BILLIE
My brain wasall over the place as I put the finishing touches on my makeup to get ready for my niece’s party. I couldn’t stop replaying the night before. The intruder, the note, and the realization that my sense of safety in my own apartment had been some sort of illusion.
Ordinarily, I was a rock. A force to be reckoned with. If either of my sisters were the one being stalked, I’d have played a stalker Uno reverse card on the perpetrator. I’d have not only identified the culprit, but I’d also have the man’s name, social security number, and credit score by the end of business that day. I would then decide whether to involve law enforcement or take matters into my own hands. No one, and I meanno one, fucked with my family.
But this was happening to me, and it was all I could do to keep my hands from shaking as I swiped on eyeliner. I willed myself to keep it still. The line came out sharp, winged, perfect. Turns out, even in full fight-or-flight, my need for order and control overrode basic survival chemistry.
The truth was I felt cracked open. Raw. Like someone had reached inside my chest and started chipping away at my soulwith a chisel and a hammer. I was second-guessing myself, which was not a behavior I was familiar with. I gave it one star, would not recommend.
My mind was flip-flopping over whether or not I should have called my sisters last night. I didn’t. Whether or not I should have gone to stay at a hotel. I didn’t. Whether or not I should have gone down to the police station and filed the report immediately. I didn’t.
The police officer came and cleared the apartment, took my statement, and bagged the note that read:Did you really think I would just go away?He also asked if I had somewhere to stay. I told him no, but that I was fine, locked the door, activated my alarm, and spent the entire night tossing and turning and trying not to think about the fact that someone had been in my apartment. Someone who had left a not-so-veiled threat.
Was that the correct response? Probably not. I should have probably done a million different things. But all I wanted was for this not to be happening, for the whole thing to be some mistake that I could rationalize away with logic and coffee.
Today was a new day. I just wanted to put this behind me and feel safe in the space that was my home. The one place I should feel safe now felt totally foreign to me.
I pushed all those thoughts out of my mind as I went through the motions: shoes, purse, phone, keys, exit. I checked the alarm and lock three times before heading down to the elevator, bracing myself for the faint, lingering smell of weed from the college kids two doors down. My building, Windsor Arms, the building I’d wanted to live in since I was a kid, a city-block-long monument to early-2000s gentrification, had all the usual suspects: a dodgy elevator, a laundry room that doubled as a narcotics exchange on weekends, and a front doorman/security guard named Kenny who was more familiar with Hot Pockets than actual security protocols, but he was sweet, and he did takehis job to protect the building and residents seriously. But what was he gonna do with a flashlight? Shine an intruder to death?
Still, I had felt weirdly safer in the chaos and anonymity of this place than anywhere else. Maybe because I knew how to disappear here. Maybe because my sisters never wanted to visit, so I didn’t have to be ‘on duty’ here.
My car was in the sub-basement garage, which, thanks to shoddy lighting and the lens of my recent experience, now felt like the set of a horror movie. I walked to my Tesla double-time, clutching my pepper spray in one hand and my phone in the other. When I got in and locked the door, I exhaled. It was silly, really. What did I think was going to happen to me on the walk from the lobby to my car at 9:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning?
I turned to place my purse on the passenger seat, and my heart seized in my chest. There was a note waiting for me, placed neatly on the passenger seat. The handwriting was the same as before: a little too deliberate, a little too neat, bleeding through the paper. The words were covered by the folded paper, so I couldn’t see what it said without touching it, and the idea of touching that paper made my skin crawl. Everything about it was unnerving, from the self-assured way it was positioned to the fact that my car had been locked. Locked. I unlocked it. Just like my home. Someone had unlocked and locked my front door and unlocked and locked my car.
This felt worse than the break-in, somehow. The break-in was at least a violation I could quantify. This was psychological warfare.
I didn’t want to open it. I didn’t want to read it. I didn’t want to add whatever it contained to my already-overflowing mental file of worst case scenarios. So I quickly got out and, for some reason, after slamming the car door, locked it and went back inside.
On the way in, I stopped at the security desk, where Kenny was methodically demolishing a family-size bag of Cheese Puffs and watching some kind of martial arts fail compilation. “Hey Kenny,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “Can you pull the footage from the last twelve hours for the garage?”
He didn’t look up from his screen. “Problems with Breakroom Dave again? The Audi blocking you in?”
“No, not this time,” I said. I didn’t want to get into it. Explaining the situation would force me to say it out loud, which would make it real, and I wasn’t ready for that.
He paused his video, orange dust on his fingers. “Is this about the break-in from last night?”
I hesitated. “Maybe, I just need to check something.”
He nodded and snatched a wet wipe, then cleaned off his fingers. “Let’s see what we got.”
After several seconds of typing, his brow furrowed. “That’s weird.”
“What’s weird?”
“There’s an issue with it,” he said, his voice was lower than usual.
“An issue?” I repeated. “What kind of issue?”
“There’s a fifteen-minute gap where the garage footage is blank from four a.m. to four fifteen. None of the cameras were recording. I don’t know if it’s a glitch or...” He continued typing. “Or someone wiped it.”
I blinked as my stomach dropped. “Wiped it?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Yeah, if they did, they knew what they were doing. Never seen anything like it.” He paused, then looked up. “I’m gonna call the police, they said to report anything suspicious. Do you want to stick around to tell them why you asked me for it?”
“No,” I shot back, perhaps too quickly. “Just send me whatever you can find if you can retrieve it.”
It was obvious he didn’t like my response, but I turned and headed back to my car before he could say anything. I knew I should stay and tell both Kenny and the police about the note. I would bring it to the station tomorrow, or better yet, this evening. If I reported it now, I’d miss Carly’s birthday party. I wasn’t going to let whoever this asshole was do that. My hands started shaking again, and this time I couldn’t make them stop.
