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“Has she been sick?” Mikoto asks. “Often, they hide when they’re not feeling well. Or they’re scared. Maybe it was all that noise from the guys hauling the couch up the stairs.”
“She hasn’t been sick, but, yeah, maybe it was the noise. Thanks again for your concern and for offering to help. I really appreciate it.”
“Oh, you’re so welcome. I’ve been studying most of the day, and frankly, this was a good diversion.”
“Are you at NYU?” A lot of NYU undergrads and grad students live in the East Village, so it’s a fair assumption.
“Yeah, I’m at the law school, in my second year. Are you a student, too?”
“No, I work. Mainly as a graphic designer, but I do some art of my own, too.”
She glances over my shoulder, and I realize she’s staring at one of my earliest collages, which is hanging on the far wall.
“You didn’t do that one, did you?” she says, lifting her chin.
“Yeah. Collages are kind of my thing now.”
“It’s awesome.” She looks back at me and winks. “Well, I should go and let the two of you have some alone time.”
“Ha. And if she confesses where she was hiding all this time, you’ll be the first to know. Good night—and thanks again.”
As soon as I close the door behind my neighbor, I set Tuna down and then think to check her bowl in the kitchen. It’s still full, which suggests that she didn’t venture from her hiding spot until just now.
“What’s going on with you, Tuna girl?” I ask. “Did all the noise scare you?”
No reply, of course. I scoop her up again and return to the living room, where I collapse onto the couch, and she begins kneading me gently with her paws. I realize suddenly that I’m starving and it’s far too late to make the mac and cheese. While trying to summon theenergy to assemble a peanut butter sandwich, my gaze drifts around the room, eventually settling on my desk. Since the apartment is so small, I try to avoid clutter, and I keep only a few items besides my computer on its surface. One is a yellow mug on the right-hand side that I use as a pen holder.
Except right now the mug is on the left side.
The back of my neck prickles. I’m almost positive I didn’t move it—I’m right-handed so I always keep it in the same spot—and even if Tuna had jumped onto the desk at some point, it’s hard to imagine she could have managed to nudge the mug all the way across the top.
I hoist myself up and begin circling the room, looking for other signs of disturbance, and I also open the desk drawer, where I store my checkbook and a couple of twenties. Everything is in its usual place. I hurry to the bedroom to find that the Ziploc bag filled with my costume jewelry is right where it should be, too, not that anyone would get much money for its contents.
I must have moved the mug myself and just don’t remember doing so. I mean, my brain is pretty useless after everything that’s happened today.
Food will help, I decide. I produce two slightly dry pieces of whole wheat bread from the back of the fridge and take down the jar of peanut butter. As I set to work on the counter, my eyes fall on the small mesh mail organizer next to the fridge where I store menus, odd pieces of snail mail, and flyers for events I might attend but probably won’t. In the very front, facing out, there’s a takeout menu from a nearby Indian restaurant.
But it wasn’t the first item when I left the apartment this morning, I’m sure of it. Before I headed for Scarsdale, I wrote myself a reminder to buy milk for tea on the back of an envelope and then stuck the envelope right in the place where the menu is now.
I freeze, a slice of bread in my hand and a breath caught in my chest. Someone has gone through the papers and stuck them back in the organizer out of order. Which means that the real reason my cat went into hiding wasn’t because of some noise in the hallway. She got freaked because someone was in my apartment.
12
Now
IBACK OUT OF THE KITCHEN AND SPIN AROUND. FOR A COUPLE OFseconds, I have this terrifying sense that whoever got in might still be here and is about to leap out at me, but I tell myself that’s irrational. Given the thoroughness of my search for Tuna, there’s nowhere anyone could be hiding.
Finally taking a breath, I walk to the door and, leaving the chain on, ease it open. There are no weird marks on the lock or the doorframe, but clearly someone must have jimmied the lock to gain entry.
I can almostfeeltheir presence now.
But what were they doing here? Nothing of value has been taken, even though there was cash in the drawer and my Mac computer is sitting in full view. Did someone just poke around, perhaps looking for something specific that he didn’t find or I don’t know yet is missing? I grab my head in my hands and squeeze my temples. My day is starting to seem like a series of episodes ofThe Twilight Zone—“Dead Man’s Money,” “The Cat Who Wasn’t There,” and nowthis.
I think about who else has the key. Only the super, and yet he’sa harmless-seeming guy who always gives me a heads-up if he has to be in the apartment for some repair-related reason.
Taking my key with me, I step into the corridor, close the door, and trot back over to Mikoto’s apartment, hoping, since it’s just after ten o’clock, that she hasn’t gone to bed yet. I knock lightly.
“Sorry to bother you,” I say when she opens the door, still in her yoga wear.
