Chapter 11
11
Tatum
June stands behind me, mouth agape. “What did you do?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I tell her, running the broom under the kitchen cabinets one final time.
“It looks incredible.”
“I figured instead of us finding a new place to stay, it would be easier to stick around Eleanor’s place. So I made her place livable.”
June rubs her eyes in disbelief. I’ve been in such a flow state I haven’t stopped to take it in myself. It’s incredible in here without all the boxes and junk. There is an airiness to the living space that emphasizes how high off the ground we are. It feels like the exact kind of place everyone dreams about before visiting here.
“How much money does Eleanor have?” I ask. “This place has gotta be worth millions. Does she own it or just rent? How does it even work?”
June doesn’t pretend to be offended by the question about money or to find it improper. Instead she gets out her phone and starts researching. The greenest of green flags, in my opinion. I love when people are just as curious as I am.
“She works in Broadway PR,” June tells me. “That’s not a luxury New York apartment salary, though. And these are condos, so, yeah, she owns.” She even starts walking around, examining the bookshelves and displays for some kind of clue as to how Eleanor has made all of this possible. “Are there any pictures around here?”
“For how much stuff was crammed into this place last night, very little of it was personal. The actual decor is almost sterile, actually. Like this is a show unit.”
“She spends a lot of money on my perfumes,” June tells me. “Though come to think of it, more than once she’s messaged me to say she’s lost a bottle and needs to order a replacement. She pays for it, by the way. She’s not just asking for handouts. But it’s happened enough that I’ve wondered how it’s possible. Now I see.” She gestures to the space, to the echo of what was there last night that I’ve spent the entire night erasing. “Her social media doesn’t have a ton to go off of. Pictures of her cats and some shows she’s worked on. And her LinkedIn just has the PR stuff.”
“Google her full name plus New York,” I say as I bust down the last of the living room boxes.
June is quiet for a while as she skims. When her first search doesn’t turn up anything beyond what we already know, she starts taking information from Eleanor’s social media, adding various names and places to her search until she gets a result that makes her let out a low humph. “I think her parents died in an accident.”
She shows me an article from over a decade ago detailing a multivehicle crash with an eighteen-wheeler in Pennsylvania, and follow-up articles discussing the huge settlement that went to the affected families.
“Two of the victims named here are listed as a married couple, and I searched their name plus Eleanor and found their obituary, where she’s listed as a student and communications major at NYU. It has to be her.”
It’s a grief too big to comprehend, so horrific that I have to stop myself from shutting out the tragedy of it. Instead, I think of my own family. The very family I’ve just run from, fleeing here to escape their drama. It suddenly seems so childish of me that I can hardly face my own shame.
“Fuck,” I say. “That’s horrific.” All the mess Eleanor left behind offends me less than it did upon arrival. “Wish we knew this when we got here yesterday, so I didn’t spend all night wishing her the worst.”
“Seriously.” June looks around at all I’ve accomplished. “Do you think she’ll be sad to lose all her junk? I know some people see it as a comfort.”
“I’ll take the blame, I promise,” I say. “I’ll curate a special re-creation if she wants. I just need to order roughly sixty-seven different things on Amazon Prime and enjoy some food from every restaurant within a thirty-mile radius.” Salt makes an appearance, meowing at my pile of deflated boxes. “I think the cats are the ones more likely to lodge the complaints, though.”
June walks over and pets Salt on the head. “We’re very sorry,” she tells the cat. “We’ll get you new boxes.” Then she looks up at me, really looks, and it roots me in the moment.
What does she see when she does that? Does it make her stomach fizz the same way it does mine?
Do friends look at each other this way?
“I can help you take these last ones to the trash,” she says.
“Oh, I got it,” I say.
“Please. It’s the least I can do.” She follows me down the hall, on the path I’ve traveled countless times throughout the night and into the morning, headed toward the trash room, which now overflows with Eleanor’s mess. “You’re a very quiet cleaner.”
“I think you’re just a deep sleeper,” I tell her.
“I must be, because it wasn’t even the sleeping pill this time.”
“I was banging shit around all night. I cleaned the office too, since it’s my bedroom for the time being. I thought for sure you heard me in there. The walls aren’t very thick for how expensive this place must be.”
June’s laugh echoes through the empty hall. It’s musical and thrilling, and louder than both of us expect. We look at each other in a private, conspiratorial way, like two children disobeying their own bedtime.
“What are you two doing?”
June and I turn, surprised by the husky voice behind us. An older woman stands in the doorway of the unit across from Eleanor’s. Weirdly, she looks familiar. She’s got light brown skin and long white hair, and she’s wearing a blue-and-green caftan with an incredible floral pattern on it. If I do know her, I have no idea why or how.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “We didn’t mean to disturb you.”
The woman seems mad. Or she’s just a fan of scowling. We weren’t being that disruptive. Then again, I’ve been at this for hours. It’s possible she heard me tell June I’ve been knocking shit around all night.
“I’ve never seen you here before,” the woman says, not acknowledging my apology. She has her arms folded across her chest and one eyebrow arched up.
“We’re friends of Eleanor,” June offers.
“Eleanor doesn’t have any friends,” the woman responds, more skeptical than ever. “At least none that come by during business hours.”
The mental picture I’m painting of Eleanor becomes more detailed by the moment. She’s made her money through devastating means. She holds on to everything unimportant but she keeps nothing substantial. She has no real friends.
“That’s our Ellie,” I say, feeling compelled to spin a friendship story with Eleanor, if only so this neighbor will soften up. “She’s a night owl. A very messy night owl.”
“She asked us to cat sit for her while she’s out of town,” June adds.
The woman continues to examine us, offering no clues to her feelings about anything we’ve said. Just when I can’t take it any longer, ready to keep walking, trying to match the baffling energy she’s projecting, she says, “Come in.”
“To your apartment?” I stumble out, confused.
The woman does not dignify me with an answer. June and I exchange a single look, deciding to go for it. It fills me with another swell of gratitude. June might not do well in crowds, but she doesn’t shy away from knowing more about other people one-on-one. She’s curious like I am. And the knowledge that she’s doing it with me really does make me braver.
Maybe it makes her braver too.
We drop the last box off in the trash room, and we walk into the apartment across from Eleanor’s.
Inside, it’s a mirror of Eleanor’s unit, with some minor layout differences. There’s also a sense of personality in here that Eleanor’s palace of beige lacks. The living room has an amazing dark orange wallpaper, patterned with white chrysanthemums, complimented by furniture in the exact shade of rich green I love the most. The glimpse of the half bath next to the entrance reveals a moody floral. It’s the kind of carefully composed style that comes through patience and time. Each piece in here feels specific and right. I steal a glance down the hallway that must lead to the two bedrooms, just like Eleanor’s unit, and notice movie posters lining the space between doors. Trying not to be too obvious, I attempt to catalog the titles to look them up later. Twilight on Clarke Street. The Bridge. There are more, names I can’t make out from where I’m standing, but there’s a theme among them. They are all movies from the seventies and eighties.
Then it hits me.
This is Dawn Flores.
She was an actor in that time, best known for her work in horror films and dramas. One close-up of her melancholic face always set the mood better than any other movie magic could. There was a bone-deep sadness embedded in her downturned expression that never felt resolved, no matter the story’s actual ending. Nowadays, she’s one of those figures that appears in every “Where Are They Now?” listicle, with the answer being, “Nobody knows for sure.”
All this time, it seems as though she’s been right here.
Starstruck, I blurt out my thoughts, unable to contain them now that I’ve figured out whose home I’ve just entered. I’ve never been around a famous person. “When I was in high school, my friends and I got really obsessed with watching old movies because we wanted people to think we were sophisticated. You were in so many of them. I still watch Twilight on Clarke Street every fall.”
“Are you calling me old?” Dawn asks, ignoring the rest of what I’ve said. That melancholy she’s known for seems to have hardened into something rougher around the edges.
“No,” I correct, hurrying. “I’m just…I don’t know. I’m shocked, I guess. I love your movies. I didn’t know you were—”
“Still alive?” she questions.
“No. I just didn’t know you were here ,” I try, floundering.
“Everyone knows I’m here. They just don’t care,” Dawn says. She’s very dry, I’m gathering, and I’m trying to adjust to her demeanor. “And I am old.”
“You’ve aged beautifully,” June chimes in. “Your apartment is incredible too.”
“It’s amazing,” I say. “I love this wallpaper. Did you get—”
“Now that you’re inside my home, it’s only right that you stop lying to me,” Dawn says, cutting off our train of compliments, which surely would have chugged on all morning if we were left to our own devices.
“You’re right,” June says. “We don’t know Eleanor at all. We’ve swapped places with her for the time being. I have a meeting here this week, and she needed a place to go, so she went to stay where we’re from.”
“Illinois,” I interject, receiving no reaction.
“I make Eleanor her perfumes,” June explains. “That’s how we know each other.”
“That’s why you smell so good,” Dawn says to June.
“Thank you. I noticed your floral right away. Is it Penhaligon’s Bluebell?”
June must be correct, because Dawn actually backs up a step, bewildered. “How the hell did you know that?”
“I have a good nose.”
This gets Dawn to laugh, which strikes me as no small feat considering how rough she’s been up to this point.
“Princess Diana?” June asks.
“Princess Diana,” Dawn confirms.
Whatever that means.
Dawn has warmed to June much faster than she’s warmed to me, which is to say she hasn’t warmed to me at all, and she obviously feels different about June. Which I can relate to. June’s presence is on par with the smell of cookies or the first bite of snow around Christmas. That’s why she’s a universal choice for favorite regular at any place she frequents.
“The problem is, we’ve never been here before,” I offer.
“And you think I can do something about that?” Dawn asks.
It comes off as mean, but maybe it isn’t. Maybe I’ve just gotten so comfortable in the shell of Trove Hills, always seeing the same people, always doing the same things. Talking to new people, experiencing a different place, is a shock to my senses.
“I think you can,” I reply, trying on Dawn’s style of delivery. Direct. Unfussed. “If you’d like,” I add, softening. “We don’t know where we are or what’s good around here. Or anywhere. We could use our phones, but we don’t even know where to start.”
“I’ve taken the train into Chicago plenty of times, but it’s different here,” June tells her.
“It is,” Dawn says. “But we don’t need to start with that. We can start with walking around. Did you bring good shoes?”
“Yes,” I say, even though I don’t have my luggage yet.
“Get dressed. Meet me out in the hall at eleven. I’ll show you what you need to know. But don’t get me wrong. This is only one very small piece of one very big place. It’s like showing you a single corner of a giant painting. Don’t expect to understand it all.”
“We won’t,” we say in unison.