It is the crow’s caw that reminds me of who I am, and it sets my feet moving. Electric blue Docs and the splash of puddles. I make my way toward Sixth Avenue, imitating the facial expressions of the people around me. People I can never be because of what I’ve already done. But, I realize, I can watch them and pretend. I can buy a raincoat and learn my way around these streets. Piece of cake. I just have to get this apartment.
The apartment isn’t as nice as it looked on the internet. I feel like a woman who’s arrived to a date with a man she met online, fooled by his outdated picture. I take it anyway, because the owner takes me. The longer I wait to find a place to live, the longer I’ll be sleeping in my car. We do everything right there, on the peeling Formica countertop of the outdated kitchen. It’s not worse than the eating house, I tell myself, as I sign the lease and hand over a year’s worth of rent. The year’s rent is the reason I get the place. No questions asked. I don’t have references or credit. I feel lucky he’s giving me a chance.
The owner is a balding, thirty-something man, named Doyle, with a gut that nudges over the top of his pants. He smells of Old Spice. I walk the apartment one last time before we leave, taking in the familiar smell of cigarette smoke and the lingering stench of grease that clings to the wallpaper. The windows face other windows, but, from the living room, I can see a patch of sky, and that is enough. We make arrangements to meet at a coffee shop later, where he will bring me the keys and the sticker I’ll need to use the building’s parking garage. As I walk out of the building, I feel accomplished. I want to tell Judah what I’ve done, so I go to a store and buy a phone. They want my address. I give them the address of the eating house, and plan to change it later. I fill out the paperwork, pay them, and when I walk out and head down a deeply sloping street to the coffee shop, I have one of those fancy things that can do anything and everything.
Finding a table near a window, I watch the people and the traffic, a growing sense of excitement bubbling in my chest. I wait for four hours in the coffee shop before I get up and ask the man making coffees behind the bar about Doyle. He looks at me with his eyebrow cocked, his pierced lip pulled up in impatience.
“How am I supposed to know who Doyle is?” he says, sliding a beverage across the counter to a waiting customer.
“Doesn’t he come in here?” I ask.
“Sweetheart, do you know how many people come in here every day?” I glance around at the dinner crowd, people freshly clocked out of their jobs, stopping by for an espresso with their coworkers before they head home for supper. He eyes my clothes, the insecurity with which I cling to my backpack. “I don’t know where you’re from, but this is Seattle. We don’t know our neighbors.” I think about my neighbors, not nice, plaid-wearing folk, who make jam and bring you over a mason jar with a handmade label. My neighbors were druggies, thuggies, and murdering mothers. And their neighbor was me: a cold-blooded killer. Poor old country folk. I look at the pierced-lip barista and roll my eyes. We were a lot tougher than he thought. I don’t know where you’re from, but it sure ain’t the Bone.
I back away from the counter and go stand by the window, convinced that I’ve done the wrong thing by coming here to this proud, undeterred city. I’m already sick of that thought, the back and forth of my decision. Judah would tell me to own it. My eyes blur in and out of focus as I watch for Doyle, unable to accept the deception. It’s a mistake. I’m at the wrong coffee shop. He was held up by something: a car accident, a family emergency. I am willing to entertain anything but the sad, stinging truth that I was scammed. I handed twelve thousand dollars over to a stranger without so much as asking his last name. A naive girl with a wad of cash—an easy target. As the sky darkens, I watch the pedestrians, imagining the spaces they are going home to—the warm kitchens and the sofas facing the televisions. The children throwing themselves at their daddy’s legs, the mothers wiping their hands on dishtowels to come fetch a kiss on the lips.
I walk to the library and search for the ad on Craigslist with Doyle’s phone number. It’s gone; however, if my suspicions are correct, it shouldn’t be long before another pops up just like it. Probably with a new number that Doyle has acquired. A pay-by-the-minute phone bought at a gas station. There will be a new name on the ad. I find the number from the ad scrawled on a piece of paper in my wallet, but when I use my new phone to make the call, it rings and rings until I finally hang up. My situation becomes more discouraging as the library announces it will be closing in five minutes.
Back into the rain, back into the march of people who know where they’re going. I make my way toward the apartment building eight blocks away. The cold is locking into my joints, and I have a headache. When I realize that I haven’t eaten all day, I buy a bowl of noodles from a food truck and carry it with me to the apartment building where Doyle stole my money. I sit on a bench across the street and watch the entrance. The food falls to my belly, but I don’t taste it. This is what happens; everything becomes black and white. I see only injustice. The man who chose the moniker Doyle, who will continue to prey on the innocent, must be held accountable. The building looks different without the glow of hope around it, dingy and mean-looking. I walk to the front of the building and stare up at the oppressive, little windows. Doyle had opened the main door with a keycard that he pulled out of his wallet. He had access to the building, which means he either already lives here, or he had pulled his scam before and somehow managed to get keys to the empty apartments. He can be anything from a maintenance man, to a friend of the real owner’s. I sit for a while longer to look up at what was almost mine. It’s all right. I’ll wait. When the time is right, Doyle will repay me—one way or another.