The Stranger Next Door

by Joy Fielding

  “Rules?”

  “No smoking, no loud parties, no roommates.”

  “No problem,” she said eagerly. “I don’t smoke, I don’t party, I don’t know anyone.”

  I dropped the key into her waiting palm, watched her fingers fold tightly over it.

  “Thank you so much,” Still clutching the key, she reached into her purse and counted out twelve crisp $100 bills, proudly handing them over. “Printed them fresh this morning,” she said with a self-conscious smile.

  I tried not to look shocked by the unexpected display of cash. “Would you like to come over for dinner after you get settled?” I heard myself ask, the invitation probably surprising me more than it did her.

  “I’d like that very much.”

  After she was gone, I sat in the living room of the main house, marveling at my actions. I, Terry Painter, supposedly mature adult, who had spent my entire forty years being sensible and organized and anything but impulsive, had just rented out the small cottage behind my house to a virtual stranger, a young woman with no references beyond an ingratiating manner and a goofy smile, with no job and a purse full of cash. What, really, did I know about her? Nothing. Not where she came from. Not what had brought her to Delray. Not how long she was planning to stay. Not even what she’d been doing at the hospital when she saw my notice. Nothing really except her name.

  She said her name was Alison Simms.

  At the time, of course, I had no reason to doubt her.

  TWO

  She arrived for dinner at exactly seven o’clock, wearing a pair of black cotton pants and a sleeveless black sweater, with her hair pulled dramatically back and twisted into a long braid, so that she looked like an extended exclamation point. She was carrying a bouquet of freshly cut flowers in one hand and a bottle of red wine in the other. “It’s an Italian Amarone, 1997,” Alison announced proudly, then rolled her eyes. “Not that I know anything about wine, but the man in the liquor store assured me it was a very good year.” She smiled, her lightly glossed lips overtaking the entire bottom half of her face, her mouth opening to reveal an acre of perfect teeth. My own lips immediately curled into a heartfelt smile of their own, although they stopped short of exposing the gentle overbite that not even years of expensive orthodontics had been able to correct completely. My mother had always claimed the overbite was the result of a stubborn childhood habit of sucking on the middle and fourth fingers of my left hand while simultaneously rubbing my nose with the tattered remains of a favorite baby blanket. But since my mother had virtually the same overbite, I’m inclined to believe this aesthetic deficiency is more genetic than willful.

  Alison followed me through the living and dining rooms into the kitchen, where I unwrapped the flowers and filled a tall crystal vase with water. “Can I do anything to help?” Eager eyes ferreted into each corner of the room, as if memorizing each detail.

  “Just pull up a chair, keep me company.” I quickly deposited the flowers in the vase of lukewarm water, sniffing at the small pink roses, the delicate white daisies, the sprays of purple wildflowers. “They’re beautiful. Thank you so much.”

  “My pleasure. Dinner smells wonderful.”

  “It’s nothing fancy,” I quickly demurred. “Just chicken. You eat chicken, don’t you?”

  “I eat everything. Put food in front of me and it’s gone within seconds. I’m the world’s fastest eater.”

  I smiled as I recalled the way she’d demolished the piece of cranberry-and-pumpkin cake I’d given her that afternoon. Had it only been a matter of hours ago that we’d met? For some reason, it seemed as if we’d known each other all our lives, that despite the difference in our ages, we’d been friends forever. I had to remind myself how little I actually knew about her. “So, tell me more about yourself,” I said casually, searching through the kitchen drawers for a corkscrew.

  “Not much to tell.” She sank into one of the wicker chairs at the round glass kitchen table, although her posture remained erect, even alert, as if she were afraid of getting too comfortable.

  “Where are you from?” I wasn’t trying to pry. I was just curious, the way one is usually curious about a new acquaintance. I sensed a certain wariness on her part to talk about herself. Or maybe I didn’t sense anything at all. Maybe the small talk we made in my kitchen that night before dinner was nothing more than it appeared to be, two people slowly and cautiously getting to know one another, asking normal questions, not overanalyzing the responses, moving from one topic to the next without any particular plan, no hidden agendas.

  At least there were no hidden agendas on my part.

  “Chicago,” Alison answered.

  “Really? I love Chicago. Where exactly?”

  “Suburbs,” she said vaguely. “How about you? Are you a native Floridian?”

  I shook my head. “We moved here from Baltimore when I was fifteen. My father was in the waterproofing business. He thought Florida was the natural place to be, what with all the hurricanes and everything.”

  Alison’s green eyes widened in alarm.

  “Don’t worry. Hurricane season is over.” I laughed, finally locating the corkscrew at the back of the cutlery drawer. “That’s the thing about Florida,” I mused out loud. “On the surface, everything is so beautiful, so perfect. Paradise. But if you look a little closer, you’ll see the deadly alligator lurking just below the water’s smooth surface, you’ll see the poisonous snake slithering through the emerald green grass, you’ll hear the distant hurricane whispering through the leaves.”

  Alison smiled, the warmth of that smile filling the room, like steam from a kettle. “I could listen to you talk all night.”

  I waved the compliment aside, using my fingers as a fan, as if trying to protect myself from the heat. Knowing me, I probably blushed.

  “Have you actually seen a hurricane?” Alison leaned forward in her chair.

  “Several.” I struggled to open the bottle of Amarone without breaking the cork in two. It had been a long time since I’d had to open a bottle of wine. I rarely entertained, and I’d never been much of a drinker. All it took was one glass of wine to start my head spinning. “Hurricane Andrew was the worst, of course. That one was something else. Makes you really respect Mother Nature when you witness something like that up close.”

  “What words would you use to describe it?” she asked, picking up the thread of our earlier game.

  “Terrifying,” I answered quickly. “Ferocious.” I paused, twisting the corkscrew gently to the right, gradually feeling the cork surrender, begin its slow slide up the neck of the dark green bottle. I admit to being suffused with an almost childish sense of pride and accomplishment as I lifted the vanquished cork into the air. “Magnificent.”

  “I’ll get the glasses.” Alison was on her feet and in the dining room before I had time to tell her where the glasses were.

  “They’re in the cabinet,” I called after her unnecessarily. It was almost as if she already knew where to look.

  “Found them.” She returned with two long-stemmed crystal goblets, holding out first one, then the other, as I filled each about a quarter of the way. “They’re beautiful. Everything you have is so beautiful.”

  “Cheers,” I said, clicking my glass gently against hers, marveling at the deep red of the wine.

  “What are we drinking to?”

  “Good health,” the nurse in me responded immediately.

  “And good friends,” she added shyly.

  “To new friends,” I amended slightly, lifting my glass to my mouth, the rich aroma filling my head before I’d tasted a single drop.

  “New beginnings,” Alison whispered, her face disappearing into the roundness of the glass as she took a long, slow sip of the wine. “Mmm, this is yummy. What do you think?”

  I quickly mulled over the adjectives experts generally employed when describing fine wine—full-bodied, buttery, fruity, occasionally even whimsical. Never yummy. What did they know? I thought, rolling the wine
around in my mouth, the way I’d seen men do in fancy restaurants, feeling the flavor burst against my tongue. “Yummy is the perfect word,” I agreed after swallowing. “Perfectly yummy.”

  Again the grin that transformed her face, engulfing her cheeks and swallowing her nose, so that it looked as if her eyes themselves were smiling. She took another long sip, then another. I followed her lead, and before long, it was time to refill our glasses. This time, I filled them almost halfway.

  “So, what brought you from Chicago to Delray?” I asked.

  “I was looking for a change.” She might have stopped had it not been for the obvious questions on my face. “I don’t know exactly.” She stared absently at the rows of ladies’ head vases on the shelves. “I guess I didn’t particularly feel like going through another Chicago winter, and I had this friend who’d moved to Delray a few years back. I thought I could come down here and look her up.”

  “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Look her up.”

  Alison looked confused, as if unsure exactly what her answer should be.

  That’s the problem with lying.

  A good liar is always one step ahead. She’s always anticipating, answering one question with an ear to the next. She’s on constant alert, always ready with a facile reply.

  Of course, all a bad liar needs is an easy mark.

  “I tried finding her,” Alison said after a pause that lasted perhaps a beat too long. “That’s what I was doing at the hospital when I saw your notice.” The words flowed easier now. “She’d written that she was working at this private hospital called Mission Care in Delray, so I figured I’d surprise her, maybe take her to lunch, see if she was looking for a roommate. But personnel said she left a long time ago.” Alison shrugged. Beautifully carved shoulders lifted up, then down. “Luckily I saw your notice.”

  “What’s your friend’s name? If she’s a nurse, maybe I can find out where she went.”

  “She’s not a nurse,” Alison said quickly. “She was a secretary or something.”

  “What’s her name?” I repeated. “I can ask around when I get to work tomorrow, see if anyone knows where she went.”

  “Don’t bother.” Alison ran a distracted finger along the rim of her wineglass. The glass made a slight purring sound, as if responding to a lover’s gentle caress. “We weren’t that close.”

  “And yet you left your home and traveled halfway across the country . . .”

  Alison shrugged. “Her name is Rita Bishop. You know her?”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

  She took a deep breath. Her shoulders relaxed. “I never liked the name Rita. Do you like it?”

  “It’s not one of my favorites,” I admitted, allowing myself to be steered gently off-course.

  “What are your favorites?”

  “I don’t think I ever really thought about it.”

  “I like Kelly,” Alison said. “And Samantha. I think if I ever have a daughter, I’ll name her one of those. And Joseph if I have a boy. Or maybe Max.”

  “You have it all planned out.”

  She stared thoughtfully into her goblet for several long seconds before taking another sip. “Do you have any children?” The question echoed against the side of the glass, barely escaped into the surrounding air.

  “No. I’m afraid I never married.”

  “You don’t have to get married to have babies.”

  “Maybe not today,” I agreed. “But when I was growing up in Baltimore, trust me, it wasn’t done.” I opened the oven door, felt a warm rush of fragrant steam in my face. “Anyway, I hope you’re hungry, because this chicken is ready to be devoured.”

  “Let’s eat,” Alison said with a wide smile.

  *

  ALISON WAS RIGHT. She was the fastest eater I’d ever seen. Within minutes, everything on her plate—roast chicken, mashed potatoes, pureed carrots, multiple stalks of asparagus—had disappeared. I’d barely swallowed my first forkful of chicken and she was already helping herself to seconds.

  “This is so delicious. You are the best cook ever,” she pronounced, her mouth full.

  “I’m glad you like everything.”

  “Too bad I didn’t bring another bottle of wine.” Alison gave one of her rare frowns, glancing past the tapered white candles in the middle of the dining room table toward the now empty bottle of Amarone.

  “Good thing you didn’t. My shift starts at six in the morning. I’m supposed to be able to stand up straight.”

  “What made you decide to be a nurse?” Alison finished off what little wine clung to the sides of her glass.

  “I lost my father and a favorite aunt to cancer before either reached fifty,” I explained, trying not to see their ravaged faces in the bottom of my glass. “I felt so helpless, and I didn’t like that, so I decided to go into medicine. My mother didn’t have the money to send me to medical school, and I didn’t have the grades for a full scholarship, so being a doctor was out. I settled for the next best thing. And I love it.”

  “Even though it’s exhausting, exacting, and infuriating?” Alison laughed as she gently tossed my earlier words back at me.

  “Even though,” I repeated. “And being a nurse meant I was able to care for my mother after her stroke, that I was able to keep her at home, that she died in her own bed, not in some sterile hospital room.”

  “Is that why you never got married?” Alison asked. “Because you were busy taking care of your mother?”

  “No, I can’t really blame her for that. Although I guess I can try,” I said with a laugh. “I think I just assumed there was all this time, that eventually I’d meet someone, fall in love, get married, have a couple of beautiful babies, live happily ever after. Standard fantasy 101. It just didn’t work out that way.”

  “There was never anyone special?”

  “Not special enough, I guess.”

  “Well, time’s not up yet. You never know . . .”

  “I’m forty,” I reminded her. “I know. So, what about you? No special someone in Chicago, waiting for you to come home?”

  She shook her head. “No, not really.” She volunteered nothing further.

  “How did your parents feel about you moving so far away?”

  Alison stopped eating, lay her fork neatly across her plate. “These dishes are really neat. I like the pattern. It’s pretty, but it doesn’t interfere with the food, you know what I mean?”

  Strangely enough, I did. “Your parents don’t know where you are, do they?” I asked tentatively, not wanting to trespass beyond invisible boundaries, but eager to know more.

  “I’ll call them after I find a job,” she said, confirming my suspicions.

  “Won’t they be worried?”

  “I doubt it.” She paused, flipped her braid from one shoulder to the other. “As you’ve probably figured out, we weren’t on the best of terms.” She paused, her eyes darting back and forth, as if reading from an invisible text. “Unfortunately, I had this older brother who was absolutely perfect. Star forward of the basketball team in high school, champion swimmer in college, graduated summa cum laude from Brown. And here I was, this tall, skinny kid who was constantly tripping over her big, clumsy feet. No way I could ever measure up, so at some point, I stopped trying. I turned into this major brat, insisted on doing my own thing, positive I had all the answers. You know the type.”

  “Typical teenager, by the sound of it.”

  Large green eyes radiated gratitude. “Thank you, but I don’t think typical is the word they would use.”

  “And what word would they use?”

  Sad grin widened into a smile as her eyes scanned the ceiling for proper adjectives. “Impossible,” she said after a brief pause. “Incorrigible. In trouble all the time,” she continued with a laugh, the words running together as one. “They were always kicking me out of the house. I left for good the day I turned eighteen.”

  “And did what?”

 
“Got married.”

  “You got married when you were eighteen?”

  “What can I say?” She shrugged. “Standard fantasy 101.”

  I nodded understanding and reached for the bread basket, accidentally knocking my fork into my lap, where it deposited a large gob of gravy on my white pants before bouncing to the floor. Alison immediately rescued the fork and ran to the kitchen for some soda water, while I scrambled to my feet, instantly feeling the effect of so many glasses of wine.

  Slowly, cautiously, I walked into the living room, trying to remember the last time a few glasses of wine had left me so inebriated. I approached the window and leaned my forehead against the cool glass.

  That’s when I saw him.

  He was standing across the street, as still as the majestic royal palm he was leaning against, and even though it was too dark to make out who it was, I knew from his posture that he was staring at the house. I squinted into the darkness, tried to gather the light from the street-lamps into a spotlight and shine it on his face. But the effect was something less than I bargained for, and the man almost disappeared in the resultant blur, “Not a good idea,” I muttered, deciding to confront the man directly, ask him what he was doing standing there in the dark, staring at my house.

  I stumbled toward the front door, pulled it open. “You there,” I called out, pointing an accusing finger at the night.

  There was no one there.

  I craned my neck, peered into the stubborn darkness, twisted my head from left to right, followed the road to the corner and back. I strained my ears for the sound of footsteps in hasty retreat, heard nothing.

  In the time it had taken for me to get from the window to the door, the man had vanished. If he’d been there at all, I thought, recalling the apparition I thought I’d seen earlier.

  “What are you doing?” Alison asked, coming up behind me.

  I felt her breath on the back of my neck. “Just needed some fresh air.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “A bit too okay. Did you put something in my drink?” I joked as Alison closed the front door, then led me back into the living room, where she sat me down on one of the Queen Anne chairs and began dabbing at the gravy stain on my pant leg with a wet cloth until I felt the dampness clear to my skin.