Page 6 of Levee

Jade

I opened my door with hope in my chest every day for four days after coming across the little riddle scribbled on it.

But for the fourth day in a row what I was met with was a vulgar phrase or, in this case, a drawing. It was a caricature of me. As expected, my features were exaggerated. Instead of the typical large head like you found in these drawings, though, it was my boobs that were comically enhanced, each one of them looking bigger than my head.

It was actually really well done for what had to be a quick doodle.

Instead of erasing it in its entirety, I just removed the boobs and replaced them with a sign, and drew hands to hold it.

You’re talented. If you want art lessons, let me know.

There.

That felt like a good way to handle it.

Clearly, it was almost certainly one of the many teenagers in the building. Just screwing around. Being kids. I couldn’t be mad about the boobs. That was, you know, a normal thing forteenage boys to hyper-fixate on. But removing them from the caricature felt like the appropriately adult thing to do.

I was still trying to shove my reusable grocery bags into my purse when I heard a loud slam coming from William’s apartment, loud enough to make me jerk and gasp.

“William?” I called, a little tentatively. I didn’t know why, though, so I tried again more loudly. “William?”

Inside his apartment, there was a groaning sound that had my heartbeat accelerating.

I rushed across the hall, reaching for the knob, finding the door unlocked. Still, I hesitated after cracking the door open. “William? Are you okay?” I called.

“Fuck, ow, fuck,” a voice howled from further in the apartment.

“William, I’m coming in!” I called to be heard over his curses.

He wasn’t in the living room, and I said a silent prayer for his dignity and my own comfort level that he hadn’t fallen getting out of the shower or off of the toilet, as I rushed into the apartment.

Luckily, I found him in the bedroom, trying to use the bed to pull himself up, but the bedding was preventing any progress.

“How about we try this?” I suggested, moving around the bed to grab the bedding from the other side, giving him something to use to pull himself up, since he was too big for me to be able to actually lift. I tried not to think about the sweat-stained sheets as I held onto them.

From the other side of the bed, William’s face was beet red as he clawed his way up onto the mattress, flopping over onto his side, breathing heavily.

“Are you okay? Did you hurt something?” I asked, moving back around the bed, reaching to right his wheelchair before I looked down at him.

“Got a bad back,” he told me through gritted teeth. Sweat was beaded in his brow and hairline, likely from the pain.

“Do you have medicine I could get for you?” I asked.

“Kitchen counter,” he said, back to deep breathing.

I moved through the apartment, grabbing the prescription bottle of pain medicine on the counter, then going to get a drink from the fridge.

Inside, I found a big tin of food.

On the island was fresher fruit, though it was already looking like it was fading. The bananas were more brown than yellow and the pears even looked mushy.

It was as I was making my way back to the bedroom when I noticed there was quite a bit of sunlight shining into the room. The windows that had been grimy on my last visit were almost completely clean.

Had William cleaned them? Maybe in a surge of insecurity at having a stranger in his place. As much as I felt bad if I’d created those feelings, I thought it was likely good for him to get some sunshine.

“Here you go,” I said to William as I twisted off the top of the bottle. He took it from me, shaking three of the pills into his palm, making me bite back a question on if that was a safe or appropriate dose. Who was I to question him? I popped his soda tab and handed that to him as well. “Can I help you with anything else? Get you something else?”

“No,” he said, biting off the word in a way that suggested I wasn’t welcome.

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