Page 36 of The Tenant
Against all odds, I survived my one-foot fall without breaking my neck, although the wind got knocked out of me. I lie on the floor for a few moments, gradually taking inventory of my injuries. I smashed my elbow on impact, and there is an electric pain shooting down my forearm, but nothing feels broken. No trips to the emergency room are required.
The paper bag is still on the top shelf, and I’m grateful for that. I look up at the shelf, where the bag is teetering at the edge. I swallow down the bile in my throat.
The contents are seared into my brain forever. I’m not entirely sure what was once in that bag. Apples? Pears? I think they’re apples. Either way, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever it was has rotted to the point that it is now crawling with maggots. The air is heavy with the sickly sweet smell.
It was bad enough to find something like that in my kitchen, but what is most troubling is how it got there. I like fruit as much as the next person, but I would never put a couple of apples in a paper bag and stick it on the top shelf where no one could reach it.
No, whoever did that did it intentionally. They did it to ensure that I would not discover the rot in my kitchen until the flies had multiplied, driving me out of my mind.
I started noticing the fruit flies not too long after Whitney arrived. It seems one of her first acts after handing over a deposit was to make sure my home would no longer feel safe and clean.
The worst part is that if I confront her, she will definitely deny it. Based on past experience, she will just hate me even more.
And Krista won’t believe she did it. She already thinks I’m losing it. Considering our relationship seems to be hanging by a thread, I don’t want to bring her into this.
I look up at the paper bag, now nearly close enough for me to touch without a stool, which is good since our only stool is in splintered pieces all over the kitchen floor. Instead, I grab one of the larger pots that is on the kitchen stove. I place it on the floor and put my weight on it, testing it to see if it will break. It doesn’t. I use my left arm to help me balance against the counter, and the elbow that I smacked during the fall screams in pain.
I have just enough height now that I am able to grab the paper bag. Miraculously, I manage to pull it off the shelf without the bottom giving way, and I set it down on the kitchen counter. The thought of what is inside is turning my stomach, but even more than that, I am absolutely furious.
But I can’t confront Whitney. I can’t kick her out. So what can I do?
And then the answer hits me. I’m going to give Whitney a taste of her own medicine.
I grab a plastic bag from the pantry, because the thought of this paper bag disintegrating and releasing the contents onto the floor is too sickening to imagine. Once it is safely inside the plastic bag, I leave the kitchen and climb up the stairs to the top floor of the brownstone, my elbow throbbing all the while.
Whitney’s room is right near the stairs. She has a lock on her door, but it only works from the inside. That means that when she goes out, the door is unlocked. When I place my hand on the knob, it easily turns.
I haven’t been inside Whitney’s bedroom since she moved in. I have confronted her a few times at the doorway to her room, but I’ve never been inside. It would’ve felt too intimate. So now I take a second to look around.
It doesn’t look too bad. I don’t know what I was expecting. Burning incense? Evidence of some sort of satanic ritual?I hate Blakescribbled in blood on the wall? But I don’t see anything close to that. The room is neat, with the clothing carefully tucked away in drawers, and even her bed is made. She is a bed maker like me—I give her a little grudging respect for that one. But I find it irritating that she clearly hasn’t emptied the wastepaper basket by her bed, and it’s filled with crumpled sticky notes.
Out of curiosity, I nudge open her closet. It is painfully boring inside. She has a row of shirts and pants and dresses hung up with an extra pair of sneakers and a pair of pumps on the floor beneath them.
All right—enough snooping. I’m going to do what I came here to do.
I position myself so that I am standing over Whitney’s bed. I take one last look into the plastic bag, and then I overturn it.
As the paper bag hits her bed, the bottom drops out of the bag as expected, and the contents spill out. Rotten fruit and maggots splatter all over her clean blanket.
There. Now we’re even.
I’ve never done anything like that before. As I take the stairs back down to the kitchen, where I intend to clean until those flies are gone, I make plans to go out and get a beer to celebrate when I’m done. I love my home, and Whitney has turned it into a living hell. I’ve just dished a little back to her.
Except I’m pretty sure Whitney won’t see it that way. As good as it felt getting a little bit of revenge, I have a feeling that I have just made a fatal error.
23
Because I couldn’t figureout a way out of it, tonight I’m having drinks with Malcolm at Cooper’s.
It’s been several days since I exploded the rotten fruit and maggots onto Whitney’s bed. I’m embarrassed to admit I made sure the door to our bedroom was locked that night when I went to sleep. It seemed like there was a chance Whitney might sneak into our room and slit my throat while I was sleeping. Or throw the maggots intoourbed, which would be almost as bad.
But strangely enough, Whitney made no move to kill me in my sleep. She didn’t mention the episode at all, in fact. When I passed her in the hallway on my way to the bathroom, it was like it never happened, which I found incredibly strange. I’m on edge though. I don’t know if she’s planning anything.
I arrive at Cooper’s ten minutes late. It’s a small, dark dive bar with chunky wooden chairs and tables that are almost always sticky, even after being wiped down. Even though smoking isn’t allowed in bars anymore in the city, the place smells like an ashtray. I suspect it’s from the patrons and staff who slip out to smoke and then come back inside seconds after stubbing out their cigarettes on the ground. The floor is smudged with ash. Gwen, my last girlfriend before Krista, was a smoker, and the smell reminds me of her in an unsettling way. That relationship only lasted a few months, and it didnotend well.
Malcolm isn’t at the bar when I arrive, and I almost walk out. He’s the one who bulldozed me into this meeting, and now he’s even later than me? But Krista was so excited at the prospect of me and Becky’s husband becoming friends—she’ll be pissed if I return home without a report of how well the evening went. Given our recent fights, I need to be extra careful not to screw things up with her.
I find a table for two and sit down by myself. There are two girls in their midtwenties sitting at the bar, having what looks like a girls’ night out, except their skirts arereallyshort. I try not to look, but one of them catches my eye and flashes a suggestive smile. I quickly avert my eyes. Where the hell is Malcolm? I’m giving him five more minutes, then I’m gone.
