Don't You Cry (18 page)

It's well after nine o'clock and the town is in a deep sleep, hibernating as we do until spring.

When I get home Pops is sound asleep on the sofa, facedown. Beside his overturned beer is another Final Notice, moist with the fermenting scent of alcohol. It clings to the table, threatening to tear as I lift it up and curse out loud. “Damn it, Pops.” The electricity this time. Soon we will be without lights. My eyes skim past the TV, past the lamp, past an ugly, old flush-mount light on the living room ceiling, and to the open refrigerator door—all on, all being used. He's managed to leave them all on, amassing more charges on the bill. I'm going to have to work overtime to pay the bill, more time busting my ass for Priddy while Pops sits at home getting trashed. And the money he gets for the beer. Now there's the real kicker. Pops doesn't have his own money for beer. He smashed my piggy bank once upon a time, long ago, when I was just a boy. He's been known to find and forge my paychecks from Priddy, and has asked at the bank for them to be cashed. Then he started sneaking into my bedroom and stealing my things—old baseball trophies, my high school class ring—stuff he could sell at the thrift store in town. Now I keep him on a small allowance so that he'll leave my things be. But still, he doesn't leave them be. Just last week I discovered my telescope missing, another treasure sold for booze.

But these are just things to me. Material things. What matters most to me isn't worth more than a few bucks, but I keep it tucked away under my bed to be sure Pops never finds it. My collection of crinoid stems. Indian beads gathered from the seashore. Tiny fossilized creatures collected in a Ziploc bag. Pops can have the telescope if he needs it that badly, but the crinoid stems are mine.

As expected, a single stove burner has been left on, the house filling quickly with a kerosene-like smell. A grilled cheese—completely blackened—lies forgotten on the stove, burning on a frying pan while Pops sleeps and snores, runnels of drool trickling down his chin and onto a slothful hand. The butter has been left out of the refrigerator, on the countertop beside the pack of American cheese. Both look a little bit gamy to me; I toss them in the trash. The fridge door is wide open, the food inside drifting to lukewarm. There's a spilled beer on the floor, the brew seeping into the tiles of our kitchen floor, warping them before my eyes.

I try to shake him awake and get him to clean his own goddamn mess. He doesn't budge. I press my ear to his chest to be sure; he's still breathing. He better be.

This way I can kill him when he finally does wake up.

He could have burned the whole house down.

I open the windows to air out the stench and put myself to work cleaning up the mess—Pops's mess—again, my anger mitigated only by the fact that my stomach is full.

Tonight I've been fed and cared for by a mother, any mother, whether or not that mother is mine.

Quinn

It's dark by the time I leave the apartment of Nicholas Keller. It's darker than dark. It's pitch-black, a starless November night, the sky an inky black.

I hop on the 55 bus in Hyde Park, a good six or seven miles south of the Loop. My home, at least nine miles north of the Loop, feels far away. In another world entirely, on another planet, in another galaxy, and though I want to be there, I wonder if my home will ever again feel like home.

The commute to my apartment is inauspicious even before it begins, over an hour long, retracing the steps I made on the way to the Hyde Park flat less than an hour ago as the sun was just starting its drop in the cold night sky. Two buses, an “L” ride and a half-mile walk on foot.

But that was before. Before I had confirmation from Nicholas Keller that Esther killed his fiancé, a woman now buried beneath a bronze grave marker in an idyllic cemetery in the suburbs of Boston.

What I don't get is what all these weird occurrences have in common: Esther's disappearance, the hunt for a new roommate, the petition to change her name, the death of Kelsey Bellamy.

There's one thought I can't get out of my mind. Is Esther on the hunt for a new roommate because she also wants me dead?

Is Esther trying to kill me?

A shiver runs down my spine, and I imagine spiders scaling my vertebrae like a flight of stairs, thousands of spiders climbing the skin, their long segmented legs stealing their way across, claws digging in. Spinning webs beneath my shirt.

Is Esther a murderer?

Suddenly I'm scared.

And still, none of this explains the identity of
My Dearest
. Who is
My Dearest
?
Who, who, who?
I demand to know, needing the answers now.

I think desperately of the men Esther has brought home over the months we've been together. There weren't many; that much is for sure. There was the one who liked to cook, some hottie with high cheekbones, a strong jawline and large sweet-talking eyes. There was a secret admirer who sent her flowers, a dozen red roses without a card.

Were either of these men
My Dearest
? I don't know.

And what do any of these things have to do with
me
?

One thing I know for sure: something sketchy is going on. Tornado sirens start screaming silently in my ear. Air-raid sirens warn me of an impending nuclear attack. Everywhere I look, I see a giant red flag.
Danger, Will Robinson!

I'm scared.

The evening commute has come and gone. The bus isn't as crowded as it often is, which is both a blessing and a curse. I would welcome the noise, for a change—bodies pressing into mine, reeking of their noxious breath and body odors. I'd embrace it for one reason and one reason alone: the fact that there is safety in numbers.

But not tonight. Tonight I am alone.

I slide into a ragged seat all by my lonesome and look out the window into the shadowy night. I pull my coat around me to help keep me warm. No dice. Thanks to the LED lights on the bus, it's hard to see much of anything. The lights of the city burn ablaze in the distance, our Great Lake nothing more than a blackened abyss. A bottomless pit. I wonder what lies on the other side of that big, black lake. Wisconsin. Michigan.

Beyond that, there is nothing. Just darkness.

But it doesn't stop me from imagining the things I can't see.

I see Esther here and there, standing on the side of Lake Shore Drive, concealed behind a leafless tree. I'm overcome with this sudden, uncanny belief that she's out there and that Esther, my dear friend Esther, is after me. I'm sure I catch sight of her in the driver's seat of another car on LSD, a red, two-door coupe, a woman who stares in through the bus window at me, her eyes menacing and hostile and mean. I spy Esther's coat at a bus stop we soar past en route to the Red Line station: her black-and-white checkered pea coat, her black beanie set atop a head. I twist in my seat, desperate for a glimpse of the woman who wears these things, but when I turn around, she's gone. In her place, where I imagined her to be, is coily black hair on the head of a teenage girl. A zebra-striped sweatshirt. Jeans.

My eyes scan the riders on the bus one by one by one—not Esther, not Esther, not Esther. I mentally check them off in my mind. I inspect them all as they drop in their fare and climb on board. I do this at each bus stop—eyes scanning the hair, the eyes, for traces of Esther, reminding myself to look closely; she could be in disguise. Some middle-aged woman glares back at me and says, “What are you looking at, girl?” and I avert my eyes as she walks by in a huff and takes a seat behind me.

When I don't see Esther, I tell myself that maybe she's hired someone to do away with me. It's silly, and yet it's not so silly when I put two and two together in my mind. Esther killed Kelsey and then she found me. Kelsey with her food allergies was an easy target. Esther could kill her with her eyes closed and both hands tied behind her back. Step one: do away with EpiPen. Step two: peanut flour. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

But not me. I have no allergies.

And now Esther is on the hunt for a new roommate, Megan from Portage Park. Her time with me is coming to an end. That's what I tell myself, anyway, as I sit on the bus, all but paralyzed now in fear. Esther is trying to kill me.

My rationalization leads to this: Esther has hired a hit man to kill me. She can't kill me herself, so instead she's hired someone else to do the job. Why else would she have all those withdrawal receipts from the ATM that I found in the kitchen trash can? Three receipts over three consecutive days, five hundred bucks each, totaling fifteen hundred dollars.

Is my life worth fifteen hundred dollars?

It is to me.

What does a hit man look like? I wonder as I make my way off the bus and into the Red Line subway station. There, it's poorly lit and dingy, my view of passersby bleary and vague. Everyone is in a hurry. They whiz by me with places to go, people to see. I stand, in a daze, trying hard to find my fare card, but instead appraise those around me, my feet frozen to the filthy concrete. Someone bumps into me, and barks, “You're holding up traffic,” but still I can't move. What does a hit man look like? I wonder again, growing more and more scared. Is he big, gruff, his voice guttural and rasping? WWF wrestlers come to mind. But so, too, do skinny men with facial piercings and a million tattoos. Drug-addicted, emaciated men. And then there are the balding, fat men with glasses. They, too, come to mind. Is a hit man any or all of them, some combination of these traits? Is he always a
he
, or can he sometimes be a
she
? Is there some sort of rule for how a hit man should look or behave, or is it better that they be unassuming like the nerdy, awkward man, dull as dishwater, standing ho-hum, reading a newspaper in the center of the platform as I pay my fare and make my way down the steps. Is it possible Esther hired this man to take my life?

His eyes rise up off the newspaper as I appear and he smiles.
I've been waiting
, say the eyes. I look closely for a weapon in his pocket or hand, for something that will kill, and then it comes to me: the “L” train will kill.

That's the one thought that crosses my mind as I step foot on the platform, eyes spinning like a chameleon with three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vision, making sure no one is hot on my trail. My heart beats quickly. I drop my fare card once, twice, three times before I manage to get it into the pocket of my purse.

There is the occasional mishap on the train, someone or other falls onto the electrified line or gets struck and killed by an incoming train. It's happened before. I've seen it on the news. It's not that common but it happens. Men or women electrocuted on the third rail; men or women run over by the train. More often than not, suicide. The CTA lines get shut down to investigate, and for the rest of the world it's nothing more than an inconvenience. Just downright annoying and rude that some fool decides to off himself smack-dab in the middle of rush hour, on the city's main mode of public transportation.

But that's not what I'm thinking about right now. No, right now I'm thinking about what it would feel like to tumble the distance, to be fried with a thousand volts of electricity, to be flattened by one of the largest rapid-transit systems in the world. To be dead. That's what I'm thinking about as I keep my distance from the man with the newspaper, the man with the tattoos, the man with the glasses and balding head and the fiftyish woman—yes, woman—with silver in her hair. One can never be too careful of anything.

What it would feel like to be dead.

That's what I wonder.

The Red Line pulls into the station and I climb on board. I stand, ready to make a run for it if need be.

I could have taken a cab. Why didn't I just take a cab? I wonder, but the truth is, safety in numbers. There is safety in numbers.

That's something my mother would say.

Maybe she's not so daft, after all.

She also told me to carry mace. A million times. I told her she was being ridiculous. A worrywart, I called her when she was terrified for me to leave the security blanket of our safe suburban life. She feared all the hooligans the city had to offer, the gangs, the high rates of crime. “Relax, Mom,” I told her. “You're worrying for nothing.”

But now I'm not so sure.

I want mace.

More importantly, I want my mother.

Again I go through the evidence one by one in my mind: the fact that Esther's gone missing, the notes to
My Dearest
, the obscure phone call on Esther's phone about the missed appointment Sunday afternoon, the petition to change her name, the withdrawal receipts, the quest for a new roommate, someone to replace me after I'm gone.
Gone?
Gone where? The death of Kelsey Bellamy, which, in my mind, trumps all the other evidence, though I'm left wondering if any or all of these are genuine clues, or if they're simply red herrings, misleading ploys meant to throw me off course. I don't know.

When the train pulls into the station, there's still one more bus ride ahead. I make haste down the street and to the bus station. I thank God Almighty that the bus pulls in just as I arrive, and that I don't have to wait outside in the cold, dark night. I scramble in, up the steps, and claim a seat right behind the driver. The driver will protect me, I stupidly tell myself.

He takes off before I'm fully in my seat. I almost fall from the motion. Once seated, I dig through my purse to find my keys, and anything else that might be of use to protect me: a nail file, lip balm, hand sanitizer. I'm thinking ahead of next steps. When the bus pulls to my stop, I'll hurry home. Up the three floors of the walk-up and into apartment 304. I'll lock the door, but since Esther has keys, that will be futile. It will be of no use.

Then I'll fortify the door with chairs, I decide, all the chairs I can find. The mod plaid chair, the kitchen table chairs, Esther's desk chair. I'll bolster it with the apartment sofa, too, the coffee table, a desk. Whatever I can find.

But then I remember that Esther doesn't have a key to our apartment. Not anymore. Maintenance man John changed the locks. At this I breathe a small sigh of relief, knowing I'll still bolster the door with the chairs and table, anyway. Just in case.

I won't eat anything for fear it's been poisoned with ricin or cyanide. I decide this, too.

And then there's the fire escape, should Esther opt to return the way she left, up the fire escape and through her bedroom window, back into our home. The window is closed and locked, but that doesn't mean she can't slice through the screen and break the glass with a fist.

Or maybe she'll just set the whole damn building on fire. That's what I'm envisioning, our four-flat engulfed in orange flames.

And then I feel it: the gentle stroking of my long blond hair.

And there, on the bus, I scream.