8. Eleanor
8
Eleanor
Really fucking creepy.
It takes several days before I’m not looking over my shoulder everywhere I go. A week before I feel like myself again. I never do make it to the police station, not really sure what I’d say. And the longer I wait, the more ridiculous the story starts to sound, even to me.
A man broke in and I think I heard him kill someone. I don’t know anything about him, except that his name might or might not be Mac and that he doesn’t wear glasses. I don’t know anything about who he killed, or even for sure if he did kill someone because I didn’t see it. But he tied me up and applied my psoriasis cream against my will.
Yeah, right.
Still, I keep a critical eye out, scan local news, listen to chatter in the restaurant and streets. Nothing. No one is talking about any local murders, and that feels too conspicuous to be a fluke.
But life goes on and the world keeps spinning.
I just wish I could stop thinking about him, stop fantasizing about him. In my head, he never stopped when I told him to. In my head, he peeled down my sweatpants and bent me over the arm of that sofa and just absolutely filled me with what he was hiding in that bulge in his pants…
At least I found my phone—it gives me something to do to keep my mind busy in the long mornings before work. And the timing was lucky, too, because I’d just been about to get another one when I realized I’d left my ID at home. My bank account is thrilled.
My next day off finds me at home, contemplating the list of foreign films currently playing near me, when there’s a knock at the door. I’m still in my pajamas, so I check the peephole because I really try not to make the same mistake twice.
There’s an unfamiliar woman in the hallway. She’s got flowers in one hand and a small package in the other, and her ugly brown polo is clearly a uniform. Zippy Delivery is embossed on her chest.
“Who is it?”
“I’ve got a delivery for Eleanor Wilson?”
“Just a second.” Even though this pajama top covers much more than my other one—which I think maybe the laundry goblins ate—I go into the bathroom and put on my old, tattered terry cloth robe. I unchain and open the door.
“Eleanor Wilson?” she asks again, like she didn’t get the confirmation she needed the first time.
I nod, a little breathlessly. “That’s me.”
She hands me the shoe-box sized package and I turn it over in my hands. It’s got some weight, and rustles in a satisfying way when shaken, but it’s a plain brown box with nothing on it. No shipping address or payment label. Weird. I didn’t order anything.
Then, she extends her other arm and hands me the flowers.
“Oh, these are for me, too?” I ask, shocked.
“Yup,” she says, snapping her gum and grabbing the clipboard out from her armpit.
They’re so gorgeous, I’m stunned for a second. The colors are bright—oranges, reds, pinks, purples—and it looks so perfect that I’m afraid to do anything with it. Even the wrapping looks expensive, with thick brown paper, tied with twine. No cheap plastic sleeves, here. I don’t know a thing about flowers, and I don’t see anything I recognize, except roses. I lean down and press my nose against the bouquet, as one does, and pull away a little disappointed. It doesn’t smell like much, just fresh and green and very faintly of roses.
There’s a card poking out the top with writing only on one side, a message that doesn’t make any sense to me.
I’m sorry.
Who is? About what?
Disappointment surges. “Oh, these must be for someone else… ”
The woman looks up from arranging the paperwork on her clipboard. “I work for the delivery company, not the flower shop. You’ll have to take it up with them. Sign here.”
Well, the card has an embossed logo on the top. If they’re local, maybe I can give them a call and let them at least know that their delivery missed its mark. I place the package and flowers down on the kitchen counter so I can take the clipboard and pen, draw a squiggle on the line as meaningless as my signature would have been, and close the door.
The flowers are making me grin like a schoolgirl with a crush, so even though they’re not for me, I’m going to pretend they are. I’m keeping them.
I give them another sniff, just in case I missed a scent the first time. Nothing. I almost feel robbed of a quintessential part of the receiving-flowers experience. Especially since this is my first time. I just assumed roses smelled a lot more like… well, roses. This scent is nothing like the body products that claim the name.
I’ve never gotten flowers before, but I have seen movies. In the movies, they always put them in water. But, because I’ve never gotten flowers before, I don’t have a vase. I don’t even have an excess of clean drinking glasses. However, I do work in a kitchen, so I always have an excess of something else.
I grab a deli cup and unwind the thick paper from around the bouquet. The sight of the beautiful flowers in the cheap plastic is almost painfully ridiculous. But even though it makes me laugh at myself, I have to admit that the deli cup is a nice touch. It feels more like me.
I take a butter knife to the box next. Inside, nestled in some recycled cardboard packaging material is something about the size and shape of a hardback book, wrapped in thick black paper with a white silk bow. I frown, confused. Black and white doesn’t exactly scream holidays, but maybe it’s a belated Christmas present? But who could it be from? I already received the e-gift cards from my parents and the Christmas card with flight vouchers in it from my sister so I could come visit her and the kids. No one at the restaurant knows where I live and Harrison and I don’t exchange gifts because we both agreed we’re too poor.
I untie the bow and unwrap the paper, then I drop it with a gasp. It hits the packaging material with a soft swish and I back away a few steps.
It’s a picture. In a frame. Of me .
The image is blurry, like it’s been zoomed in or taken from very far away, and I’m in the very center of a black circle with crossing lines, like crosshairs or a target. I’m smiling with my eyes closed, head tilted up to soak in the sunlight. I’m wearing my pajamas and, though it’s blurry, I recognize the vague shapes in the background as the refrigerator and cabinets of my own kitchen.
Chills erupt under my skin. The pounding of my heartbeat is so intense it almost hurts.
With shaking hands, I pick the frame back up and something falls into the packaging below. It’s a note. Scrawled on a yellow post it in that same cramped scribble I have memorized is, Now you have one of yourself.
He has been watching me, just like he promised.
I press my lips together and look up at the window. The curtains are open, so he might be watching, even now. I don’t remember standing there, smiling in the sunlight this morning, but I was wearing these pajamas. Was this taken today?
My phone starts buzzing, making me jump, and my stomach tries to fall further out my butt. It couldn’t be… No way… Swallowing, I inch towards the couch where I left my phone. And the relief is so acute it’s almost painful when I see my sister’s face on the caller ID screen.
“Hey, Melissa,” I greet her. I sound out of breath and I know it’s my racing heart.
“Hey, you! How have you been?”
I slump onto the couch, dropping the picture into my lap. “Oh, you know… same old.”
“Cooking, reading, working?”
I laugh a little because I usually really am that predictable. This would be the first time we’ve spoken in the past five years where anything really different has happened and I can’t even tell her about it. “Eat, sleep, repeat.”
“Bo-ring,” she sings.
“Yeah,” I agree, staring down at the picture frame in my lap. I didn’t notice before when I was busy freaking out about what was inside it, but the frame is silver, and hefty. It’s plain, but in a way that looks expensive. It’s the kind of frame Melissa put her wedding portrait in .
My sister never really calls me to talk about me, though, so I throw that ball back to her. “But what about you? How’s Nick? How are the kids?”
“Nick is fine, whatever. He’s doing well in some fantasy draft or something and it’s all he fucking talks about. Avery is great, they just had a trip to the zoo with her class so she’s in her ‘I’m going to be a vet’ era, which is adorable. She’s telling me all these things she’s learning about lions and hippos. It’s so fun watching her be excited about stuff.
“And Warren’s front tooth just fell out and he informed me that he knows the tooth fairy isn’t real because some kid named Jeff told him. So now I have to go find some kid named Jeff and kick a 6-year-old’s ass.”
I laugh. “It’s only right. He can’t be allowed to keep spreading those lies. Just make sure it’s the right kid named Jeff.”
I can hear the smile in her voice. “Good call. And as for me…”
As she regales me with tales of a new breakfast she’s been making on repeat that she’s loving and how annoyed she is about a promotion that should have been hers going to someone else, I quietly have a crisis.
He’s watching me. He watches me. He’s been watching me.
I keep waiting for the fear or panic to set in. I keep thinking it’s going to freak me out, make me want to throw closed the curtains and hide in the dark forever.
Why the hell doesn’t this bother me like it should?
What has he even seen? I don’t sleep with the curtains open, or change in front of the window. At most he’s seen me pick my nose or itch my ass, which—while private—aren’t exactly earth shattering.
Which just begs the question: why? Why is he watching me? It makes sense he would be keeping tabs on me right after that night—he would have wanted to make sure I didn’t tell anyone about what I’d seen—but I would think that it’s been obvious for a while that I’m not going to be a problem.
So, why? It’s not like I’m all that interesting, as Melissa so generously pointed out.
As my sister switches topics to her last run-in with Avery’s hot teacher, I look down at the picture again. I should throw it away. My fingers tighten around the edge and I get up off the couch and head towards the kitchen trash can, shoved against the wall near the fridge. I stand over it, but can’t bring myself to let go .
When Melissa pauses for breath, I jump in. “Mel, what would you do if someone sent you something kind of creepy and stalkerish? Would you throw it away?”
“Yes,” she replies instantly.
“But what if… you don’t want to?”
She sighs and I swear I can practically see her switching her phone to the other ear in frustration as one of her kids—not sure which, they’re both equally loud—screams in the background. “Why do I feel like there’s a right answer but you’re not giving me the context I need to get there?”
I hesitate. Do I chance it? I desperately want to tell someone and surely Melissa, who’s miles away in Pittsburgh, is safe from any potential repercussions. It’s not like she’d be able to do anything on her end, anyway. “Well, there is one thing—”
“No, no! Paul, gah! Bad dog! Ellie, I need to call you back. My asshole dog just took a dump in the middle of the floor.”
I snort, like I always do at the mention of Paul the Asshole, as he’s fondly known. She puts the phone down, but forgets to hang up so I hear her voice trail off as she begins to admonish him and her kids start to chant in sing-song voices, “asshole, asshole.” With one last chuckle, I hang up for both of us.
And fall right back into my spiral.
If the package was from him, that must mean the flowers are, too. I look over at them, biting my lip against a smile. He sent me flowers? Why would he do that? Then I remember the note and wipe away the expression completely.
I’m sorry, it says. He’s sorry?! For what, being a total creep?
Suddenly, I’m sick of this. Sick of questions with no answers. Sick of this note crap only going one way.
I place the frame carefully on the edge of the windowsill, facing my picture inward. The only blank paper I have is an almost used-up yellow legal pad that I don’t remember buying, but it’ll do. I write big, in sharpie, pressing the tip a little too hard to the paper in my anger. Then I tape my note to the window above the picture so the arrow I drew is pointing right at it.
Really fucking creepy.