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“No problem. Did you and your kitty get some bonding in?”
“Yeah, and I think what you said about her hiding because she was scared might be right. It looks like someone was in my apartment today.”
“Whoa,” Mikoto says, visibly concerned. “You mean likebrokein?”
“Yeah, but it’s strange. Nothing is actually missing—at least as far as I can tell—and yet a few items have clearly been moved around. My lock is still intact, so it must have been picked.”
She shakes her head. “Jeez.”
“You mentioned you were in and out today,” I say. “Did you notice the super in the building?”
“No, and when I called him about fixing my bathroom faucet, he said he wouldn’t be here until tomorrow.”
My heart sinks. A part of me had hoped that he’d had to let himself in to check for a leak or a mouse infestation orsomething.
“I wonder if someone got in when the foyer door was propped open,” she muses.
“Yeah, I’m wondering that, too. And maybe it was some kind of pervert, the kind who likes to go through women’s things, which I can’t bear to think about.”
“It would explain why he didn’t take anything.” Mikoto bites her lip. “I know this sounds crazy, but—could it be someone you were dating? I’ve never had an ex break into my place, thank god, but one pretty much stalked me a few years ago.”
There’s no chance in hell it was an ex. Lucas, my old boyfriend, left town four years ago, and since then I’ve dated a mere handful of guys, all for just a short while, and I slept with only one of them for a grand total of two times.
I shake my head. “Not likely,” I tell Mikoto. “I should let you get back to whatever you were doing, though.”
“Are you going to call the police?” she asks.
“No. I mean, what would I say? ‘Even though there’s no obvious signs of someone breaking into my apartment, I’m sure someone was here because my favorite mug was moved, and my cat was so scared she tried to enter the witness protection program’?” I shake my head. “I’m going to have the lock changed, though.”
“You have a chain, I noticed. But maybe you should put a chair or something against the door tonight. I think I might do the same.”
“So sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“I’ll be okay. Before law school, I had a regular salary and was able to swing a doorman building, but there’s no chance of that now, and I’m pretty used to the security downgrade.”
She wishes me good night and starts to close the door, but then tells me to wait. She grabs her phone from a little table next to the door and suggests we exchange numbers. I can’t imagine why I’d call her and not 911 if anything happened, but I don’t want to seem rude, so I rattle off my number.
As soon as I’ve returned to my apartment and made sure Tuna’s still on the couch, I put the chain in place and drag over the small table I keep by the entrance. Finished, I spin back around, facing the room. Even with the barricade in place, I still feel unnerved, sick to my stomach about what this means. Someone gotinhere, without even having to hack down the door, and they went through my belongings.
I dig out a spray bottle of Lysol from under the sink, tear a wad of paper towels off the roll, and begin wiping down surfaces—thekitchen counter, the desk, the top of my dresser—as Tuna watches me from the couch. Then, even though I’m bone-tired, I change my sheets and throw the used ones, as well as my underwear and bras, into the hamper to be washed, just in case someone touched them as well.
My cleanup efforts have confirmed that there’s nothing missing from either room, so the intruder has to have been some kind of nut who gets his kicks going through women’s underwear drawers. As I stand in the middle of my bedroom, catching my breath, my mind returns to Mikoto’s question. Earlier my kneejerk reaction had been to say it couldn’t have been someone I know, because I couldn’t imagine anyone being fixated on me. And yet there was that guy Deacon, the one I more or less ditched a few weeks ago and who left me with a really bad taste in my mouth.
We’d met one Saturday in the bookstore and gift shop of the New Museum on the Lower East Side, where we were both browsing through art books. He’d looked over at one point, smiled, and asked if I knew if membership included a store discount. It was a pretty lame line, but I told him it did, and we’d started talking about the exhibit we’d both just seen. Then he invited me for a coffee at a café nearby. I’d said yes, mainly because the thought of spending the rest of that gorgeous late summer day alone in my apartment seemed a little depressing.
He ran his own web design business, he told me over our cappuccinos, and loved to hike, and he asked a lot of questions, unlike most guys. He was nice-looking enough, too, with medium-length brown hair, a large but not unattractive nose, and light eyes, maybe gray but I don’t recall. We met for dinner a week after the coffee date, after which he’d kissed me lightly on the mouth and asked me to dinner again.
I said yes, not sure how I felt about him, but a few minutes into our third encounter I realized that he was far too intense for mytaste, with a tight smile that never went all the way up to his eyes. Yes, he asked questions, but instead of being keen to learn more about me, he seemed at times to be drilling me for answers he could challenge me on. There was no way I wanted to sleep with him, I realized then, or for that matter, spend any more time with him. I tried to pay for my half of the meal, but he refused to let me.
“So, what’s next?” he asked as we walked out of the restaurant. I wasn’t sure if he meant that night or in terms of the next date, but it didn’t matter.
“I should get going,” I’d said. “My life is about to become kind of crazy over the next weeks.”
“You want to call me when you come up for air?” he asked.
“It’s going to be a while,” I lied. “I don’t know when I’ll have any time in the next few months.”
He’d reared his head back, like a horse with a bit in its mouth. “Sounds like you’re blowing me off.”
