23
There was a saggy, day-after feeling at the diner next door, where Stevie retreated immediately after poking her head into
their apartment, seeing that the coast was clear—Nate had headphones on and his back turned, and Janelle and Vi were in the
bedroom with the door closed. She snatched her coat and computer bag and took the elevator down to escape.
Stevie needed to think before talking to anyone about what was happening. She slid into the booth by the window, with a view
of the gray and rainy street where she could watch the cops and medical examiner. She found she was ravenous, so she ordered
coffee and lemon ricotta pancakes again.
Her phone was buzzing. Janelle was texting.
Janelle: What is going on?
seriously what the hell is happening
Stevie: I’m at the diner next door. Come down.
Stevie turned her phone face down and opened her computer.
She could get a strong Wi-Fi signal from the lobby.
She followed Luna’s instructions and was soon looking at a page of folders of all the cameras in the building and lists of dates.
It appeared the server had footage going back thirty days, and there was a live feed as well.
They really had not secured their system at all.
She pulled up the feed from the elevator from the day before.
She scanned through as her coffee arrived, keeping one finger on the fast forward until she saw Benny leave at 3:30, a backpack slung over one shoulder.
Stevie reached around in her bag for her notebook and a pen and began to record the comings and goings of the residents of
the eighth floor. She recorded Mitzi taking Snacks for a walk at 4:03. Lance going out at 4:47 and returning at 5:39 with
a shopping bag.
Andy left at 6:03 and returned at 6:27 carrying a bottle of wine.
Mitzi took Snacks out at 7:15 and returned at 7:36.
Sophie and Imogen went out at 8:04.
At 9:28 p.m., Janelle and Vi got into the elevator on the eighth floor. She felt embarrassed watching Janelle pressing Vi
against the back wall in a passionate kiss, which was broken when Vi sneezed violently.
Andy and Margo left at 9:32.
Elliot left at 9:47.
Stevie saw herself leaving at 10:02.
Lance walked Snacks at 12:17 and returned at 12:34.
So those were the outgoing trips. She started to see people coming back.
Janelle and Vi came back early, arriving at 12:06.
Andy and Margo were back at 12:16.
Stevie watched herself on the elevator, pacing in a tight circle and rubbing at her hair at 12:27. Even from the small eye of the camera, Stevie could see the baffled frenzy on her face.
Sophie and Imogen returned at 12:40.
Benny returned at 1:10 a.m.
Elliot arrived back at 3:35.
Now it was time to do the hardest but most important watch. She opened up the feed for the camera on the back of the building.
Stevie only watched the fall footage once. It was horrific, even seeing the small bit of it captured by the back door camera.
In grim and silent grayscale, Benny came out of the air, twisting in terror, and landed with a solidity that Stevie felt in
her own bones.
That was at 1:17 in the morning.
Two of the cops came in and ordered coffee at the counter. Stevie casually slipped off her headphones and, keeping her head
down and pretending to read something on her phone, tried to tune out the music and background noise and pick up only what
the cops were saying. Mostly they were talking about their fantasy football league, but finally they got into what was going
on upstairs. Stevie only caught parts of sentences.
“. . . bird was outside, so . . .
“. . . yeah, no struggle . . .”
“. . . she only had it for a few days . . .”
“. . . New Year’s Eve, but they said she was at an animal shelter, but they could’ve been drinking, and there’s no bar on
that window . . .”
“. . . then we’ll wrap it up . . .”
That sounded like this was being thought of as some kind of accident—that Benny came home drunk, maybe, saw the bird that had just come to live with her had gotten out, and fell out the window trying to catch him.
This was New York City, though. On New Year’s Eve. Which meant a lot of people probably got hurt and had accidents. A woman
falling out a window was a big deal, but not the deal it would have been somewhere smaller.
Her pancakes arrived, and she ate them in bites stacked three high and tried to figure out how she was going to explain to
her friends that, yet again, someone had died on her watch.
Just in the interest of being thorough, she went to the footage from Christmas Eve. That day was a blizzard of activity—people
coming in and out with packages and deliveries. It put her in a trance.
She was absorbed in thought when Janelle slid into the booth seat across from her. This brought Stevie back with a start and
she made a high-pitched noise and somehow ended up with her elbow in the syrupy mess left on the plate.
“So are you going to tell me the real reason there are cops all over the building?” Janelle said, looking on in dismay as
Stevie tried to use a paper napkin to get syrup off her Lopapeysa, which only resulted in her having two things stuck to her
elbow. She gently stopped Stevie’s hand, picked up a clean spoon, and delicately scraped at the spot.
“There was an accident,” Stevie said. “A neighbor.”
“A neighbor what?”
“Fell out a window.”
“Fell.” Janelle set down the spoon. “Out a window.”
“She was from our floor,” Stevie said. “Her name was Benny. The neighbor who died—the other neighbor who died—Benny was taking care of her bird. He had flown out the window . . .”
“Oh my God. Oh my GOD.” The waiter came up to the table and Janelle gave the gigantic menu a flustered read.
“Can I get the turkey club sandwich with the fruit salad, a bowl of chicken noodle soup, a cheeseburger with fries, a hot
latte, and an orange juice? All to go? And can I have a lot of crackers with the soup?”
She gave her menu to the waiter and straightened up, smoothing her red turtleneck and pulling a hoop earring back into the
correct position. “So she was trying to . . . catch the bird?”
“I don’t know,” Stevie said, rubbing her face tiredly. “Maybe.”
Janelle quietly examined the back of her hands for a minute, letting the gravity of recent events sink in.
“I’m sorry,” Janelle said. “I should have given you the letter as soon as I found it.”
Stevie picked up her remaining strip of bacon and tapped it on the edge of her plate.
“I know why you did it,” Stevie said. “I’d probably have done the same thing. I know I’ve been a mess. I’ve been ignoring
everything. I failed an exam.”
“It’s not your fault,” Janelle said. “You got hurt. I just didn’t want to make it all worse. And now all this horrible stuff has happened here. Are you okay?”
“I’m . . . confused,” Stevie replied. “Helen died of natural causes. I know this because I asked Larry to find out her cause
of death. But there are too many strange things about her, about what she said to me before it happened.”
Stevie told Janelle about Helen’s strange morning meeting, going into the apartment and finding the printouts, the feeling
that someone else had been there, about what Loretta had told her about the commune on the hill.
“That’s a lot of stuff,” Janelle said.
“But I’m not sure it means anything. Helen was popping edibles when I was talking to her so maybe she was high, and I got
the impression she was kind of spicy and weird all the time. Benny suddenly had a bird to take care of and those windows aren’t
secure. Maybe there’s nothing there. Maybe I’m being insane.”
“You are many things, but insane is not one of them. And you’re trying to do this when you’re in the middle of this David
thing. What happened? You said nothing . . .”
“We talked.”
“And?”
“He wants a do-over,” Stevie said. “Start over, right where we were. Because he screwed up.”
“Yes,” Janelle said, “I would say that dumping you cold and leaving you on the street, no reasons, no explanations, was a
mistake. While you were helping his friend.”
“I know all that . . .”
“And I know, I mean, I don’t date people who identify as male. David is not for me. David was for you. I know I’m not in your shoes. But, what do you want?”
“I want it like it was,” Stevie said. “But I keep seeing that person at the bar. Or, the back of her head. She’s always there.
I keep coming back to it. I want to know who it was, what happened.”
“Of course you do,” Janelle said. “It’s a mystery.”
“I hate it. I keep telling myself not to think about it, which is useless. I know there’s no point in caring about who it
was. But it—she, they, whoever—is there. In my head.” Stevie tapped on the center of her forehead. “So it’s not like it was.
What’s your advice?”
“My advice would be to delete his number. Then we go back to school and have the best semester, and maybe you get stupid with
someone in the yurt. You finish out strong. You go do amazing things. But you’re not going to do that, probably.”
“Probably not,” Stevie said. “It sounds smart.”
“So, I guess you have to do what you do. Solve your mystery.”
“I can’t,” Stevie said, shaking her head. “I mean, it was probably nothing. He was drunk. He might not even know.”
“Not that mystery,” Janelle said, “though you’re going to do that.
You will go and find out about this other person.
I know you. You won’t let that one rest. I mean the one where you have two dead neighbors on one floor.
If your gut is telling you that something is happening in that building, I think you listen to it.
Focus on that. Be Stevie. Because Stevie knows what to do. ”
The plastic bag of takeout arrived at the table along with the check, and Janelle and Stevie had a brief scrabble over it.
Stevie shoved her phone out first to pay. It was the least she felt she owed everyone.
“How are you so good at everything?” Stevie asked as they got up to go.
“I am very smart,” Janelle said. “And I read a lot of advice columns and romance novels.”
“And you date someone who isn’t going to appear on the cover of Daddy Issues Monthly.”
“See!” Janelle shook Stevie’s arm. “There you are. Come on. We need to feed Vi and Nate and I need to soak your sleeve and
make sure Vi drinks juice. And you . . . you do what you do. But, carefully, right?”
“I’m always careful,” Stevie said unblinkingly.