Page 25 of Preferential Treatment

Angel straightened, taking Kate’s silence as an admission. “Are you fucking serious right now? You would call the cops? For what? For sitting in your shit-ass apartment?” Her voice rose higher and higher with each word until she was screaming.

Kate gestured futilely for Angel to lower her voice. “My neighbors—”

“What do I fucking care?” Angel screeched, jumping to her feet. “Apparently I’m not going to be sticking around!”

“Angel, come on—”

“Fuck you! FUCK YOU!” Her scream was so shrill it warped in Kate’s ear, a painful, broken wavering.

From the other side of Kate’s living room wall, a heavy pounding sounded. “Hey!” her neighbor’s voice, a grumpy older man named Mark Kowalczek, came muffled through the wall. “Knock it off!”

“Mind your own fucking business!” Angel screamed back at him.

Kate clutched her hands to her ears, wishing she could curl up in a little ball and hide in the closet like she used to do when she was a kid and Angel got out of control.

“Angel,” she pleaded, “you have to go.”

“I don’t have to do fuck-all!” Angel slapped the lamp off the nearest end table. Ceramic and glass shattered as it hit the floor. She kicked the end table over, sending books flying. On the other side of the wall, Mark started pounding again. Kate’s heart was beating like a hammer. Sticky, prickling sweat broke out over her whole body.

“I’ll call the cops!” Mark shouted through the wall.

That got Angel’s attention. “Fuck you, dickface!” She kicked the wall next to the couch, smashing a boot-shaped print through the plaster and lathe.

“Stop!” Kate cried.

Angel turned and stormed towards the door, slapping picture frames off the wall as she went. Glass shattered in her wake. “Tell that asshole not to bother,” she snarled, kicking at the wall again, thankfully leaving only a dirty print. “I’m gone.” She ripped the front door open and stormed out.

Kate stood frozen in place, staring through the open doorway, listening to the sound of Angel’s footsteps retreating down the stairs and the thunderous drumbeat of her own heart.

A few seconds later, Mark appeared in the hallway. He peered into Kate’s apartment. Bald-headed and mustachioed, he looked like Mr. Clean, if Mr. Clean was seventy years old and liked to wear knitted cardigans. He spotted Kate, and the agitated glare dropped off his face, bushy eyebrows rising.

“You okay?” he asked gruffly.

Kate nodded stiffly. “Yeah. I’m so sorry about that. I was trying to get her to leave.”

Mark nodded. “Family?”

“Unfortunately.”

“I’ve been there.” He paused, scrunching his lips guiltily. “Er… sorry to say, I called the non-emergency line. They’re sending police over.”

Kate rubbed tiredly at her temple. “No, that’s fine. It was the only thing that was going to get her to leave.”

“I’ll wait for them. Let them know it wasn’t you.”

The fact that the clarification needed to be made was crushing. To be fair, not many people would mistake Kate and Angel for each other these days, identical twins or not. Even so, Kate recognized Angel in herself, and seeing her again was torture. Kate was Dorian Gray, and Angel was her portrait in the attic. Or something like that.

“Thanks, Mark.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Two cops showed up twenty minutes later, stone-faced and speaking to Kate with a degree of condescension that verged on belligerent. Apparently, Mark wasn’t the only neighbor who’d called in a noise complaint. Kate tried not to react to their disdain, to rise above whatever they expected from the source of a noise disturbance call, but the urge to mouth off was simmering in her blood like itchy fire. She managed to keep her cool—if she lost it, she’d be no better than Angel. Impulsive, reckless, stupid.

They talked to Mark after her and, magically, after speaking to a man who supported her version of events, the condescension dropped. They stopped with the intimations about fines for noise violations and instead suggested she consider filing a restraining order against her sister.

Kate knew she wouldn’t do that, but she told them she’d think about it, and finally, they left.

Alone again, she cleaned up the mess Angel had made, sweeping up broken glass and then going over the floor again with a damp rag to pick up any shards she might have missed. She dumped the shattered lamp in the trash and righted the end table. She wiped the dirty shoe print off the wall and then stared helplessly at the hole next to the couch.

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