When the Lights Go Out(62)

But it’s more than that too, because I’m certain that someone has been in the carriage home when I wasn’t there. Only two people should have a key to that home, and it’s Ms. Geissler and me.

The carriage home is technically hers, but as far as I’m concerned, she shouldn’t be allowed to come and go without reasonable notice. Without letting me know in advance, twenty-four hours in my opinion. It’s one thing if the pipes had burst or sewage was overflowing from the toilet, but so far, that’s not the case.

I think of what Lily the apartment finder said about carriage homes not abiding by the same rules as prescribed in the city’s landlord-tenant ordinance. Living here, I wouldn’t be protected in the same way, she’d told me.

Did she mean I’d have a complete lack of privacy? That Ms. Geissler could enter my home without permission? Open and close my window shades? Stare in through the glass at me?

For some reason, I don’t think so.

At first I think I should keep going, that I should pedal right on by. But then I have second thoughts. I want to speak to her, because there’s something nefarious going on here—many nefarious things—and I want to know what it is.

I force down the kickstand of Old Faithful and stand, hands on my hips behind Ms. Geissler. As I do, words emerge. I don’t think them through.

“Why have you been watching me?” I ask.

Her smile is warm. “Jessie,” she says kindly, as if she didn’t hear my question or the tone of my voice at all. Instead she says that it’s nice to see me today. “How about this weather?” she asks, hands elevated, praising the sun and the sky for this glorious day.

And I’m thrown easily off track, thinking then only about the weather. Forgetting about the pair of eyes watching me at night. Forgetting the fear I felt at stepping inside the carriage home and finding the shades open wide.

I snap to. “Why have you been watching me?” I ask, and her face clouds over in confusion. Her eyebrows crease.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she declares.

“I saw you,” I assert, pointing a finger at the windows up above. The windows that are dark now, not a light on inside. They’re obscure, shadows only. The only thing that I can see is the outside world getting cast back at me. A reflection. “Standing up there,” I say. “Three nights in a row now,” I say, though the truth is that I’ve lost count. It could be three. It could be four or more. “You’ve been staring into the house, watching me. Spying on me. Why?” I demand. “Why are you watching me?”

The smile slips from her face. Or rather gets replaced with one that’s more pitying. Ruts form between her eyes, deep trenches in the skin. She pulls the hat from her head and a great big cluster of hair falls from her head, getting trapped in the straw brim. Like Mom’s used to do before she bit the bullet and shaved it all off. I see her and me standing together in the shower basin. Starting with an electric shaver first, and then a cheap, plastic disposable razor. Rubbing gobs of aloe vera on it when we were through.

“Well, aren’t you going to say something?” I ask when Ms. Geissler doesn’t say anything. I can’t stand to see her looking at me piteously, saying nothing. “You have no right,” I say, my eyes lost on the clump of hair that has fallen out of her scalp. She grabs a hold of it, plucks it from the hat and releases it to the wind. “No right,” I tell her, “to be spying on me.”

“Jessie,” Ms. Geissler says. Her voice bleeds of sympathy, empathy. Or darn good theatrics. I don’t know which, but whatever it is, I don’t like it one bit. “Jessie, dear,” she says again. “You’re still not sleeping, no?” she asks. I feel my knees become liquid. They soften. I want to say no, that I haven’t been sleeping. I want her to tell me to try warm milk. A spoonful of honey. To listen to music before I go to bed. Calming music. Lullabies. Not because I trust her; I don’t. But because I want someone to tell me about the music and the voices that come to life in the ductwork at night. About Jessica Sloane.

In that moment I see her, Jessica Sloane, in her purple bathing suit, lying dead on the street. Pigeons circle around her, staring at her with their beady eyes.

Ms. Geissler stands before me, staring. “Jessie, are you all right?” she asks, and only then do I realize that she’s been speaking to me. That she’s been speaking to me and I didn’t hear a word. “You don’t look all right,” she decides, empathy in her eyes, but I won’t let her divert me from my track. I look around, remembering where I am. Remembering what I was going to say.

“Slept like a baby,” I lie.

I look to the ground for the clump of hair that fell from Ms. Geissler’s head, but it’s not there. All there is is a cluster of leaves, a mixture of yellows and browns that shrivel on the lawn. As my eyes rise to Ms. Geissler, she replaces the hat on her head. And there I see it. A single wilted yellow leaf, folded like a moth in its cocoon, clinging to the straw of the hat.

There was never a clump of hair. I’d only imagined it was hair. It was just leaves. Leaves falling from a nearby tree, getting snagged on the hat as she hunched over the lawn, tending garden.

“I see you there in the window. Every single night. I know you see me. You were in my home,” I snap, my tone turning vitriolic. “That’s trespassing, you know?” I say. “An invasion of privacy. I could call the police. I should call the police.”