She pretended the question made no sense. “Why what?”
I tried to bend her to my will with a don’t-mess-with-me tone of voice. “Why are you doing this, Parker?”
She gave a big shrug, and then she didn’t fight me—and I suddenly realized she’d wanted me to ask this question all along. “I heard about you and my mom hanging out,” she said, and then her voice got theatrically pouty, “and I thought, Are they having fun without me?”
“We were not having fun,” I said. “I don’t ‘have fun’ with Lucinda.”
“She paid you a visit, though,” Parker said. “At your roof-hovel.”
Hey. Only I got to call my hovel a hovel.
“Now we can all have fun together,” Parker went on—her voice shifting to menacingly perky.
“I don’t want you here,” I said, starting to feel a panic of helplessness.
“Aww, I know,” she said now—lacing her voice with fake sympathy. “This is kind of your worst nightmare, isn’t it?”
She waited, like I might confirm it.
I held still.
“But don’t worry,” Parker added then, raising her hand for another high-five attempt. “Given your whole brain-damage situation … you will literally never know I’m here.”
Eleven
PERFECT. BETWEEN JOE the Weasel and Parker, I pretty much had to dread every single elevator ride.
Another reason to never leave the rooftop.
And yet Parker wasn’t wrong. I really didn’t notice she was there. Other than that our top-floor hallway suddenly started smelling like cat pee, which had to be that creepy Sphynx cat’s fault. Maybe she worked all the time—what kind of terrible job would a person like Parker even have?
Or maybe she was moving around me all the time, unseen, like a ghost.
Either way, she was surprisingly forgettable.
The Weasel, however, was the opposite.
That red-and-white bowling jacket was as hard to miss as a stop sign. And he wore it all the time. Other people changed their clothes, their shoes, their hair. Sometimes they wore workout gear. Sometimes a suit for work. Sometimes jeans. It was normal human behavior to wear different clothes for different occasions and I applauded it. Of course, it made it almost impossible for me to know who was who, but at least the world was still lumbering along much as it always had.
Anyway. Not this guy.
He really must have loved that jacket.
I saw him in it almost every evening. Getting coffee at Bean Street from Hazel One or Two. Locking his Vespa at the bike rack. Crossing that same crosswalk where I’d almost been flattened by a VW Beetle. Doing normal things, mostly. But with a spotlight on him because of that jacket.
Just my luck.
Everybody looked the same except for the last guy I wanted to see.
Noticing him like that did, however, confirm my initial diagnosis: he was definitely some kind of epic player.
My first confirmation came when I saw him stumbling drunk down the hallway with the sexiest woman in our building. I was waiting to step into the elevator as they lumbered out, arms pretzeled around each other, after what had clearly been a wild night of drinking. She looked worse than he did, for sure, and as they lurched past me, I wondered if she might be in danger.
Had he roofied her? That was the first question that came to mind. Just how terrible was this guy? Was he just a douche, or was he a monster?
I wanted to ask her if she was okay, but I didn’t know her name.
Sue and I always just called her Busty McGee. Which sounds terrible, now that I think about it. But I’m telling you, most of her outfits were very … cleavage-forward. We weren’t noticing something she didn’t want us to notice. Actually, she’d make a great friend for me now, because she was highly recognizable, even without a face. I’d know that chest anywhere.
And I very much admired her confidence. I, who hadn’t bought new bras in so long I couldn’t even tell you how long it had been.
But look, as identifiers went, those were hers. If you needed to mention her to anyone in this building, all you had to say was “the lady with the boobs,” and you’d be set.
Not that you would say that. But you could.
Anyway, I hesitated on her name—and then I made do with “Hey.”
“Hey!” I called, catching up to them. “Are you okay?”
Leaning against the Weasel, she stopped, turned in my direction, and said, “He’s got me.”
At that, Joe un-paused them and they continued on toward her apartment door. Should I stop them? Should I call the police? What would I even say? A fat-shaming jerk is taking a very sexy neighbor of mine back to her apartment—and he might be up to no good?
That wasn’t a 911 call. People got up to no good all the time.
In the end, all I could think to do was shout after them: “Make good choices!”
They kept going—no acknowledgment.
“Be sure to respect each other’s humanity!”
Not even a glance backward.
Then, “Don’t make me hear about this in the elevator in the morning!” As they disappeared into her apartment and left me standing there.
After that, I started noticing Joe coming out of Ms. McGee’s apartment more often. Which made me think they’d started dating. But get this: There were two other single women on our floor—not counting Parker, who I would never count, on principle—and I saw him coming out of their apartments, too, often late at night. The glasses, the floppy hair—and always that bowling jacket. Unmistakable.
What was he doing in all these women’s apartments?
Something about it just bothered me.
Here I was, chastely facing all kinds of recovery and obstacles and time pressures … and there he was, just having his way with the entire building.
I was frantically trying to relearn how to paint. I was staying up late and getting up early and painting back over canvases. I was falling asleep at my own worktable, leaving paint and brushes out to dry and get ruined.
I was hustling like crazy all the damn time—and this guy Joe was just … getting lucky?
I didn’t have time to obsess over what this dude was up to. And yet I was doing it anyway.
“I think he’s a gigolo,” I said to Sue one night, FaceTiming while we both did our dishes. “I see him going in and out of women’s apartments all the time.”
“Multiple women?” Sue asked.
“Multiple women,” I confirmed.
“Then he’s not a gigolo,” Sue declared. “Gigolos are typically kept by one older woman for eye candy and sexual favors.”
I paused, like, Huh. “Why do you know that?”
“If it’s multiple women,” Sue went on, proud to be helpful, “he’s more likely a male prostitute.”
I considered it. “Well, he must be very good. The penthouse apartments in this building aren’t cheap.”
“Maybe that’s what the videos are for. Maybe he’s extorting them so he can live in luxury.”
I sighed. Maybe. “Anything’s possible. People are so terrible.”
“It’s a shame, though. He’s so cute.”
“Is he cute?” I asked.
“You don’t think he’s cute?”
“Sue, I can’t see his face.”
Sue smacked her forehead. “Forgot again.”