Are they twins?”
The mother cups her ear.
“Twins? I’m a twin, too. I have a twin sister.”
The mother chatters excitedly to the son and pushes him toward the window. He wrests his arm away and sticks his head out of the car. His expression is pained. “My mutha says that twins are a special blessing from God. You are a special person.” Then he rolls his eyes.
I feel my eyes moisten, like an idiot. I want to hug his mother. “Tell her I said thank you. She is a special person, too.”
He examines a set of filthy nails. “Great, we’re all special. So, you know how to get to the South Street exit?”
“Tell your mother how special she is.”
He looks up at me, a wry challenge. “Are you for real?”
I straighten my blazer and pick up my briefcase. “The realest.”
He turns from me and shouts at his twin sisters, who are still whimpering. Then he says something to his mother, and she smiles at me happily. He leans back out of the window. “Awright?”
“Thank you. Take a right at the top of the street, then go left on Spruce. Take another right and follow it to Lombard. It’ll go right into South Street.”
“Got it, babe.” He lean
s back into the car and says something to his mother. The mother waves good-bye. As the Cadillac pulls away, the kid flips me the finger.
I laugh, unaccountably elated. I pick up the answering machine, wondering whether it broke when it fell, but it looks fine. I tuck it under my arm and dig, calmly now, in the bottom of my purse for my keys. I feel giddy, reminded of my father’s old joke. Why are your keys always in the last place you look? To which Angie and I would moan, in stereo: Because once you find them, you don’t look anymore.
I find my keys and let myself in. I pick up my mail. My heart is even lighter when I find there are no anonymous notes in the mail. I feel like I’ve gotten a reprieve as I climb the stairs to my door.
But halfway up the staircase, as I thumb through the key ring for my apartment key, I notice that something about the stairwell looks different.
Then I see why.
At the top of the darkening stairway, my apartment door is open.
Wide open.
11
I freeze. Did I leave without locking the door this morning? Is that possible?
I feel my senses heighten. I strain to hear something from inside my apartment, but there isn’t a sound. The air smells vaguely of cigarettes, but then it always does, since my landlords are smokers. The door is open wide and it looks dark inside. Alice is nowhere in sight. I can’t believe this. Someone could be in there, right now. He could be in there.
I have to get out and away. I have to call the cops. I will myself into moving. I back slowly down the staircase, easing my back along the wall, my eyes riveted to the door. If he comes out, if anybody comes out, I’ll scream like hell. I inch painstakingly downward, trying not to make any noise. The plastic bag rustles slightly as I move, and I curse having bought the answering machine.
My apartment door grows smaller and smaller at the top of the staircase, and I reach the landing. Only a short flight to go. For a fleeting moment I worry about Alice. Would he hurt her? Would he kill her? I’m surprised to feel a twinge at the thought; I didn’t know I even liked the cat. Still, I’m too frightened to go back. I’m almost at the entrance hall when I hear:
Run.
And I do, bolting out the door, down the pavement, to the pay phone two blocks away. My hands are shaking as I press 911. The woman says they’ll have a car there in five minutes.
I walk back and hover at the corner directly across from the top of my street, holding my briefcase, purse, answering machine, and mail.
Five minutes later, there’s no police.
Ten minutes later, there’s still no police, and I feel like a pack animal.
Half an hour later, the only thing that’s changed is that I’m keeping company with Marv, the man who sells tree-height ficus plants on this corner. I’ve settled into his rickety folding chair to watch the front door to my building. My fear is gone, as is the steely cold taste of panic. Both have been replaced by a low-level tension. Whoever was in my apartment is probably gone by now. I just wonder what he took and what the place looks like. And whether Alice is safe. I squint up at my apartment windows, still dark. The cat isn’t on the windowsill.
In exchange for the chair, I had to listen to Marv’s life story. He’s spent thirty years selling anything that doesn’t move — encyclopedias, bronze baby shoes, Amway detergents, and now ficus plants. He told me how he drives a U-Haul down to a Florida nursery where he buys the plants for cheap, then how he brings them up here and sells them for cheap, and how he still makes out like a bandit. The U-Haul is parked in front of his apartment. Each of the ficus trees is chained to its own parking meter. Marv owns this corner. He says, Who better?
“They ain’t comin’, Mary,” he says. “You shoulda told ’em he had a gun. They hear gun, they come. They don’t hear gun, they don’t come.”
“I didn’t see a gun. I didn’t even see a person.” I watch the door across the street, but there’s no activity at all. The few passersby don’t look inside, which tells me nothing unusual is going on.
“So you say it anyway.” He rubs a pitted cheek and looks worriedly at the sky, which is almost dark. “I’m doin’ lousy today, I tell you. Can’t give these plants away today.”
I watch the street for the cops. “Maybe I should call them again.”
“Won’t do you no good. They don’t hear gun, they don’t come.”
“Not even for a burglary?”
“You tell ’em it was a burglary?”
“No, not exactly. I don’t know if I was burglarized. I only know the door was open and I didn’t leave that way.”
He pushes up the brim of a grimy pith helmet, part of his jungle motif. “That’s what you told ’em?”
I nod.
“Why’d you tell ’em that?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
He bursts into laughter. “Listen to this kid! Because it’s the truth, she says! You’re a lawyer, what’s the truth to you?” He guffaws. “Mary, you hear the one about the elephant and the tiger?”
I’m in no mood for more lawyer jokes. My chin sinks into my hand as I look down my street.
“Mary?”
“No.”
He licks his lips with anticipation. “So this elephant is walkin’ along in the jungle and a tiger is walkin’ behind him. And every five feet, the elephant, you know, drops a turd. Now the tiger, he’s walkin’ behind the elephant, and he eats it.”
“Jeez, Marv.” I wince.
“No, no, listen, it’s a good one. So the elephant, he gets disgusted. He turns around to the tiger and he says, ‘Yo! Why you eatin’ my turds like that?’ And the tiger says, ‘Because I just ate a lawyer and I want to get the taste out of my mouth.’” Marv bursts into gales of laughter.
I shake my head. “That’s disgusting.”
“You like that?” he says, delighted. “Wait, wait. I got another one. What’s the difference between a porcupine and a Porsche full of lawyers?”
Suddenly, a white police car turns onto my street. The cavalry. “Finally. They’re here.” I gather up my things and scramble to my feet.
“So they came after all.”
The squad car stops in front of my building and a cop climbs out of each front door. One cop is black and one is white; they’re both square-jawed enough to be from central casting. It looks like a movie is being filmed in front of my apartment, with a racially balanced cast. But it’s not a movie, it’s my life. My apartment. My cat. “I gotta go.”
“Wait, don’t you wanna hear the punch line?”
“I have to go, Marv.”
“In a porcupine, the pricks are on the outside.”
I’m too tense to laugh as I hurry across the street.
“Come back if you need anything!” he calls out.
“Thanks,” I call back. I hustle over to the cops, who are standing together like the twin towers. I feel slightly in awe of them, of their authority. They’re the good guys. I consider telling them the whole story. About the notes and the car.
“Do you live here?” says the black cop gravely. The nameplate on his broad chest says TARRANT.
“Yes. I’m the one who called. I came home and saw that my apartment door was open. I was too scared to go in.”
“Was there any sign of a forced entry?”
“No. But the door was open. I know I didn’t leave it that way. I don’t know if anybody is up there still. No one’s come out since I called you. I’ve been watching the front door.”
“Is there a back door?”
“Not to my apartment. I’m on the third floor.”
“No fire escape?”
“No.”
“We’ll check it out. Do you have a burglar alarm?” Meanwhile, the white cop, named LEWIS, is squinting up at the building. When he looks up, I can see he has braces on his teeth.
“No.”
“Is the house yours?”
“No. My landlords are away.”
“You live alone?”
“I have a cat.”
br /> Tarrant clears his throat. “May I have your key to the front door?”
I dig in my bag again. My father’s joke is miles away. With effort, I produce the keys. “This one is to the front door. The next one is the apartment door.”
He takes the key ring by the front door key. “We’ll check it out. Please stand back and clear the door.” He throws a brawny arm in my path and guides me away from the entrance. My stomach begins to churn. In a few minutes, I’ll find out what the fuck is going on.
They leave me there and enter the building. One of my neighbors across the way, the one with the Bianchi bike, watches curiously from the window. None of the other neighbors are at the windows. The shades are drawn again in the apartment across from mine. Whoever lives there is never home. A lawyer.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Marv crossing the street and heading in my direction. I stand away from the building and look up to see if anything’s going on in my apartment. The slats in the window blinds are suddenly illuminated. The cops must be in the living room. I bite my lip.
“Did they find anything?” Marv peers up with me at the building.
“They’re still up there.”
“Don’t worry. Anything got taken, you can get replaced. It’s only money.”
“Except my cat.”
“You think they took your cat?”
“No. I’m just worried about her.”
“Me, I hate cats.”
“Me too.”
Suddenly, the window blinds are pulled up and Officer Lewis’s silhouette appears in Alice’s window. He fusses with the screen and pokes his head out briefly, then replaces it. I crane my neck to see inside the apartment, but I can’t see past the cop. He does the same to the other window.
“I wonder what he’s doing,” I say.
“Seeing how the guy broke in. I heard some guy broke into an apartment on Lombard last week. Climbed right up the front of the building to the third floor. Like a mountain climber. Like Spider-Man.”
I look up at the apartment. Two bright windows face the street, glowing from the front of the building like the eyes of a jack o’lantern. I wonder how much longer the cops will be. I wonder what they’re finding. Suddenly, Alice springs onto her windowsill and does a luxuriant stretch.