Kill her
—was also a prompt to someone about something he was supposed to do.
Had it already been done?
Gary didn’t know, and he went online to see if he could find information about any murders or assaults that might have occurred in his neighborhood. There were none, but that did not set his mind at rest, and he spent the rest of the day wondering if some friendless old lady’s body was rotting undiscovered in one of the houses.
When he got home, Maggie wasn’t there, but she’d left a Post-It on the middle of the TV screen where she knew he’d see it, telling him that she’d gone out for dinner with her friend Cindy and would be back later in the evening. Another note below that contained a P.S. telling him there were leftover crab cakes in the refrigerator that he could heat up if he wanted.
He found himself looking at her handwriting, mentally comparing it to that on the sticky note he’d found in the gutter. Why? Did he think she’d written it? Definitely not, but there was still something reassuring about seeing her firm bold lettering, written in pen and so different from that faint shaky pencil.
Kill her
He ate the crab cakes while watching the national news. By the time the program was over, it was dark outside, and he went to the front window, looking out at the street for a sign of Maggie’s car. He realized that she had not given him a specific time when she’d be back, but had only said “later,” which was not at all like her. There was a slight breeze out, and when he saw a scrap of white paper blow onto his lawn and catch on one of Maggie’s rosebushes, it made him think of the sticky note in the gutter. Was it still there? It probably was, but what difference did that make? Why was he even thinking about it?
He didn’t know, but he was half-tempted to walk down the street and around the block to the spot where he’d found the yellow square.
That was just craziness.
Headlights shone in his eyes as Maggie pulled into the driveway, and he moved away from the window, happy to be distracted from his thoughts.
In the morning, he retraced his same route from the day before. He usually varied his exercise routine, and he told himself that he wasn’t walking this way on purpose, that it was just a coincidence and meant nothing, but that wasn’t true, because he slowed down when he reached the spot, looking into the gutter.
There it was.
He didn’t pick it up. He had enough self-control that he continued on, but he knew it was there, and its presence haunted him. For the rest of the morning, his mind kept coming back to that dirty rumpled Post-It and its simple terrible message.
Kill her
He went out for lunch with Steve from Accounting, who spent most of the meal texting on his phone. They were seated at a sidewalk table outside the Southwest Grille, where they often ate, and at one point, he glanced up and thought he saw Maggie pass by in the passenger seat of a red convertible. Maggie? In a red convertible? That was impossible because she was at an all-day conference in Anaheim.
Or was she?
He didn’t dare try to call or text her with Steve around—nothing spread faster through the office than personal gossip—but as soon as he was back in his office, Gary dialed her cell number. It went immediately to voice mail.
Who had been driving that car? Was it a man? He hadn’t noticed.
He pushed the thought from his mind. That was ridiculous. Forcing himself to get back to work, he spent the rest of the afternoon concentrating on a project that he had due at the end of the week.
Still, he looked carefully at Maggie’s hair when he got home. It did appear slightly messier than it had in the morning, slightly more windblown. He wished he’d been able to see what the woman in the car had been wearing.
“I went to lunch with Steve today,” he said casually. “The Southwest Grille.”
She didn’t even bother to glance in his direction. “Oh?”
“I thought I saw you passing by. In a red car.”
“A red car? Whose red car?”
“That’s what I was wondering.”
“I was in Anaheim.”
She went into the kitchen, and he followed her.
“I called you.”
Taking a package of frozen shrimp out of the freezer, she frowned. “I didn’t get any messages.”
“I didn’t leave any. You didn’t answer, so I just hung up.”
She faced him. “Do you have a point? I don’t understand what you’re on about.”
“Nothing,” he said, walking back into the living room. “Nothing.”
Lying awake that night, unable to sleep, it occurred to Gary that perhaps the message had been meant for him, that he was its intended reader.
Kill her
No, that was lunacy. He hadn’t known himself that he was going to take that route until he did so. It could not have been deliberately left for him to find. When he walked, he followed no set pattern. In fact, that was one of the advantages of walking in the neighborhood rather than using the treadmill or the exercise bike: he could vary the view, go where he felt like going, see new things every time.
But maybe that’s why the Post-It was in such bad shape: it had been sitting there for several days, waiting for him to come by.
That was crazy thinking. He could have just as easily been focused on the houses or the sky or the sidewalk in front of him or a car that was passing by or a jogger or a biker. It was pure happenstance that he had glanced down in that direction at that moment, seen the little yellow square and picked it up.
Only what if it wasn’t?
His head hurt from indulging in such pointless speculation, and Gary tried to think about something else.
Maggie.
Why hadn’t she answered her phone when he called? And that woman in the convertible had looked a lot like her.
He fell asleep. Eventually.
He decided not to exercise in the morning—or at least not to walk. Maybe he’d take an extra half hour at lunch and drop in at the company’s gym in the basement, make it up.
He did call Maggie’s phone several times throughout the day. She answered each call, and by the third time, she’d figured out that his prepared topics of conversation were bogus and he was just checking up on her. She let him have it on the fourth call, but he didn’t need to keep tabs on her after that, because by then it was mid-afternoon, and she wouldn’t have had time to do anything outside her office anyway.
The atmosphere at home was chilly, but Gary decided to pretend that it wasn’t. He knew this emotional frost was mostly his fault, but it wasn’t entirely his fault, and he couldn’t shake the idea that Maggie was hiding something. So, he acted as though it were a normal evening, ignoring her stony silence, heating up some leftovers in the microwave and watching the nightly news on TV. Halfway through the news, she got a call on her cell, and she left to take it in the other room. He thought of following her, spying on her, but decided to be big about it and watched a heartwarming end-of-the-news story about a blind veteran and his seeing-eye dog.
He went to bed early, well before she did, telling her that he was tired and not waiting to see if she answered him.
The night was windy and moonless, exactly the type of night that would have terrified him as a child. Outside, it sounded as though a banshee were howling somewhere far away, and closer in, tree branches struck the side of the house at odd irregular intervals. He found it hard to sleep, despite being so tired, and his last thought before he finally drifted off was that maybe the reason Maggie hadn’t come to bed the same time he had was because she was trying to be faithful to her lover.
In the morning, the wind was gone, and after pulling on a pair of pants, Gary went out to pick up his copy of the newspaper in the driveway. Bending down to pick up the paper, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a small yellow square sitting atop a mound of leaves that had been blown by the wind onto the sidewalk.
A sticky note.
Heart pounding, he walked slowly over and picked it up
.
Kill her
He recognized the shaky hand, the light pencil. It was the same Post-It, a little worse for wear. How was that possible? The odds that a windstorm could pick up a piece of yellow note paper from a gutter three blocks over and deposit it on top of a pile of leaves on his sidewalk had to be astronomical.
Maybe someone was trying to tell him something.
Who? God? A spirit? Some type of supernatural presence? The idea was ridiculous. Still, it had entered his mind, and as much as he wanted to, he could not entirely dismiss it.
Perhaps the note had been meant for him.
He pocketed the Post-It and took the paper inside. Maggie was still asleep, and though he would ordinarily wake her up, he wasn’t sure of their status at the moment, so he left her alone and went into the kitchen to put on some coffee. It was Saturday. Usually he would make himself pancakes or French toast, but he wasn’t very hungry, so he just popped a couple of pieces of bread into the toaster.
He had just finished eating when, from down the hall, he heard Maggie go into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. On impulse, he hurried back to the bedroom, where he picked up her phone off the dresser and turned it on to check it.
Thirteen messages over the past three days to a number he did not recognize.
The name next to the number was Adrian.
Adrian
It was one of those unisex names that could be either a man or a woman. He tried to tell himself it was just a client from work, someone with whom she needed to get in touch as part of a project, but his mind refused to buy it. Whether Adrian was a man or a woman, Gary was pretty sure that he or she drove a red convertible and that Maggie’s interest had nothing to do with work.
Kill her
The message on the note came back to him. His hand felt for the paper in his pocket. As beaten up as it was, its edges felt crisp and sharp.
This was wrong. He shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be thinking this. He turned off the phone, put it back on the dresser, then hurried back down the hall to the kitchen, where he took the Post-It note out of his pocket, tore it up and dropped the pieces into the sink, turning on the water and washing them down the drain.
It was done.
Or was it?
What if he saw it again while walking through the neighborhood? What if it showed up on the doorstep of his office or on the windshield of his car? What would he do then?
He didn’t know.
Maggie touched his shoulder, and he jumped, unaware that she’d come up behind him. She smiled. Her voice betrayed none of the animosity of the night before. “Why so jumpy? Are you all right?”
He looked into her eyes, thought of the sticky note.
“Yeah,” he said and tried to smile.
“Are you sure?”
Kill her
He nodded, and for some reason felt unusually calm. “I’m fine,” he told her. “Everything’s fine.”
THE SMELL OF
OVERRIPE LOQUATS
(2016)
Johnny didn’t like staying overnight at his grandmother’s house.
She still lived in East L.A., where his mom had grown up, but over the years the neighborhood had deteriorated around her. Fences and garage doors were spray-painted with gang tags, and low-riding cars cruising the streets were driven by tough-looking men with shaved tattooed heads. His other grandparents, his dad’s mom and dad, his American grandma and grandpa, lived in Boston, and he loved visiting them. For one thing, they lived far away, so the visits were vacations, family affairs where they got to fly on a plane, stay for a week, see aunts and uncles and cousins, and do fun touristy things. His grandparents’ house was filled with old toys and games he could play with, and they always bought him a new present each time he came.
But his grandmother here in California, his Mexican grandma, Abuela, didn’t plan anything special on the nights he stayed over. She was just babysitting him so his parents could have a night to themselves, and while she might bake him something nice for dessert, that was pretty much the extent of it.
There wasn’t a whole lot to do at her house either. It was an old lady house. There were no toys or games, no computer or wi-fi. She didn’t even have cable, only regular TV.
The worst part of it was that she was always trying to get him to play with the kids next door, the Orozcos, whose mom had been one of his mom’s best friends when they were in grade school. He didn’t like those kids much, and they didn’t like him, but at his Abuela’s insistence, he would go over to their house for a while, hanging out with their mom in the kitchen or occupying himself alone in their back yard for a polite period of time before retreating back to his grandmother’s.
The only time he and the neighbor kids were stuck with each other for any length of time was when he stayed overnight on a Saturday. His Abuela, who could not leave the house without a walker and so went to church midweek to avoid the crowds, insisted that he attend mass on Sunday morning. So, she invariably asked his mom’s friend to take him to church with her family.
Which was why he preferred staying overnight on Friday.
Once again, though, his parents dropped him off after lunch on Saturday, his mom telling him brightly that they’d pick him up Sunday afternoon.
“I don’t want to go to mass,” he told her privately, whispering so his grandmother couldn’t hear. “Abuela always makes me go to church.”
His mom laughed lightly. “You’ll be fine,” she said. “I even packed your tie.”
“But—”
“No ‘buts,’” his dad said sternly.
So, the next morning, he had to go to church with the Orozcos.
St. Mary’s was a little more than a block away and within walking distance. Ordinarily, all six of them would walk up the street in their dress clothes until they reached the steps of St. Mary’s, but Mr. and Mrs. Orozco were both sick, so they put Roberto, their oldest son, in charge, and told him to make sure that his brother and sister and Johnny got safely to the church and back. They entrusted him with money for the collection plate, instructing him to give each of the others a dollar bill to contribute.
The four kids headed up the sidewalk toward St. Mary’s, Roberto and Miguel in front, talking together in low tones, Johnny stuck next to Angelina behind them, the two of them silent, ignoring each other. They reached the corner, but instead of crossing the street and continuing on to the church, Roberto and Miguel turned left.
Johnny stopped. “Hey, where are you going?”
Neither boy answered. Angelina pushed past him, following her brothers.
Johnny hurried to catch up. “This isn’t the way to church,” he said.
“We’re not going there,” Roberto informed him.
He felt a flicker of fear but did his best not to show it. “Where are we going, then?”
“You’ll see.”
They continued walking, crossing several streets, until they were in a neighborhood where the houses were even less nice. Several of them had been condemned, and others had been razed, leaving vacant lots filled with debris. Ahead, Johnny saw another boy and girl approaching from the opposite direction, both of them dressed in their Sunday best. The six of them met on the cracked sidewalk in front of a dilapidated stucco house with smashed windows and no front door. It was a bright morning, but the interior of the house was dark. Nothing could be seen inside.
They stood before the empty house, voices hushed. “He lives there,” Roberto said.
“Who?” Johnny asked.
“God.”
“God?”
“Our god.”
A bolt of fear shot through him. Our god? What did that mean?
Whatever it meant was wrong, because there was only one god—God—and the thought that these kids worshipped some other deity, one who lived in their neighborhood, was beyond blasphemous.
They had to be messing with him. But when he looked into their faces, he saw nothing but complete sincerity. Even the new kid
s were looking at him with a calm serenity.
Did their parents know about this? They couldn’t. He tried to think of how Abuela or even his mom or dad would react if they knew he was here, and he almost turned and ran away. But the other kids already thought he was a nerd, and he didn’t want to give them any more ammunition against him. He tried to keep his voice normal and calm, as though this were the type of conversation he had every day. “I don’t understand,” he said. “There’s a god in that house?”
“Our god,” Roberto repeated.
Johnny peered at one of the broken windows, trying to see something within the blackness. “What does that mean?”
“We didn’t like our parents’ god. I mean, do you like that god?”
“That’s God,” Johnny said. “Everyone loves God. He loves us.”
“Does he?”
“He doesn’t like kids,” Miguel piped up. “That’s why we made our own god.”
Johnny couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Made your own—”
“He doesn’t like kids,” Roberto agreed. “He wanted that one guy to kill his own son. And in that Ten Commandments story? He kills all of the Egyptian children. All of them! Why? What did they do? That pharaoh guy had all those first-born Jewish boys killed, which was wrong. God knew it was wrong. Everyone knows it was wrong. But did God kill that pharaoh? Did he kill the adults who helped the pharaoh, who actually did the killing? No. He killed the children. Innocent children who didn’t know about any of this political stuff going on. He did the exact same thing he was punishing the Egyptians for.” Roberto shook his head. “He’s ruthless, that god. He doesn’t care about kids. Never has, never will.
“That’s why we had to make our own god. A god for us.”
“But you can’t make a god,” Johnny protested.
Roberto pointed. “We did. And he’s in there.”
Johnny wanted to leave. This whole thing was freaking him out. He didn’t believe a word of it, but it was clear that the Orozcos and their two friends did, and that was frightening. This was a bad neighborhood, however, and he was afraid to walk either to the church or back to Abuela’s by himself. The thought occurred to him that if he returned early, he would have to explain why, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to turn in the Orozcos to their parents.
Walking Alone Page 19
