27 #2
Boas are really good at escaping. Unless you’re okay with a loose boa in the—”
“Five minutes,” Maria said, turning away. Luna closed the door most of the way.
Benny’s was the worst apartment on the floor. It was smaller, with the extra space from the fire stairs and the trash chute
taking up some of the room. The living area was an L shape, with the bedroom carved out with two walls. This may have been
a studio before.
“I’m not going to feed Cleo the mice,” Luna said in a low voice. “She’s bruminating. You don’t feed her in the winter for
a few weeks. I’m going to put these under the sink with some food. They’ll be all right up here.”
As she did so, Stevie took in the layout.
To the immediate left was the living room and, beyond it, a small kitchen connected by a bar.
Cleo’s terrarium rested against the wall, next to the sofa, the little light inside being the only thing that illuminated the room.
There were collapsed boxes, baby gates, and a folded pet crate behind the sofa.
There was a hook on the wall with multiple leashes in various widths and lengths, bins with dog and cat food, small cages, all the things you’d need if you worked in a shelter and fostered animals.
On the wall by the window, taking up a significant chunk of real estate, was Murph’s empty cage. It almost blocked the bedroom door.
Stevie stepped into the bedroom and unlike the living room, Benny’s bedroom was orderly. There was a rolling clothes rack
and a chest of drawers for her clothes. Her bed was a low futon.
“So the story is that Benny fell out the window trying to get to Murph,” Stevie said. “This would mean the living room window
was open.”
“We open our windows a lot because it’s so hot,” Luna said. “Maybe the window was open, but there’s no way Benny would have
left Murph out while she was gone.”
“But what if she came home and opened the cage to let him out and forgot it was open?” Stevie said. “And then Murph flew out
and she reacted quickly, and she fell. Look . . .”
Stevie turned from the cage door to the window.
She peered out to make sure no one could see her, opened it wide, then leaned out as far as she could, all while keeping a firm hand on the sides of the frame.
The window looked out on the alley behind the building, and the fall was more than eight stories; below was the recessed basement-level area—a little pit with metal guardrails around it.
Benny had, apparently, struck one of the rails on the way down before landing in the recessed area. It was a long and nasty fall.
There was something sticky on the floor. Stevie got down and tested it with her finger.
“Sniff that,” she said to Luna.
“What?”
“My nose is stuffed up. Sniff it.”
Luna seemed pleased, maybe even excited to smell the floor. It touched Stevie. Luna was a kindred spirit.
“It’s sweet,” she said. “It’s . . .”
Luna put her face down and licked the spot on the floor, which was a step even Stevie might not have taken.
“It’s pineapple,” Luna said.
Stevie got on her hands and knees and started looking around. There was a pattern of drips and splotches of the pineapple
juice, and two pieces of pineapple were under the table.
“It looks like she dropped the pineapple,” Luna said.
“Not dropped,” Stevie said, squinting. She touched the wall under the window, where there was a sticky cascade of drops. There
was a large splotch of juice there. She dabbed the cuff of her sweater against it and fibers stuck. “More like it was thrown.
It hit there . . .”
She pointed to the spot.
“Then it looks like it dripped down. And it’s . . .”
Stevie crawled around and felt the windowsill. More drops.
“Where’s the cup?” she said, looking around. “This pineapple came in a little plastic cup.”
Luna scouted around, peering under the furniture and around the various boxes and junk on the floor.
“Maybe the police took it?” she said.
There was a heavy knock and the front door creaked open a bit.
“You done? Finish up,” Maria called.
“Coming!” Luna and Stevie straightened up and stepped back into the hall. Maria peered into the apartment.
“Cleo loved the mice,” Luna said. “Want to see?”
“Get out of there,” Maria said, locking up.
“So what now?” Luna said when Maria got on the elevator.
“Now I think,” Stevie replied.
Stevie let the coat drop from her shoulders and hit the floor. She peeled off her shoes by stepping on the backs of the heels.
She dropped onto the sofa and pulled the blankets over her. There weren’t enough. The windows were open and nothing was going
to ever make her warm again.
Someone, probably Janelle, had gone to the store and acquired more provisions, including a clamshell container of black and
white cookies—the ones Stevie saw at the diner and in every deli, but had never had before in her life. They sat on the coffee
table in front of her and Stevie wanted one, but the coffee table was now too far.
Janelle came in from the bedroom and shut the door behind her.
“Vi’s doing a little better,” she said. “Nate took his computer and went out to work. How was your thing?”
“Her name is Katrina,” Stevie said. Her throat was burning now. “He had sex with her. They saw each other for a week. Mystery
solved.”
Janelle sat down next to Stevie and put her hand on her forehead.
“You’re hot,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“The incubation period for the flu is one to four days,” Janelle said, “with the average being around two. You have it.”
“I know. I just can’t get it yet.”
Stevie closed her eyes and was vaguely aware that she was probably sleeping. It was unclear, though. She knew she was in the
apartment, but she was also back at the Watergate exhibit, walking the path the curators had set, coming to Frank Wills standing
by the blue door, holding the handle. The blue door. The tape. His logbook was right there, under glass.
“Frank Wills,” she said. She could feel the sweat glistening on her face.
Janelle was no longer in the room. Possibly time had gone by. She pushed herself up, took the black and white cookies, and
stumbled to the door.
Stevie was starting to feel like she wasn’t in her body anymore.
She saw her warped reflection in the curved mirror in the corner of the elevator, the one that you could use to look behind you in case someone was doing something weird.
She saw a girl with messy blond hair squeezing a clear clamshell container of cookies like a golem.
Al had taken over for Maria at the desk, reading his phone when Stevie approached, walking unsteadily in his direction.
“Thanks for your help last night,” she said, passing over the cookies.
“No problem,” he said, accepting them with a smile. “That’s nice of you. You okay? You look a little weird.”
“It’s been crazy since we’ve been here,” Stevie said, ignoring that. “Helen. Benny.”
Al nodded as he popped open the clamshell to get a cookie.
“Poor Helen,” Stevie went on. “She seemed lonely. But at least she had that one visitor the day it happened.”
“Helen? Nah, she never had visitors. Ever. What visitor?”
Stevie shrugged, as if uninterested. “There was someone in her apartment on Christmas Eve.”
This information seemed to pique his interest, and he wiped his fingers on the desk mat and reached for the logbook.
“Christmas Eve?” he said. “I was off. Usually not a lot of activity. Let me see.”
He scanned down the gridded page.
“No,” he said. “No one for Helen that day.”
“Are you sure?”
“There’s nothing here.”
He spun the book around. Stevie scanned the column listing the times of arrivals. There was someone who came to the eighth
floor that day at the right time, but they were not going to visit Helen.
“See,” Al said. “Only one visitor for the eighth floor that day. Not for her. For next door. “For 8F. You can’t even read this name. People are supposed to write legibly. This is what happens when we get temps in. They don’t check to see if it’s legible.”
There it was—the cooling rush of understanding, cutting through the fevered frenzy in Stevie’s brain. The sudden connection
of random wires, and then, a light. A bright and shining light that illuminated dark places and darker deeds.
She just needed one thing and she would know.