Page 29 of The Tenant
“Because she forgot about some rotting food in the fridge? You do that all the time, Blake. Are you sure it wasn’t yours?”
“It wasn’t mine. Trust me.” My jaw ticks. “Why aren’t you more bothered by this? It smells like death in here.”
“It’s not that bad.” She shrugs. “Just open a few windows and spray the air freshener. I bet it’ll be fine in a couple of hours.”
“It’s not just that, okay? She’s just… She’s toxic. She woke me up twice in the middle of the night doing God knows what…”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“That’s because you sleep with earplugs!” I throw up my hands. “Trust me, she’s doing this to torment me. And she keeps looking at me like she wants to slit my throat while I’m sleeping. I’m not comfortable with her here.”
“I think she’s really nice.” Krista blinks at me. “I don’t get it. You don’t like the way she’slookingat you?”
I grit my teeth. “She hates me. Do you know what it’s like to live with somebody who hates you?”
“She doesn’t hate you.”
“She does!” A fruit fly dances in front of my face, and I swat at it in frustration. “Sheabsolutelyhates me. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she left this rotting food in the fridge just to torture me!”
The fruit fly finally gets out of my face and lands on the kitchen counter. I reach out and slam the palm of my hand down, smashing the life out of it. I feel a brief flash of satisfaction.
Krista takes a step back, blinking quickly. “Are you okay, Blake?”
“No, I’m not okay!” I shoot back. “There’s a psychopath living in my house, and I want her out!”
And now my stupid eye won’t stop twitching.
“The last several months have been really stressful for you,” Krista says gently. “I know it was hard on you to lose your job that way, and I know you hate your new job. And I know you aren’t sleeping well. But Whitney is not the cause of all your problems. I promise you that.” I start to protest, but then she raises her hand. “And I need to remind you that the money Whitney is paying us for the room is the only thing keeping us afloat right now.”
She has a point. We need the money. And it’s not like there were any other amazing candidates lining up.
“Fine,” I mutter. “I got rid of the rotting food at least. She needs to know she can’t do it again though.”
“I’ll talk to Whitney about the food,” Krista says. “You stay out of it. You’ll just make things worse.”
That’s for sure.
“And we can get rid of the fruit flies,” she adds. “I was looking it up, and you can build a trap using dish detergent and apple cider vinegar!”
“Fantastic.”
I wait for Krista to wrap her arms around me in a tight hug—I could really use a hug right now. At least level seven or higher. But instead, she goes upstairs to fetch the air freshener. It’s hard to imagine that it will do anything to help get rid of this terrible smell, but it’s worth a try. We have one window in the kitchen, so I throw it open; then I go into the living room to open some windows, because the whole place is starting to smell. Even poor Goldy looks kind of green in her little bowl. Thank God at least the weather is decent so we can keep the windows open.
I feel sorry for our poor fish, so I toss her a couple of pellets. She must be hungry, because she immediately rises to the surface to gobble them up. Eating is literally the most interesting thing that she does. It’s sort of cute. I feel a weird rush of affection for our little pet. It’s nice to have something to take care of.
As I idly scratch my chest, which feels itchy again all of a sudden, I hear the sound of footsteps thudding on the steps. I raise my eyes from the fishbowl to the stairwell. Someone is standing at the top, and at first I think it must be Krista with the air freshener. But it’s not. It’s Whitney.
I don’t say anything, and neither does she. She just stands there, dressed in her usual jeans and hoodie, looking down at me. I wonder how long she has been standing there. I wonder if she heard our entire conversation.
Then she tucks her hair behind her ears and smirks. She heard every word.
18
One of myall-important jobs as the temp is to fetch coffee from Starbucks every morning.
I have to walk around, taking drink orders like I’m a waiter, and then Kenny gives me the company credit card. I trot off to the Starbucks three blocks away to join the line that goes all the way to the door, no matter what time I show up. If I get out of there in less than half an hour, it’s a miracle.
Today I have a whopping nine drink orders, which means I am going to be carrying two tiers of drink trays back to the office. Balancing something like that as I walk across two streets is no easy task, but I have sadly become very good at it over the two months I have worked there.
