Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [8]
Charlotte came to the door wearing baggy shorts and a University of Michigan T-shirt. Reading glasses on her head and a pen and sheaf of papers in one hand. Mint-green toenail polish. She held the backdoor open for me.
“I would have just tossed him in the trash but the garbage isn’t until next Wednesday. That didn’t seem very, I don’t know, hygienic.”
But when we got to the side yard where the tulips grew there were only a few flattened stalks, a petal or two strewn about.
“He was just here,” she said, then whirled on her heel and startled me by punching me in the arm. She had a great loud laugh. “He was playing possum. Oh my God.”
She offered me a beer for my trouble, and I told her that possums don’t actually play dead, that they’re so frightened they fall into a real coma. Then, after a few hours, they rouse themselves and go on their way. Charlotte thought that was fascinating. She made me sit down at her kitchen table and tell her more.
Not many women have ever looked at me that way.
Tonight she came over to my apartment uninvited. I’d sent her an e-mail two days ago telling her I was home from Prague, in case she cared. I didn’t tell her where I live. I figured I’d let it slip next week, after Agnessa arrives from Chelyabinsk.
“Hello!” she said, stomping the snow off her red cowboy boots before coming right on in. She walked around my front room. Touched the DVDs stacked on top of the TV, picked up the empty Czechvar bottle on the desk beside the computer. Flipped through a stack of mail on the end table beside the couch.
“You settled right in here, didn’t you?”
“It’s good to see you,” I said. It was good to see her. She wasn’t wearing any perfume.
“I got your new address from Elaine,” she said. “How’s the jet lag?”
“Who?” I knew who. Elaine was the only person who was aware I’d moved to Southeast Ankeny.
“I had a dream about you last night.” I didn’t know where I was going with this, but chicks always liked to hear that you had a dream about them.
“I came to get my ring back,” she said. She was in one of those moods. Fine.
“Why don’t you sit down and I’ll get it.”
She pulled her hair out of its scrunchie and pulled it back up on top of her head. She didn’t sit down.
I took my time. I walked down the long hallway to my bedroom. I sat on the bed in the dark. It occurred to me that Agnessa was going to need someplace to put her clothes. I didn’t have a bureau, but instead used the top two shelves in the closet. I walked back down the hallway. Charlotte wasn’t there. From the kitchen I could hear the freezer door open, then Charlotte’s loud laugh. Ha!
I stood in the middle of my front room, stared at a poster I’d taken from our old house, black-and-white, a young couple kissing on a Paris street. It had some name in French.
“This wasn’t something I wanted to tell you over the phone, but one night someone broke into my flat in Prague and stole your ring,” I called into the kitchen. I was glad not to have to look her in the eye. “They took my wallet too. And my passport.”
She came back into the living room holding the frozen top layer of our wedding cake. “I can’t believe this.”
“It’s our wedding cake,” I said.
“Yeah, I know what it is. How is it you still have it?”
“You said I could take anything I wanted.”
“What did you do with it for the two months you were in Prague?”
“I got a sentimental streak a mile wide, so sue me.”
She started shaking her head. She shook her head and laughed. Laughing and crying, mascara running. “At first I thought Elaine was the nut job, but it’s you! I didn’t believe her when she said you didn’t even go to Prague. It was impossible. No one is that crazy. She said if I didn’t believe her to check the freezer.”
“Elaine is a nut job,” I said. “She thinks she’s a witch.”
“Stop, Ray, just stop.”
“She wanted to put a spell on you but I wouldn’t let her.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“The guys broke into my flat when I was out one night with Agnessa,” I said. “You wanted the truth and this is the truth. I’m in