Page 49 of The Tenant
If she doesn’t leave, I am going to take all her crap and dump it on the sidewalk in front of the building. I don’t care if she sues me. I’m flat broke anyway.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Whitney says with a laugh, “I’ll be gone long before then.”
And then she slams the door in my face. I hear a click as she locks it.
Her words should be reassuring. After all, Iwanther gone. Yet something about the way she says it makes me very uneasy.
It feels like a threat.
29
As I’m walkinghome from the train station after a day of work, my phone buzzes in my pocket.
It’s been a week since Krista moved out. In the days after she left, I sent her roughly a billion text messages and voicemails. She sent me one single text, asking me to give her some space, and I then proceeded to send her another billion text messages and voicemails. I’m having a lot of trouble playing it cool. I just want her back.
Every time my phone rings, I’m hoping it’s her. So I can’t say I’m not disappointed when I pull out my phone and “Dad” is flashing on the screen. But I haven’t talked to my father in weeks, maybe longer, and it hits me right now that I desperately want to see him and hear his voice. I have no friends at my new job because Kenny told everyone about my history, and nobody from my old job still speaks to me. Which means there isn’t anyone I’ve been able to talk to about what happened between me and Krista. Not even Goldy.
I swipe to take the call, and there’s a squeezing sensation in my chest as my father’s familiar voice fills my ear: “Blake! You picked up!”
That squeezing sensation gets even tighter. “I always pick up. If I’m free.”
“Sure,” he says. “It’s okay. I know you’re busy, Blake.”
Great, he knows I dodge his calls. Well, I’m not going to anymore. I’m going to quit being such a shitty son. When my father calls, I’m going to pick up the phone. Most of the time anyway.
“So how is it going?” he asks me. “How is the new job?”
“Fantastic,” I lie.
“That’s wonderful,” he says, and it’s a tribute to him that he sounds like he actually means it. “And how is Krista?”
“She’s…” I almost lie again, but then I realize this is my dad I’m talking to. Why pretend? Who am I trying to impress? “She moved out.”
“Aw, Blake.” His voice lowers a few notches. “I’m really sorry to hear that. She seemed like a nice girl, and I know you liked her a lot.”
Liked her a lot? She wasthe one. And Whitneyruinedit.
“Yeah,” I manage.
“What happened?”
I swallow a lump that always seems to pop up in my throat when I think about Krista. “She thinks I cheated on her.”
And she thinks I murdered her fish. I’ll leave that part out though.
“Did you?” he asks.
“No!” I can’t believe he would ask me that. “She just got this idea in her head. None of it is based on reality, but she doesn’t believe me.”
“Well,” he says, “if you didn’t even do the thing that she accused you of, why don’t you win her back?”
“Believe me, I’m trying.” Krista hasn’t blocked me yet, but if I keep sending her this many text messages, that is the next thing coming. “She says she needs space.”
My father is quiet, thinking this over. I’m waiting to hear what he has to say. The funny thing is, even though I don’t talk to my father much, he gives great advice. He’s a smart guy. He was married to my mother for nearly thirty years when she died, and even though they had their financial problems and he couldn’t give her everything I thought she deserved, they were always really happy together.
Maybe my mom didn’t get her dream house and sometimes the electricity went out, but she was content. She gave me a wonderful childhood, full of camping trips and home-cooked dinners and treasure hunts for fireflies. And when the cancer finally got the best of her, she died in her own home, with my father holding her hand. Maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong.
“If she asks for space,” Dad says, “you need to give it to her. She knows you love her. I think at the end of the day, she’ll come back to you.”
