Page 28 of Stay Awake
“Just because there’s no sign of a break-in doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Can’t you at least take fingerprints?”
“Ma’am, there’s no sign a crime took place here. Nothing’s been stolen. We don’t take fingerprints when there’s no indication a crime was committed.” He talks to me like I’m a child.
“So you’re saying I trashed my own bedroom and I don’t remember?”
“There’s probably a perfectly good explanation for everything that happened. Cats can be vindictive when they’re left alone. They’re smarter than people think.”
“My cat is smart, but even she can’t open and close drawers and closet doors. Nor can she draw hearts on windows.”
“Maybe your roommate did that before she went on vacation,” the burly cop suggests, trying to shut me down. “Maybe she borrowed some of your clothes and she was in such a rush to pack that she left a mess behind.”
“Amy wouldn’t do that. She knows that I’m a neat freak. Someone else was here.”
He sighs impatiently. “Look, we’ve checked your apartment. There’s nobody here except for you.” He opens the front door and gestures with his head for his partner to follow.
“Someone must have come into the apartment and messed up my bedroom. Even if that person didn’t steal something, it’s still a crime. Breaking and entering. Isn’t it?” I’m annoyed that they’re literally doing nothing to get to the bottom of this.
“It would be a crime. If it had happened,” he says, turning around enough for me to see a judgmental glint in his eyes. “But there’s no evidence there was a break-in. Nothing’s missing. There’s no forced entry. Is there someone you think might have broken into your apartment just to mess with you? Someone with a grudge? An ex-boyfriend? A neighbor?”
“Nobody I know would do something like this!”
“What about someone you don’t know?” the junior cop chimes in, earning an irate glance from his partner.
“What do you mean?”
“Have you been harassed recently, ma’am? Anonymous messages? Calls? Threats of any type?”
“You’re asking whether I’ve been stalked?”
“Yes, I am.”
Kevin, the waiter from Café del Mar, left three more messages for me at work. I wouldn’t define his calls as stalking. He’s never done anything more than leave me innocuous messages. But I find it weird that a waiter, with whom I had a fleeting conversation, would track me down at my office and call me repeatedly.
I’m about to mention his name, when I change my mind. Some people are really bad at reading social cues. Kevin might be one of them, and that’s why he keeps calling me at work. Plus, it might antagonize him if the police confront him about his calls to me. The fact is that bitter experience over many years has taught me not to trust cops. Things always go haywire when the police get involved.
“Nobody’s stalking me,” I say, with more conviction than I feel.
Chapter
Eighteen
Wednesday 12:42P.M.
Claudine holds her hands together in delight and tells me to spin around when I come out of the changing room dressed in the outfit she’s styled for me.
She inclines her head at an angle, as if not quite sure about how I look, and then scrambles in a closet and removes an asymmetrical silver-blue cardigan so long that it reaches the top of my thighs. It suits my outfit of skinny jeans and a cashmere black scoop neck top.
“It’s still missing something,” says Claudine.
She disappears into a storeroom and returns with a necklace made of different shades of blue-and-clear quartz stones. Standing behind me, she clips on the hook of the necklace.
“One last thing and then you can go,” she promises.
She pulls out a handful of cosmetics samples from a box and sorts through them until she finds shades that suit my coloring. “This will finish off your look.”
As I apply the makeup, I see my reflection in the small mirror morph back into… me.
I almost fool myself into thinking that everything is back to normal until I remember the jagged scar on my body. No matter how hard I try, I can’t remember what caused it. There’s a gaping hole in my memory from the moment I answered the phone on my desk on what was definitely a blue-sky summer’s day until the moment I woke on the park bench this morning to the biting chill of an approaching winter. I tell myself my memory loss is temporary, the aftereffects of a late night, or really bad jet lag. Clarity will return very soon.
