Follow Me(31)

Thump.

Fear shot through my body. Had that been my galloping heart, or had that noise come from within the apartment? Scarcely daring to breathe, I listened for other noises, but heard nothing. It’s just your imagination, I told myself, but I nevertheless wrapped my hand around my key ring, pushing the keys through my fingers to form a spiky weapon.

Once I was semiarmed, I carefully pushed open the door. My apartment was dark, the faint glow from the streetlight throwing sharp shadows across the small space. So frightened I could taste it, I looked wildly around the room, searching for signs of an intruder.

The apartment was a disaster—which is to say, it was exactly how I left it. Sagging with relief, I was reaching for the light switch when I heard someone cough.

Fuck.

I wanted to turn and run, but my feet felt glued to the laminate, and so that’s where I was standing when a shadowy figure appeared in my bedroom door. A montage of scenes from horror movies flashed through my mind, and I swallowed a scream while tightening my hand around my key ring.

Then I noticed the man-bun looped atop the intruder’s head, and my terror began to ebb. Ryan. Ryan was a class-A creep, but I doubted he made a habit of murdering his grandmother’s tenants.

Fear morphing into anger, I turned on the overhead light and demanded, “What are you doing here?”

Ryan flinched, shading his bloodshot eyes.

“Answer me,” I snapped, digging in my purse for my phone. “What are you doing in my apartment?”

He dropped his hand and rolled his head so his neck cracked. “I got confused.”

“You got confused?”

“Yeah. I used to live in this unit before you,” he said, looking past me to the open front door. He took a step in that direction, his grungy fingers tapping an irregular rhythm on the bulging pocket of his baggy jeans.

“What’s in your pocket?” I asked suspiciously.

“Nothing. Cigarettes.”

“Show me.”

“Huh?”

“Show me what’s in your pocket. Show me these ‘cigarettes.’ ”

He smirked at me. “No smoking in this building. Grandma’s rules.”

Now certain that he was concealing something of mine in his pockets, I brandished my phone and said, “Maybe we should call Grandma. Maybe she wants to see these ‘cigarettes,’ too.”

“Maybe she wants to see your weird-ass blunt,” he countered.

“My what?”

“That weird-ass blunt you were smoking in here.” His voice turned mocking. “No drugs allowed.”

“You mean the smudge stick? How did you . . .” I trailed off as it dawned on me. “You came into my apartment while I was out and lit the sage, didn’t you? Did you try to smoke it?”

He scowled deeply, and I had to laugh.

“You moron. That was sage.”

“Fuck off,” he grumbled, trying to step past me.

“Not so fast,” I said, blocking his exit. “What’s in your pocket?”

He rocked back on his heels and sucked his teeth in consideration. Finally, he said, “What if I give ’em to you?”

“The ‘cigarettes’?”

“Yeah. Or, you know. Whatever. What if I give ’em to you? You won’t call her?”

I held out my hand. “Show me what’s in your pocket, Ryan.”

“Don’t call her,” he warned, reaching into his pocket and producing a handful of costume jewelry, my bottle of Ambien, and the fifty dollars in five-dollar bills I had on hand for tipping manicurists.

I snatched my belongings from his grimy hands and struggled not to scream. “Is that all?”

“Yeah.”

“If anything else is missing, you know where I’m looking, right?”

“That’s all,” he sneered, turning his pockets inside out, their contents nothing more than a crumpled pack of Camels and a jumble of keys. “See?”

I pointed to the keys. “Give me the key.”

“I don’t have a key.”

I blinked, amazed by the brazenness of his lie. “You’re a terrible liar. Give me the fucking key and get out of here, or I’m calling the police.”

“Bitch,” he muttered, unwinding a key from the ring. He threw it onto the floor and then stalked past me and out the front door, pausing only to spit in my entryway.

? ? ?

OUR LANDLORD IN New York had been a faceless corporation to which we mailed a check every month and otherwise interacted with infrequently. When something broke, we submitted a maintenance request and waited for a contracted handyman to come. Response times varied, and some requests were simply ignored, but dealing with the corporation had been easy. There was a defined method for communication, we knew exactly the level of apathy to expect, and we never had to tell the corporation that its grandson was a shiftless loser who burglarized her tenants’ units.

I almost waited until morning to make the call—as annoyed as I was, I didn’t relish the idea of breaking the elderly woman’s heart—but in the end, I couldn’t sleep until I called Leanne.

“Good evening, dear,” she greeted me pleasantly. “Is everything all right?”

“Not really,” I said. “Your grandson has come into my apartment multiple times without permission.”