I took a couple careful steps back because the lady seemed nervous. She was plump and middle-aged, with a severe face set in a grim expression and dowdy clothing. She must have had major vision problems, because her glasses were some serious hardware. I know. Take April’s contacts out and she can hardly see at all.
“Hi. You must be the new tenant, right? Unit 2A?”
“That’s me.”
Her voice was cooler and more confident than her mousy appearance suggested. She fixed me with an evaluating stare and it was my turn to feel nervous. It was as if I had asked to take her daughter on a date or something.
“Sorry… my name is Preston. Preston Tauschen.”
“I’m Kim Ai, the apartment manager. Are you going somewhere? Do you mind stopping by the office to sign a few papers later?”
“No, not at all. I’m just going down the street to grab some dinner for April and I, then…”
I headed for the stairs and she fell in alongside me, watching me the way someone watches a wild animal that has gotten too close. I wondered if maybe I had done something wrong already.
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot. April is your girlfriend, or wife, or…”
“No,” I said flatly. “We aren’t like that. I am more like a caretaker. April’s got health issues, Miss Ai…”
“Kim.”
“April’s got health issues, Kim. She needs pretty much round-the-clock monitoring. That is where I come in. I look after her.”
I heard her pause briefly on the stairs above me. I could already tell this one would be trouble. Seems there is one in every apartment complex.
“It’s nothing serious, or contagious, I hope…”
I sighed and shoved my hands in my front pockets so she would not see my fists clench. It wasn’t her fault, I had just had my fill of this conversation already, enough to last a lifetime. My patience was at its end. My voice seethed with bitterness.
“She is not contagious. The condition is not life-threatening. April won’t harm or bother your other tenants in any way, Miss Ai.”
“Kim is fine. Still,” she nagged, “you should have notified us in advance.”
“April has a rare neurological disorder. It causes certain eccentricities in her behavior, but she is completely harmless. Just give her a chance. When you meet her I guarantee that you will like her. She is actually quite bright, much more so than I am. Anyway, one of her quirks is that she does not leave the apartment unless I accompany her. So you don’t need to worry; she won’t be bothering anyone.”
I reached for the latch on the front gate. Kim stopped behind me.
“This is all quite suspicious,” she said frankly, sounding ever more like the voice of the local Parent-Teacher Association. “She never leaves her room without you? Did you kidnap her or something?”
I couldn't say whether she was remarkably perceptive or a prying bitch. It could have been my own exceptionally bad luck. Whatever. I had only just arrived at the Kadath Estates and Kim Ai was already getting on my nerves. I got the feeling she was the kind of middle-aged lady who, for lack of ability or opportunity, never has children, then spends the rest of her life bossing everyone else around to make up for it.
“Look, we are both starving. Let me go get some food, then when I come to sign those papers after dinner, I will bring April along. You can confirm for yourself that she isn’t dangerous, or in danger from me, or whatever you are imagining. Okay? Please?”
I glanced back at her, and she hesitated, as if she might decide not to let me go. I was frankly shocked. There is nosey, but this…
Kim nodded, grudgingly. I released the latch and hit the street, letting the door slam behind me with a sound like a misshapen bell ringing. A childish gesture, but I was hungry. Moreover, the kidnapping thing... even if it wasn’t what she thought it was, her allegation made me feel exposed and vulnerable. The whole way down to the fried chicken place, I wondered if maybe we shouldn’t stay there, at those strange, intricate apartments after all. We had been running for so long, though. We were out of money and exhausted. We had to stop somewhere. The Kadath Estates was as good as any other place for us to lay low.
It started to rain as I made my way down the street. I was so tired and miserable that I let it fall on my head, trying to imagine what it would be like to be truly and actually free.
***
Kim’s apartment was almost as spartan as ours; spare and functional in its minimalist furnishings. Of course, she had a couch, a television, and similar niceties, but her apartment still managed to look as if she had only recently moved in and had not gotten around to unpacking. I noticed Kim inspecting April for bruises as I led her gently into the room, holding the elbow of my jacket until the door closed behind her. April then relaxed as if the room had pressurized.
April doesn’t look all that odd. I could see Kim start in on a fresh set of doubts about my story. April’s condition is only vaguely visible in her general frailty and her idiosyncrasies. What Kim saw was a normal girl about the age for college, skinny and sickly-pale, with brown hair almost to her waist, and cute, slight features that are modestly hidden by her tangle of hair.
“Hello, April,” Kim said, with a kindness that surprised me. “I’m Kim, the apartment manager.”
“Hi, Kim. Ooh, your hair is pretty.”
Kim blushed and made dismissive noises. April gives compliments like a child – they come from such a place of utter honesty that it is difficult not to be moved.
April is that way with criticism as well, but most people never have an opportunity to see it.
April reached for Kim’s arm with her thin, nervous fingers, and I could practically see Kim melt. In fact, I didn’t really need to watch. I had seen April do this any number of times since we had run away. I did not listen much to the things April said, because the words were irrelevant. If April decides that she is going to be close with someone, then that is the end of the story. And she knew that having Kim on our side was critical.
In five minutes, April had her utterly charmed.
“What a sweet girl,” Kim chuckled, patting April affectionately on the head. “What in the world do you see in him?”
Kim pointed at me as if I had a scarlet letter on my forehead. I didn’t take it personally.
“You had some papers for me to sign, right?”
“Yes, of course,” Kim snapped, glaring at me for no apparent reason. “I have it all over here.”
I followed her over to the kitchen sidebar where there was a variety of documents waiting. A fake name presents all sorts of unanticipated challenges, none more difficult than producing a credible signature. Ask any married woman who changed her name. A signature is far more practiced than I had realized until I needed to fake one. I muddled through the rest of the forms, fabricating birthdates and hoping Kim was not the type to try to confirm documents.
“Hey, Kim, what is this picture of?”
Kim gave me one more suspicious look, as if to warn me that she had counted the spice bottles on the nearby rack, in case I got any ideas, before she joined April at the other side of the room.
“That is Vietnam. It is a little village that my family left when I was only baby, you never would have heard of it. I went back years ago and took some pictures.”
“Wow,” April said, looking at her with wide eyes. “You went to Vietnam? Cool… what was it like?”
“Very different,” Kim said thoughtfully. “But also very beautiful. It was hard, because I look Vietnamese, so people kept assuming that I spoke the language. The food was amazing, though, and the people were quite nice.”
“Which was more like going home?” April asked innocently. “Going there or coming back here after?”
Kim looked astonished, the way people always do when they have started to lull themselves into thinking that April is shy or indifferent.
“Well, I was born there,” Kim said carefully. “I’ve lived here as long as I can remember, though, so Kadath fe
els more like home.”
“That must be nice. I’ve never been anywhere I’d want to go back to.”
“Wait. What?”
“Kim, have you read Cities of the Red Night? The spine on your copy looks brand new. Can I borrow it when you’re done?”
Kim looked back at the three crowded bookshelves behind her, every shelf packed with a dense, rigidly organized collection of paperback novels and older, leather-bound books with faded titles and scrollwork. Her jaw dropped in astonishment.
“How did you?”
“She has a great memory,” I said hurriedly. “For the things she sees, at least. April really likes books. She could probably recite every title she saw in your collection. She is good at remembering stuff like that. Not so much for the things I ask her to do.”
“That is totally unfair. It’s just that he asks me to do all the wrong things,” she explained to Kim with air of exasperation. Suddenly there were two sides to the room and I had one all to myself. I guess I should have been happy that they were friends, but it still felt a little cold.
I let them chatter while I finished the forms as best as I could. Kim must have been a woman who only liked other women – the warmth she showed April was unexpected, given my previous experience. Then again, what do I know? Kim must have had her reasons.
Don’t we all?
“When did you last cut your hair, April?”
“Well, never, I guess. Yeah. Never.”
Kim’s glare was accusatory. I felt compelled to defend myself.
“Well, we’ve had to move around a lot these last few months. There wasn’t any time for things like that. As soon as we get settled here…”
“I don’t like that,” Kim said, taking something from a drawer in the kitchen. She returned with a comb, a brush, and determined look. I was nervous about how April would react to her ministrations, but April didn’t so much as blink an eye when Kim started fussing with her hair. “Why have you two been moving around so much? Are you in some kind of trouble, April? Has Preston gotten you in trouble?”
“Because it isn’t safe. Yes. No.”
“What?”
Kim froze with a tangled mass of April’s hair held distastefully in one hand.
“Look, I’ll let April answer your questions, but you have to remember that English isn’t her first language. There are going to be some oddities.”
Kim looked from one of us to the other, puzzled.
“Not her first language? Then what is?”
“Ask her. I have no idea what it’s called,” I said, shrugging. No need for a lie when you don’t know how to answer.
“April, is Kim safe? Are you safe here?”
April looked around the room slowly, warily, while Kim watched in disbelief.
“She’s okay,” April said brightly. “We’re cool for now.”
“You have your phone?”
She rummaged in her pockets and came up with a sticker-covered Motorola.
“Okay, I’m going to go do some stuff. You call me when you are done and I will come and get you. And while I’m gone, please try to convince Kim that I’m not a threat or holding you hostage or anything.”
I nodded civilly at Kim, patted April on the head, and went to the front door.
“He’s an awful sex offender,” April confided as the door shut behind me. “He makes me do perverted things every night.”
I gritted my teeth and made my way out to the hallway, then down the stairs to the street, feeling no great desire to sit in the apartment alone. April would convince her, I knew. April would become Kim’s best friend.
For an agoraphobic, April is great with people.
There were things that needed doing, so I got to work.
First, the van.
I drove around until I found a deserted industrial side street, miles of decaying warehouses moldering in the sun, surrounded by brown grass and ancient stumps of what must have been huge trees. I followed it until the city started to peter out, only the occasional ancient house dotting the side of the road, slowly collapsing into the soil. It did not take long to find a spot where I could push the car off the road and into a shallow ditch. I got out, leaving the van in neutral without the brake, and went to the trunk for a plastic container of gasoline I had filled on the way to the city. My eyes watered as I soaked the interior of the car. The gas caught with the second lit match I tossed in. I had to hurry to push it over the ledge before the fire got too intense, almost rolling over my foot in the process. I was worried that the fall would put out the fire, but nothing of the sort happened. In fact, the flames threatened to ignite the nearby brush at the side of the deserted road. I hurried off, trying to appear uninvolved in case anyone bumped into me in the middle of nowhere.
No one did.
The nearest bus stop was less than a mile away according to my phone’s GPS, which started functioning as soon as I left the heart of the city. I made it in ten minutes, hustling. My phone rang just as I got on the bus and I cursed. I had hoped to have time to change into clothes that, if they were not clean, at least did not reek of gasoline before I had to face our landlady.
“Hey.”
“Hey, um, you,” April said hesitantly. I was secretly pleased. It had been a trial to teach her not to use names, even fake ones, while talking on a phone. “The manager lady doesn’t think you are a criminal or a molester now.”
“That’s good. Thanks.”
“No problem. We get along. She wants to talk to you. Do you want to?”
It was not an idle question. If I said no, April would make sure that Kim never got on the line. Compared to April, I’m a pushover.
“Fine by me. Put her on.”
There was a clattering as the phone was passed. The guy next to me glared over his newspaper, apparently bothered by the conversation. My glare was worse. He returned his attention hurriedly to the business page while I wondered what kind of relevant news could possibly be in an eight-hour-old newspaper.
“She says I’m not allowed to use names,” Kim said dryly. “I can’t tell you how uncomfortable that makes me.”
“I can explain some other time. Is your mind at ease, otherwise?”
I heard Kim close a door to shut out the noise of a television.
“I suppose. She says that you are her friend. I suppose that will have to be good enough for now. She claims to be twenty, but half of the time... how can she possibly be twenty years old?”
“She has a neurological disorder with any number of physiological manifestations. Believe me, she is every bit as old as she says. Don’t underestimate her.”
“I’ll try not to read into that much,” Kim groused. “Her hair is filthy. And I can't cut it until it is clean. When was the last time she took a shower?”
“Every morning that I could find time to make her, but, well…”
Thankfully, Kim caught my drift. I couldn’t march into the bathroom every morning to force April to bathe, unless I wanted to invite more confusion into a relationship that was already overly ambiguous.
“Okay. Well, I am going to wash it. Then I am going to finishing cutting her hair. You can pick her up in two hours.”
It was not a question. Kim did not say goodbye. I just heard the phone rustle and then it was April again.
“Do I have to?”
“I’d like to stay here for a while. You know that we need to. This means we both have to do things that we don’t want to. I wish it wasn’t like that, but it is. Your hair really is gross, you know, and you do need a haircut. Suffer through it.”
“Fine. But you better bring me something.”
The line clicked and I put the phone away. Two more hours made nine in the evening and I was only a few minutes from downtown. I had enough time to do some shopping. Besides, the detour would require a transfer to a different line and give me an opportunity to suss out any potential tails. It would also help break up any patterns developing in my movements; it was important that I never tak
e the same route anywhere twice in a row.
I spent the next several blocks watching a tired brunette discretely apply makeup to her pale cheeks, using her reflection in the bus window as a mirror. She looked tired and I caught myself feeling a little sorry for her.
But the thing about faces? After a while, it seems like I have seen all of them somewhere before.
***
“You look tired.”
“I am.”
“That’s a lot of bags.”
“We do not have a lot of things. This is a poor attempt to rectifying that situation. Now, I do not mean to be rude, but…”
Paranoid Magical Thinking (Unknown Kadath Estates) Page 2
