Page 6 of The Tenant
Her lips twitch. “I suppose.”
“You know,” I say, my eyes dropping lower, “you’ve got flour all over your shirt.”
Krista drops her eyes and gasps when she sees the flour speckled all over her maroon tank top. She attempts to brush it off, but that only seems to spread it out more.
“Hey, let me help you with that,” I tell her, and she’s not even the tiniest bit amused when I fondle her breast. But hey, it’s not like these prospective tenants will be any good. May as well have some fun.
“Blake!” she scolds me, although she’s suppressing a smile. “Cut that out. They’re going to be here any minute.”
As if on cue, the doorbell rings.
“Shoot,” she says. “Blake, that must be Elizabeth. Can you let her in, and I’ll join you in a minute?”
Before I can answer, Krista hurries off to change her top for the benefit of this woman who we will surely never see ever again. I go to answer the door, but not before grabbing a chocolate chip cookie to stuff in my mouth. Man, there’s nothing like good home-baked cookies.
When I throw open the front door, a woman about the same age as my mother is standing there, dressed in robes. Yes, you heard me—robes, like the plural of a robe. There are at least three robes that I can identify. She has long white hair, frizzy from the humidity, which is covered by some sort of silver hat. I’m not saying she’s wearing a tinfoil hat, but I’m not entirely sure it’snota tinfoil hat.
“Uh, hello,” I say.
“Drake?” she asks me.
“No, Blake,” I say.
She looks disappointed.
“And you must be Elizabeth,” I say.
She shakes her head. “No, it’sQuillizabeth.”
“Quill…lizabeth?”
“That’s right,” she says, like it’s a common name I ought to know.
“Okay,” I say. “Well, please come on in…Quillizabeth.”
Quillizabeth looks down at the threshold of our home and crinkles her nose. Then she reaches into one of her many robes and pulls out—I kid you not—a salt shaker. She sprinkles salt liberally at the entryway.
“It’s an important thing to do,” she says sagely, “to keep any evil spirits from entering the premises.”
“Uh-huh,” I say. Great. Now I’m going to have to clean up a bunch of salt after she leaves.
“I’m sorry about this.” She continues to spread salt around and even says a few words to herself. “But I tend to have a very strong connection to the spiritual world, especially if I don’t take the proper precautions.”
“Huh,” I say. I have a piece of chocolate stuck in one of my back molars. “To be honest, I don’t believe in that stuff.”
She straightens for a moment and fixes me with a calculating gaze. “You’re a Scorpio, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” I admit.
She looks at me like I admitted I don’t know my own first name. This is going to be a long thirty minutes.
Finally, after our doorway has been sufficiently seasoned, Quillizabeth follows me into the brownstone. Her sharp eyes are taking in every nook and cranny, lingering on the photos of me and Krista on the mantel, studying our dark brown sofa, judging the sixty-two-inch TV in the corner of the room.
With each new object her gaze comes in contact with, she clucks her tongue like we have committed some cardinal sin. It’sreallyannoying. If I didn’t think Krista would be mad about it, I’d ask her to leave right now. I don’t need this crap.
“My girlfriend made some cookies,” I finally say.
Quillizabeth takes in the plate of chocolate chip cookies. They’re still warm enough that the chips are slightly melty. I’d grab another one if Krista weren’t about to burst into the living room any minute now.
