by Rose Marie Zurkan
She stands outside the door holding a can of hairspray. "Is this yours?" she asks. I say no. "Somebody threw it in the incinerator. You're not supposed to throw spray cans in the incinerator. They can explode."
"I don't use hair spray."
"Everybody uses hair spray."
"I don't."
She doesn't believe me. "Just stop."
She turns and stomps back down the stairs.
"What's she got against me?" I ask my husband that night. "Why doesn't she bother the old woman on the third floor. She uses hairspray. Her hair never moves."
"She's just doing her job," he says.
"Why are you taking her side?"
"I'm not."
"What's she doing working here anyway? She's gorgeous. That red hair."
I see her everywhere. Is she following me? Worse, when I leave the apartment and return, it looks like someone has been in here. Someone has been riffling through my drawers. Things are in different places. I tell my husband.
"It's your imagination," he says.
"I want to move," I say.
"We signed a lease."
"You signed the lease before I even saw the place. I can't help it. She scares me."
The next time I shop I notice her behind me in the supermarket, pushing an empty cart. I speed up, turn the corner into the aisle where beauty products are sold. Hairspray. I back up and nearly run into her. "Are you following me?" She smiles and doesn't answer. I lose my taste for shopping and hurry to the checkout counter.
I tell my husband about the encounter in the grocery store. "Why would she follow you?"
"Who knows? Maybe she knows. Maybe she wants to punish me."
"For what?"
"It was my fault that girl died."
"No, it wasn't."
"The papers said it was. They said I got off because I had money."
He doesn't say anything.
Mid-morning the next day I hear a knock at the door and see through the peephole that it is the property manager. I don't open the door. A few minutes pass. Next comes a different noise. Of course! She has a key.
I jump up, run into the bedroom, yank open the closet door, duck inside. I listen to her slow steps as she moves through the apartment. What's she looking for? My car is in the parking lot. Where does she think I am? Instead of hiding, why don't I confront her?
I stand in the closet, hangers poking me in the back, while she moves into the bathroom. I hear her opening, closing drawers, opening the medicine cabinet. Does she do this in every apartment, or just mine?
Eventually, she leaves. I remain in the closet, in the dark. When I finally push open the door and step out, barely half an hour has gone by. I walk around the apartment, looking for changes. In the medicine cabinet the bottles have been rearranged. I tell my husband. He says nothing. "You don't believe me, do you?"
"Of course I do," he says, but he is lying. He remembers my breakdown after the accident.
We are sitting at the table. I look down at the food on my plate. None of it is appealing.
"Eat something," he says. "You're getting too thin."
"Do you think she knows?" I ask.
"About the accident? Even if she does, so what? You got off."
"She'd say I got off because I'm rich. I paid people."
"Stop worrying," he says, but not like he means it.
"Sometimes I wonder why we got married," I say. "We're so different."
I'm hoping he'll say we got married because we fell in love, but he says something else.
"You mean you have money," he says, "and I don't."
Why doesn't he understand? "That's not what I mean, the money doesn't matter," I say.
"If it doesn't matter, why did I have to sign a pre-nup?"
"That was the lawyer's call, not mine."
She knows my routine. Wherever I go, she's there too. I am afraid to go out, convinced that when I leave the house she lets herself in and goes through my things. I stop going out, start having food delivered.
"I have to go out of town," he announces one day.
"Can I go?" I used to go along.
"It's meetings all day. You'll be bored."
I used to enjoy my long walks through unfamiliar streets. "How long will you be gone?"
"Overnight," he says.
I watch him pack. Not much, a clean shirt and underwear. In the morning I lock the door after him. No way am I leaving the apartment. The thought of her trying on my clothes, holding them up to her body, looking at herself in the mirror, sickens me. She must have seen my husband carrying a suitcase, she knows that he is not coming home tonight. I nap during the day so I will be able to stay up during the long night.
Despite the naps, I fall asleep, wake up to the sound of footsteps.
She creeps into the bedroom. I sleep on my back, my arms above my head under the pillow, where I stashed the knife. Through slitted lids I see that she too holds a knife.
I tense, grip the handle of my weapon, as ready as I ever will be. She stands at the foot of my bed for such a long time that I fear, fear and hope, that she will retreat. Instead, she approaches the side of the bed. There again she stands and watches. Go ahead, I will her to strike, end this one way or another. When she dives toward me, I am ready. I bring up the knife, plunge it into her white neck. At the same time, I feel a searing pain in my shoulder. I am covered with blood, hers and mine, lose consciousness…
I awaken in the hospital. My husband sits beside my bed. His eyes are closed. He has not shaved. "How long have you been here?" I ask.
"They phoned me last night, and I drove straight home." I look out the window, register the bright sun. "What happened?" he asks. "She attacked me."
They release me later that morning. With the help of a nurse's aide, I dress. My husband pushes the wheelchair the hospital insists on and helps me into the car. "Why didn't you take my car?" I ask.
"I didn't stop at the house," he said. "I drove straight here."
Something bothers me, but I am still too drugged to figure out what. I close my eyes, open them much later, after the trip has taken longer than it should have. "Where are we?"
He stops the car. We sit at the top of Lookout Point, the valley spread beneath us. He gets out of the car. "What are you doing?" I ask. The engine is running. He lets out the brake. Neither of us notices the car behind us. Now it pulls up, and the two men jump out. One grabs my husband, the other reaches in and resets the brake.
Later, they explain. After the property manager's death, they researched our backgrounds: hers, mine, my husband's. It hadn't taken long to discover the relationship between the property manager and the woman I killed, the relationship between the property manager and my husband. When they added my wealth to the equation, the result was obvious. They knew that if they kept an eye on me, he would try again.
Now I understand what bothered me when I climbed into the car. On the back of the seat lay a long red hair.
