The walk home with Margie is a quiet one, with both of us lost in our own thoughts. And then Margie glances at me.
“Think we’re due for story time. That’s a pretty major detail you left out about the kiss.”
I blanch. I avoided telling Margie or Avery, partly because I didn’t want to give them ammo to tease me with, but mainly because I didn’t want to think about that moment too much myself.Pirate Dukeis scorching, bless Karin Shelby’s heart and pen, but that book and Jack’s clumsy advance have burrowed together into my hippocampus and procreated, birthing some trulyawfulthoughts.
Yes, I admit it. He’s handsome if you’re extremely near-sighted.Have some self-respect, lady! He insulted you!
“He’s the worst,” is all I volunteer. “It was nothing. I just want to forget he exists.”
“Maybe tonight he’ll be too busy itching to pay attention to you,” she muses before hugging me goodbye and continuing on to her apartment.
The thought brings me joy. I carry that joy with me on the walk home, images of Jack loading his shit into the back of a moving van prancing through my mind. Sad little garbage bags filled with his piney-scented wardrobe, those barstools I like so much…
My daydream morphs as I practically skip to my apartment: Jack handing his keys over to Gence. Me closing our building’s front door on him with a smile.
Once inside, I fill my watering can at the sink and envision my neighbors cheering as I triumphantly hold my mortgage papers aloft, my beautiful apartment mine forever. I imagine Gence high-fiving me as I enter the lobby, happy to see me now that my nemesis is gone. I grin like mad—until I notice my beautiful fire-escape garden.
The air leaves my lungs in a quiet gasp. I gently set the watering can down onto the floor next to me and force my mouth closed. My fire escape looks like the bottom of a bird exhibit at the zoo. Everything—literally everything—on my black fire escape is white. Or gray.
It’s covered in bird shit, is what I’m saying.
How does this happen? I open the window and lean out, looking up, eyes squinted in case I’m surprised by the biker gang of birds responsible. There’s nothing there. I inspect my plants. Feathers all over, enough that they compete with the bird crap for pole position. Some of my seedlings have been uprooted entirely.
And…seeds?
I pick one out of the dirt in the pot closest to me, analyzing it like Detective Poirot. It’s a small yellow millet seed. And beside it is a cracked sunflower seed.
My lips firm. Jack fucking Craig. This was no accident. Jack knows what I did. And now I know he knows. And he’s going to know that I know.
I march to my kitchen, retrieve what I need, and stride toward The Hole. And then I’m through, rushing toward the radiator over by his windows. I kneel and reach into the tin, pulling out a scoop of tuna and smearing it onto the back of the radiator. I repeat until the can is empty and then move to the second one. And then I look out the window at the blindingly beautiful blue sky and wonder how my life has landed me at this new low.
Jack returns later, when I’m working at the wall, and pokes his head in on me.
“Hey!” he calls out. His skin is patchy and red. His eyes are puffy and bloodshot. For a second, I worry that I didn’t think things through. What if he’d gone into anaphylaxis? I just assumed it was a minor cat allergy since his own sister had a cat, but… I didn’t want tokillhim. Not even maim him. I just want him to move away. A spark of remorse lights up the dark side of my mind, illuminating things about myself I’d rather not think about.
No. Black and white is the only filter for this situation. Jack = bad. Penny = good.
“What?” I ask, returning my attention to the wall.
“I’m ready to start taking this thing down if you’re game for the help. Though… You’re making so much progress with yourcrew.”
He surveys the pathetic patchy damage I’ve done to my side of wall with an evil twinkle in his red eyes, and I mentally take back what I said about maiming.
“Okay.”
“You can be reasonable? Who knew?” He gathers up my wall covering and drapes it over the sofa so that The Hole is exposed, then fetches some tools wrapped in a cloth and a few rolled-up blankets from his bedroom before returning. I accept them and he steps through, grabbing my broom and waving me away as he sweeps up the debris. “First thing is setting a tarp or blankets down, or you’re going to destroy my future floors. Not to mention that it helps keep the dust to a minimum. Surprised your crew didn’t tell you that.”
“My crew is made up of a scientist and an actor, so.”
He moves my sofa and stuff out of the way and takes the blankets from me. “We’re going to try and rip this side of the wall down, and then we’ll stab through the lath.” He reads my expression correctly. “That’s this wooden slatting.”
“Iknow. Avery told me.”
Avery did not tell me.
“All of the walls between apartments on this side of the building probably started as quarter walls that divided two rooms in the same apartment. You can tell because they used different building materials. They drywalled over lath and plaster closer to the front door, and over here in the middle of the room it’s mainly Sheetrock. Which is why you were able to punch that hole in the wall so easily and kickstart this entire fiasco.”
I yawn and barely reach up a hand to stifle it. “I don’t need a history lesson. I just want to tear this wall down, rebuild it to code with extra noise-muffling properties—”
