Page 8 of Etched in Stone
She opened her mouth and then closed it again. He sighed in relief. Hopefully, she wouldn’t ask what apartment she lived in, as the mysterious woman didn’t exist. He subcontracted out all the other maintenance jobs to a management company. But Olivia had introduced him as the super and so a super he was, collecting her rent (when she paid), and collecting her complaints as they happened. As far as tenants went, she was a pretty easy one to please.
“I like your sketches,” Ray said, after standing in silence for a long moment. “I think that one’s the most practical.” He pointed to the one he starred in.
“Those aren’t real suggestions. I was just spitballing. I do that. Just draw whatever comes into my brain. It doesn’t mean that I want a bathroom with a tuba toilet.”
He cracked a grin. It was probably frightening on an old man face, but she laughed. Finally, a little bit of a connection.
“Gotcha. No musical toilets.”
“Actually, your bathroom is spectacular,” Jesse said. “Anything close to that would be awesome.
Aren’t those tiles getting heavy?”
He looked down. They would be heavy for an old man. He nodded and headed back out to the garden. She didn’t follow. She probably was going to get dressed. He looked up and saw the door close and heard the lock click.
So much for having a decent conversation. He piled the tile next to him and took one to taste. He took a bite from the first one and shrugged.
“Needs salt.”
He was too lazy to go get some, so he just sat there, staring down at the street below, munching on his snack. A pigeon landed on the ledge beside him.
“Salt, or some nice white wine. Do you think she likes wine? She's an artist. Of course she likes wine. Unless she's a beer kinda girl.”
The pigeon seemed unimpressed with this rambling. It seemed more interested in trying to taste one of his tiles.
“Nah, this isn't your style. I swear, I'm not holding out on you.”
5
JE SSE
The leaves were brilliant in Central Park this time of year. Last year, everything had been coated with the gloom of mourning her aunt but this year was different. The display of fluttering leaves was a pageant of colors, waiting to be captured in some form or another.
And Jesse would capture them all. She'd spent nearly the entire day soaking in the color and taking pictures to preserve as much of it as possible so she could go back to her apartment and recreate a masterpiece that would do this work credit.
It had taken her nearly the entire day to also realize that someone was following her. In fact, she quite suspected that there were actually two of them, working in tandem, like she was some foreign spy that they were keeping an eye on. All of which was ridiculous, because she was a practically starving artist with nothing at all to do worth spying on. Her life was an open book.
Julia Child had apparently been a spy, but she'd been a chef that traveled and made plenty of connections. Jesse had few friends to her name and no real connections other than a few artists that she got together with few days a month in order to network and drum up business. But she made more money selling her work in online stores than she ever did in person.
Jesse tried to tell herself it was just her imagination, but even after circling the building and then the block, she was certain that the man in the jogging wear and the woman putting money in the parking meter for the third time were just too nonchalant to be doing anything but waiting for her to reappear and go into her building.
What to do? Did one call the police? Did she start causing a commotion? Did she go up and talk to one of them? The last thing she wanted to do was go up to her apartment alone, but she was afraid if she tried calling the police, they’d just disappear, making her the crazy lady in need of a little psychiatric help. She kept walking, past her building once more and into the little bodega on the corner.
“Hey Hen!” Luis called from behind the corner. He was the cousin or some string relation to the owner Eric. He was also an outrageous, yet harmless flirt.
“Hi.”
“You need milk? I got milk? I got all the fresh milk.”
“Not exactly.”
“Of course you want milk. Eric’s new guy in charge of ordering may have ordered twice as much as needed. But don’t tell Eric that because he doesn’t want Eric to know.”
“Luis.”
“Okay, you got me. I am Eric’s new order guy. Do you think I can handle the responsibility?”
“There are two dudes following me and I don’t know what to do,” Jesse said, wanting to cut to the quick.
