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June took the lingerie to the register and rang it up. She quirked a brow briefly at my shopping with cash, but it was probably just more nosiness. With a card she could learn my name. Without one, I was still a mystery. I was surprised she hadn’t just gone ahead and asked. Maybe I should have offered a name. I wasn’t sure about the small town meet-and-greet protocol.
She carefully wrapped the lingerie in tissue paper and put it in an elegant black paper bag with shiny silver accents. Then she added some additional gray tissue paper in the top, tied the handles together with some curling ribbon, and handed it to me like it was the holy grail.
“Have fun,” she said, winking at me.
I looked at my receipt. The date was February third. Okay then, another piece of thewhat the hell is happening in the real worldpuzzle solved.
I stopped in a few other shops on the block and got some apple cinnamon bubble bath which I felt tempted to just go ahead and eat instead of bathe in—it smelled that real. Then I grabbed a few fashion magazines and some stationery and a roll of stamps and some fat white candles.
Finally, I stopped at the corner grocery and got a few snacks I missed now that I remembered I liked them... like kettle corn drizzled in dark chocolate and a bottle of Merlot.
Since I didn’t have a car, I stopped buying things at this point. I still had to carry it all back.
It was tricky figuring how to get everything back up into the house since I couldn’t use the front door. The security system was like an extra lock. If you didn’t know the code, it didn’t matter whether you had a key or not. It wouldn’t just sound an alarm, the door or window wouldn’t even open. The balcony door was therefore the only door I could still get into.
I ended up having to throw the bags one at a time onto the balcony from the ground. Except the Merlot, which I carried up. I was glad there were some trees around the house and that Shannon’s nearest neighbor was more than a block down the road. I didn’t need anyone asking why I was tossing stuff up onto a balcony, or climbing the trellis to get inside the house. I looked like a really inefficient cat burglar. And even from my perspective—knowing the back story—the whole thing seemed absurd.
Once inside, I still felt antsy. The freedom of finally being able to come and go in a civilized world was not lost on me. I grabbed some more money from the drawer and after a quick lunch, I went out the balcony and climbed down the trellis.
This time I went into a florist shop a block over from where I’d been earlier. As soon as I stepped inside, I knew this was what I’d craved. Plants. Living green things. Shannon didn’t have a single plant in his house. Given my history with the study of them as well as being surrounded by greenery constantly in the abandoned park, it was almost distressing not having any of my own. They changed the energy of a space, making it more alive than it might otherwise be. It was the kind of thing you didn’t notice unless you were used to it and then suddenly it was gone.
In the company of so many options, I went a little crazy, buying up almost everything in the front part of the store. I was, however, careful to only buy plants that were non-toxic to cats. There may be no love lost between me and the white cat, but if I killed her, Shannon would be livid.
“No flowers?” the old florist asked, disappointed. “I haven’t gotten to make a fresh arrangement since Tuesday.” His name tag read, “Stanley.”
“I’m sorry, not today.” I made a mental note to come back for flowers at another time, assuming Shannon was just testing me and not trying to get rid of me. “Can I get these delivered?”
The old man pulled out a large sales pad. “Address, please?”
I gave him the address, and immediately a large smile broke out over his face. “You’re Shannon’s girl. June told us about the mysterious new girlfriend. Finally domesticating him, are you?”
I just smiled.
“I can have these out on the van to you in about an hour. Will that be okay?”
“That would be great. Thanks. I’ll probably still be out and about, so could you just leave them on the front porch, and I’ll bring them inside when I get home?”
“Certainly, Ma’am.”
I paid him in cash, to a raised eyebrow similar to June’s. He didn’t ask personal questions of me, but I was almost sure he realized he didn’t even know my name as I made my escape from the building.
I went straight back to Shannon’s after that. When I got inside, I poured a glass of wine and ran a bubble bath in the master bathroom and lit a few candles and soaked and read. I stared at the stationery and stamps still in one of the bags on the bathroom floor. When I’d bought it, I’d planned to send Professor Stevens an anonymous threatening letter. I wasn’t sure if he’d even know who it was from.
I really just wanted him to fear it might be from me, that I was coming for him. But I was afraid that the postmark would just lead back to Shannon.
I heard the old white van with the plants pull up. I waited until they were unloaded and I was sure Stanley was gone before I went outside. Getting the plants inside was even trickier than the rest of my purchases had been. Thankfully, I hadn’t bought any really big plants. I could just imagine Shannon’s irritation if I broke my neck falling off the trellis with these.
When they were finally inside, I went about the house, finding a window for each of the bright light plants. I’d bought a few low light plants for the coffee table and some end tables that had nothing on them. I wasn’t sure I wanted to imagine Shannon’s reaction to all this when he got home. I imagined he’d lived in this cold, minimal, antiseptic house with the white cat as his only other living companion for so long, that bringing this much life into the house might not go over well. They might clash with his energy. Plants were quiet at least. Surely they could find some common ground with Shannon there.
I needed to be surrounded by green things if I wanted to not lose my mind. And with the trees bare of leaves and everything so bleak and gray all the time, this was a necessary evil. I couldn’t stay by myself in a house where the only other living being hated me. I needed something friendly.
9
Without Shannon in the house, the nightmares came back even darker and more detailed than before. This time, I couldn’t will myself awake in time. I had to relive the whole fucked-up thing. Somehow the worst of it wasn’t the too-hard whipping that exceeded anything I’d previously experienced. The worst part of the memory/dream was his voice and the awful words he said, blaming me over and over again for what he was doing as he made sure I knew what a filthy, disgusting little whore I was. Without that, I might have been able to pretend it was someone else, anyone else.
I jolted awake and scrambled to sit up. It was too quiet in the house without Shannon, and I knew the white cat wouldn’t comfort me. She hated me. That feeling was mutual.
I’d moved all my bags from my shopping excursion into the bedroom except the snacks, which were in the kitchen. I turned on every light in the house as I made my way there now.
