Chapter Thirty
Thirty
Natalie
Before the arms
Natalie sat in her car, watching Gwen through the window of Painting Pots like she had so many times before.
When Natalie had first found her, Gwen had seemed to be doing well. She’d been taking classes at a community college and would meet up with people in the student center and spend long nights in the library. She’d had a job at the campus store and waitressed at night. It was all so normal.
Natalie had wanted to approach her. She could pretend to run into her on the street.
She could show Gwen how well she was doing too.
But every time she came close, Natalie’s temperature would rise and the tremors would start in her shoulders.
What if Gwen would bring up their last night together?
What if that was all Gwen remembered of Natalie?
What if Gwen didn’t remember Natalie at all?
That would be even worse. It was better just to watch—wait for the right time.
It had been almost eight years since she’d found Gwen, and Natalie had settled into this life.
She had a job in a warehouse where sustained manual labor and rampant turnover shielded her from any meaningful social interactions.
She went through the motions when she had to, but nothing diluted her fascination with Gwen.
She had no hobbies. She had no friends. She spent all her free time watching Gwen, waiting for the right time to approach her.
Natalie had been there to see Gwen briefly dye her hair red before dying it back to the fake brown color she’d stuck with since.
She’d been there when Gwen dropped ten pounds she couldn’t afford to lose and she’d been there when she gained twenty pounds back.
She’d been there when Gwen started a new job downtown and moved into the apartment she was in now.
Mostly she’d been there when nothing remarkable happened at all.
Gwen’s job was a blessing and a curse for Natalie.
When Gwen stepped through the rotating glass doors, she was gone.
There was too much security and nowhere for Natalie to hide.
But she needed that. She needed to be able to go to work herself.
She would return later to be with Gwen for whatever the nights would have in store.
Natalie much preferred watching Gwen at Painting Pots. The storefront had big square windows that let her see almost everything. On slow days, when there was a clear view of Gwen sitting alone at the pottery wheel, Natalie wanted so desperately to walk in, but she never did.
There was a new guy working there. Well, by now it had been two years. Natalie didn’t experience normal life markers that could help her process the passing of time in a relatable way.
The new guy was young, with bleach-blond hair that helped Natalie distinguish him from the other people Gwen interacted with.
At first, Natalie didn’t think much of him; Painting Pots had a rotating staff of unmotivated youths who Gwen couldn’t care less about.
As the weeks passed, Natalie noticed subtle differences.
Gwen was smiling more. Their interactions were playful.
Occasionally Gwen would bring him a coffee and he would hug her and lift her enough for her toes to leave the ground.
It was a relationship Natalie couldn’t quite understand, but he seemed to make Gwen happy and Natalie took note.
She could make Gwen happy too. Once it was the right time.
- - - - -
Natalie started her car. It was a cold night and she needed to run the heat, crank it up for a few minutes, and then cut the engine, hoping it would last longer this time.
The final customers had left. The blond guy wiped down the tables while Gwen washed up at the sink. Natalie dug into a turkey sandwich she had packed. Gwen would be leaving soon.
The guy left first, as he usually did. He made a silly face at Gwen. She waved him off with a grin and he skipped out of the store and into the night to do whatever he did with the rest of his time.
Fifteen minutes later, Gwen exited the store and locked the front door behind her.
Natalie repositioned herself in the driver’s seat.
This was the most stimulating part of the night; Gwen could be going anywhere.
Once in a while, Gwen would go to the movies alone and Natalie would walk in a few minutes later and stay through the credits, and for those two hours, it was almost as if they were together.
Gwen grabbed dinner from the sandwich place two stores down and headed to her car, holding a brown paper bag and a medium fountain drink.
She didn’t always get a drink. It irritated Natalie that she couldn’t find a reasonable correlation for why, but when Gwen opened her car door and maneuvered into the driver’s seat with her hands full, a small white card fell from her pocket.
Natalie stirred. Once Gwen pulled out of the parking spot, Natalie got out of her car and went to the card. She picked it up and flipped it over. Buy 5 sandwiches and get a free medium drink. It had one stamp. Natalie shoved the card into her pocket and raced back to her car.
It was just a stupid promotion, one-fifth of the way toward a drink that couldn’t cost more than a few dollars.
She knew it meant nothing to Gwen and should mean nothing to her.
She wasn’t proud to fixate on objects solely because they were Gwen’s.
That had never been what this was about.
But she wanted it. Just like she wanted the other things.
She was not stealing; they were items destined for the trash.
Natalie caught up to Gwen’s car, leaving two in between them for cover, and followed her home to her apartment.
She parked in a spot far enough down the street to avoid raising suspicion but close enough to see Gwen’s windows.
The ones facing the street would remain dark until Gwen went to bed.
Natalie reclined her seat and got comfortable.
It was nights like this that, while boring, made Natalie feel most at home.
There were no distractions. She wasn’t racing around town, trying to keep up with Gwen.
She wasn’t worried about being caught. She was alone and quiet and so was Gwen.
It reminded her of the moments they’d shared as children, that small window of time at night when the girls finally heeded the attendants’ warnings and stopped giggling—the minutes when they were together and silent before they were both asleep.
Natalie knew what she was doing wasn’t normal, but she wasn’t normal.
What was the alternative for her? Her whole life she’d been told she wasn’t right.
She raged, she panicked, she attacked. If a little light stalking kept those things at bay, she wasn’t going to feel guilty about it; it wasn’t for other people to understand.
At ten fifteen the bedroom light came on, then the bathroom. Natalie watched Gwen’s silhouette pass by the sheer curtains in the bedroom to the clouded glass of the bathroom and then back again. Five minutes later, the lights went out and Natalie started her car.