by Riley Sager
Smoking isn’t allowed.
Of course.
Nor are drugs.
Another no-brainer.
Alcohol is tolerated if consumed responsibly, which is a relief, seeing how there are two bottles of wine Chloe gifted to me in one of the boxes Charlie’s set to deliver to my door.
“You’re to keep everything in pristine condition at all times,” Leslie says. “If something breaks, contact maintenance immediately. Basically, you need to leave the place looking exactly the way it did when you arrived.”
Other than not allowing visitors, none of this sounds unreasonable. And even the no-visitors policy makes more sense now that Leslie’s explained the reasoning behind it. I begin to think Dylan is right. I have nothing to worry about.
But then Leslie adds another rule. She mentions it offhandedly, as if making it up on the spot.
“Oh, one last thing. As I mentioned yesterday, the residents here enjoy their privacy. Since some of them have a certain renown, we insist that you don’t bother them. Speak only if spoken to. Also, never discuss residents beyond these walls. Do you use social media?”
“Just Facebook and Instagram,” I say. “And both very rarely.”
For the past two weeks, my social media usage has consisted of checking LinkedIn for potential job leads from former co-workers. So far, it hasn’t done me a bit of good.
“Be sure not to mention this place on there. We monitor our apartment sitters’ social media accounts, again for privacy reasons. If the inside of the Bartholomew shows up on Instagram, the person who posted it is forced to leave immediately.” The elevator shimmies to a stop on the top floor. Leslie throws open the grate and says, “Do you have any other questions?”
I do. An important one, only I’m afraid to ask it for fear of sounding indelicate. But then I think about my checking account, which is now fifty dollars lighter after that Uber ride.
And of how I’ll have even less once I buy groceries.
And of the text I got reminding me that my phone bill is past due.
And of the unemployment check I’ll be receiving soon and how long that meager two hundred sixty dollars will last in this neighborhood.
I think of all these things and decide I can’t care about appearing indelicate.
“When do I get paid?” I say.
“A very good question that I’m so glad you asked,” Leslie replies, tactful as always. “You’ll receive your first payment five days from now. A thousand dollars. Cash. Charlie will hand-deliver it to you at the end of the day. He’ll do the same at the end of every week you’re here.”
My body practically melts with relief. I was afraid it wouldn’t be until the end of the month or, worse, after my three months were up. I’m so relieved that it takes an extra moment for the strangeness of the arrangement to sink in.
“Just like that?” I say.
Leslie cocks her head. “You make it sound like that’s a bad thing.”
“I was expecting a check, I guess. Something to make it more official and less—”
A word Chloe used last night comes to mind. Shady.
“It’s easier this way,” Leslie says. “If you’re uncomfortable with the arrangement or having second thoughts, you can back out now. I won’t be offended.”
“No,” I say. Backing out is not an option. “The arrangement is fine.”
“Excellent. I’ll let you get settled in, then.” Leslie holds up a key ring. Attached to it are two keys, one big, one small. “The big one is to the apartment. The small one opens the storage unit in the basement.”
Instead of dropping it into my hand like the mail key, she places the key ring in my palm before gently curling my fingers around it. Then with a smile and a wink, she returns to the waiting elevator and is lowered out of view.
Alone now, I turn to 12A and take a deep, steadying breath.
This—right now—is my life.
Here.
On the top floor of the Bartholomew.
Holy shit.
Even more astounding is that I’m getting paid to be here. One thousand dollars every week. Money I can use to erase debt and save for a future that’s suddenly far brighter than it was a day ago. A future that’s just on the other side of that door.
I unlock it and step inside.
5
I name the gargoyle outside the window George.
It comes to me as I haul the last of my boxes into the bedroom. Standing at the top of the winding staircase, I look out the window, once again drawn to that sumptuous view of the park. Late-morning sunlight pours through, silhouetting the curve of stone wings just beyond the glass.
“Hi, George,” I say to the gargoyle. I’m not sure why I choose the name. It just seems to fit. “Looks like we’re roommates.”
The rest of the day is spent making this deceased stranger’s apartment feel like my home. I transfer my underwhelming wardrobe to the overwhelming closet large enough to hold ten times the amount of clothes and arrange my meager beauty products on the bathroom counter.
In the bedroom, I personalize the nightstand with a framed photo of Jane and my parents. The picture, taken by fifteen-year-old me, shows them standing in front of Bushkill Falls in the Poconos.
Two years later, Jane was gone.
Two years after that, so were my parents.
Not a day goes by when I don’t miss them, but today that feeling is especially acute.
Joining the photo on the nightstand is my battered copy of Heart of a Dreamer. The same one I’ve carried with me for years. The very copy Jane read to me.
“I’m totally a Ginny,” Jane said during that first read, referring to the book’s main character. “Hopeful, tempestuous—”
“What does that mean?” I had asked.
“That I feel too much.”
That definitely summed up Ginny, who experienced everything with a combination of joy and ecstasy. A trip to the Met. An afternoon in Central Park. Tasting real New York pizza. And the reader is swept right along with her, experiencing her lows—being dumped by bad boy Wyatt—and her highs—that kiss atop the Empire State Building with good boy Bradley. It’s why Heart of a Dreamer has become a touchstone for generations of girls on the cusp of adolescence. It’s the life many dream of but few get to experience.
Because Jane first read it to me, she and Ginny have become almost interchangeable in my mind. Every time I read the book, which is often, I imagine it’s my sister and not some fictional creation arriving at the Bartholomew, making new discoveries, finding true love.
That’s the real reason I love the book so much. It’s the happy ending Jane deserved. Not the grim one she in all likelihood received.
Meanwhile, I’m the one who ended up at the Bartholomew. I stare at Heart of a Dreamer’s cover, once again not quite believing I’m now inside the same building pictured there. I even spot the window of the very room I’m in. And right next to it is George. Perched on the corner of the building, paws together, wings spread wide.
I touch the image of the gargoyle and feel a pang of affection. Only it’s more than that. It’s a sense of ownership. For the next three months, George is mine. It’s my window he sits outside, and thus he belongs to me.
In a truly just world, he would have belonged to Jane.
With the book in its rightful place, I sit beside George at the bedroom window with my phone and laptop. First, I text Chloe cancelling the plan for her to visit the apartment tonight. My hope is that a text message and not a phone call will keep her from asking questions and once again expressing disapproval about my current living situation.
No such luck.
Chloe’s reply comes literally three seconds after I send the text.
Why can’t I come over?
I start to type that I’m not feeling well but think better of it. Knowing Chloe, she’ll be at the door in an hour with a gallon of chicken soup and a bottle of Robitussin.
Job hunting, I text back
All
day?
Yeah, I text. Sorry.
So when can I see the place? Paul wants a tour, too.
I have no more excuses at the ready. Sure, I could come up with something on the fly about tomorrow and even the rest of the week, but I can’t spend the next three months making excuses. I need to tell her the truth.
You can’t.
Chloe’s reply is immediate. Why not???
No visitors. Building policy.
I’ve barely finished typing when my phone rings.
“What kind of bullshit is that?” Chloe says as soon as I answer. “No visitors? Even prisons allow visitors.”
“I know, I know. It sounds weird.”
“Because it is weird,” Chloe says. “I’ve never heard of a building telling residents they can’t have guests.”
“But I’m not a resident. I’m an employee.”
“And friends can visit each other at their workplaces. You’ve been to my office plenty of times.”
“Rich and important people live here. Emphasis on the rich. And they’re big on privacy. I can’t really blame them. I’d be too if I was a movie star or billionaire.”
“You’re getting defensive,” Chloe says.
“I’m not,” I reply, even though a definite edge has sliced into my words.
“Jules, I’m just looking out for you.”
“I don’t need looking after. Nothing bad is going to happen. I’m not my sister.”
“Between this no-visitors thing, my grandfather’s weirdness, and what Paul has told me about the place, I’m starting to get freaked out.”
“Wait—what did Paul say?”
“Just that it’s all so secretive,” Chloe says. “He said it’s next to impossible to live there. The president of his firm wanted to buy there. They wouldn’t even let him inside the building. They told him nothing was available but that they could put him on a ten-year waiting list. And then there’s the article I read.”
My mind is starting to spin. I feel an annoyance headache coming on. “What article?”
“I found it online. I’m going to email it to you. It talks about all the weird stuff that’s happened at the Bartholomew.”
“What kind of weird are we talking about?”
“American Horror Story–level weird. Illnesses and strange accidents. A witch lived there, Jules. An actual witch. I’m telling you, that place is shady.”
“It’s the complete opposite of shady.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“I call it a job.” I look out the window, taking in George’s wing, the park below, the city beyond it. “A dream job. In a dream apartment.”
“That I’m not allowed to see,” Chloe adds.
“Is it unusual? Sure. But it’s the easiest job in the world. It’s practically money for nothing. Why should I give that up? Just because the people who live here are private?”
“What you really should be asking is why they’re so private,” Chloe says. “Because, in my experience, if something seems too good to be true, that’s because it is.”
The call ends with the two of us agreeing to disagree. I tell Chloe I understand her concerns. She tells me she’s happy something good has happened. We make plans to have dinner soon, even though I can’t really afford it until next week.
That task out of the way, I go about looking for a job. I wasn’t lying to Chloe about that. It’s how I plan to spend today—and all the days after it. I grab my laptop and check the latest postings on a half-dozen different job sites. There are plenty of openings available, just not for me. The curse of being your basic office drone. I’m a dime a dozen, and everyone is looking for a quarter.
Still, I make a note of all the jobs that land within my narrow window of qualifications and compose cover letters for each of them. I resist the urge to begin them all with Please give me a job. Please let me prove myself. Please give me back the feeling of self-worth that’s been missing from my life.
Instead, I write the platitudes all potential employers want to read. Stuff about seeking new challenges, adding to my work experience, reaching my goals. I send them off with my résumé. Three in all, joining the previous four I’ve sent in the past two weeks.
My expectations of hearing back from any of them aren’t high. Lately I’ve found it best not to get my hopes up about things. My father was the same way. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, he used to say.
By the end, he ran out of hope, and nothing could have prepared him for what lay in store.
With the job search, such as it is, out of the way, I open a spreadsheet on my laptop and try to come up with a budget for the next few weeks. It’s frighteningly tight. In the past, I relied on credit cards to get me through lean times. That’s no longer an option. All three of my cards are maxed and, at the moment, frozen. All I have to live on is what’s in my checking account, a figure that makes my heart sink when I check my balance.
I now have only four hundred and thirty-two dollars to my name.
6
I now have only three hundred and twenty-two dollars to my name.
Thanks, wretched cell phone contract that I can’t escape for another year.
Unlike the deferments on my student loans or the temporary hardship agreements with the credit card companies, the phone was an expense I couldn’t put off. Already I was a week late with payment and didn’t want to risk losing service. Potential employers can’t call a phone that’s not working. So there it went—another hundred and ten bucks gone in an instant.
I console myself with the fact that an unemployment check will be automatically deposited into my account at the stroke of midnight. It’s cold comfort. I’d rather be receiving an employment check for an honest week’s work.
Because my current cushy situation doesn’t feel honest.
It feels like freeloading.
Never take anything you haven’t earned, my father used to say. You always end up paying for it one way or another.
With that in mind, I decide to clean, even though the apartment’s already sparkling. I start in the upstairs bathroom, wiping down the spotless countertops and spraying the mirrors with glass cleaner. Then it’s on to the bedroom, where I dust and sweep the carpet with a sleek vacuum found in the hall closet.
The cleaning continues in the kitchen, where I wipe down the countertops. Then in the study, where I run a feather duster over the desk, the top of which has been cleared of any of the previous owner’s belongings. It strikes me as odd that so much of what she owned remains in the apartment. Her furniture. Her dishes. Her vacuum. Yet anything that could identify her has been removed.
Clothes in the closet? Gone.
Family photos? Also gone, although in both the study and sitting room are discolored rectangles on the wallpaper where somethings used to hang.
I open the top desk drawer, acutely aware that I’ve moved from cleaning to snooping. But not in a prurient way. I have no interest in any of the dead owner’s dirty secrets. What I’m after is a hint of who she was. If this was the apartment of a CEO or movie star, I want to know who it was.
I search the bookshelf first, scanning the rows of volumes for signs of the dead owner’s profession, if not her outright identity. Nothing gives it away. The books are either classics bound in faux leather with their titles embossed in gold or bestsellers from a decade ago. Only one catches my attention—a copy of Heart of a Dreamer. Fitting, considering the location.
It’s a hardcover, in perfect condition. So unlike my beloved paperback with its cracked spine and pages that have been so thoroughly turned they’re now fuzzy at the edges. When I flip the book over, the author stares back at me.
Greta Manville.
It’s not an entirely flattering picture. Her face is made up of harsh angles. Sharp cheekbones. Pointy chin. Narrow nose. On her lips is the barest hint of a smile. It makes her look amused, but in a way no one else would understand. As if she and the photographer had just shared a private joke righ
t before the shutter clicked.
She never wrote another book. I looked her up after Jane read me Heart of a Dreamer, eager to find more of her work. Only there was nothing more to be read. Just that single, perfect novel published in the mid-eighties.
I put Heart of a Dreamer back on the shelf and move to the desk. Its contents are meager and disappointingly generic. Paper clips and Bic pens in the top drawer. A few empty file folders and old copies of The New Yorker in the bottom ones. Definitely no personalized stationery or documents with names on them.
But then I notice the address labels stuck to the magazine covers. All of them bear not only the Bartholomew’s address and this apartment number, but a single name.
Marjorie Milton.
I can’t help but feel let down. I’ve never heard of her, which means she was, in all likelihood, your average rich lady—born with money, died with money, now has family squabbling over that money.
Disappointed, I drop the magazines back in the desk and continue cleaning, this time in the sitting room. I hit the biggies—carpet, windows, coffee table—before running a dust mop across the crown molding, my nose mere inches from the wallpaper.
The pattern is even more oppressive up close. All those flowers opening like mouths, their petals colliding. The oval spaces between them are colored a shade of red so dark it flirts with blackness. They remind me of eyes studding the wallpaper.
I take a step back and squint. My hope is that it’ll erase the impression that the wallpaper is a series of eyes. It doesn’t. Not only are the eyes still there, but the flowers now no longer look like flowers. Instead, those spreading petals take on the shapes of faces.
It’s the same with the crown molding. Hidden within the intricate plasterwork are similar wide-open eyes and pinched faces.
The sensible, rational part of my brain knows it’s an optical illusion. Yet now that I’ve noticed it, I can’t trick my eyes into returning to what they originally saw. Those flowers are gone. All I can see now are the faces. Grotesque ones with warped noses, mutated lips, elongated jaws that make it look as though they’re talking.
