Page 60 of Stay Awake
“Your finger should be fine now,” she says in a thin voice when she’s done.
She gets up abruptly and takes her assortment of shopping bags to her bedroom. I rise from the sofa and follow the delicious aroma of food cooking in the kitchen. Looking through the oven glass, I see a delicious casserole bubbling in a ceramic dish on the oven rack.
“It smells amazing,” I tell Amy, when she comes into the kitchen. “Where did you get the recipe?”
“Recipe? What are you talking about?”
“The casserole in the oven! And here I thought you couldn’t boil an egg.”
“Liv, you know I don’t cook.”
“Then who made the casserole?”
“You, of course,” she says, looking at me weirdly again. “You’re the only one of us who cooks.”
I’m speechless. I’d know if I cooked dinner. Wouldn’t I? Everything feels so out of place. That’s when I realize that I haven’t seen the cat since I woke up.
“Where’s Shawna?”
“Probably prowling around the neighborhood,” says Amy.
“She’s usually back by this time.”
I tap a can of cat food with a spoon by the kitchen window. The noise always brings her home. We both hear a faint sound in the hall closet. Amy opens the closet door and Shawna runs out, skittish and visibly distressed.
“How on earth did you get locked in the closet you silly thing?” Amy asks the cat as she picks her up.
Hanging in the closet is my dry cleaning. A receipt stapled to the front of the clear plastic garment bag indicates it was collected today. Payment was in cash.
“Did you pick up my dry cleaning? I’ll transfer the money I owe to your account.”
Amy doesn’t hear me. She’s deep in concentration, typing a text on her phone.
“What did you just say?” She looks up after she’s sent the message.
“I thanked you for picking up my dry cleaning.”
“What dry cleaning?” Amy looks at me strangely. “I didn’t pick anything up today.”
Her denial makes me wobble. I put my hand against the door frame to support myself. If I didn’t collect the dry cleaning, and Amy didn’t collect it, then who did? First, milk appearing in the fridge, and then a casserole in the oven. Now my dry cleaning miraculously turning up in the hall closet. Someonewashere while I was sleeping. It’s the only explanation. The question is who, and why.
“Are you all right, Liv? No offense, but you’re acting really strange.”
“I’m feeling a bit dizzy,” I say, to explain my weird behavior.
Amy will think I’ve gone nuts if I tell her that I believe someone came into the apartment while I was asleep to heat up a casserole and bring in my dry cleaning. It’s ridiculous. Even I think I’m crazy. Yet I can’t think of any other explanation.
When I go into my bedroom, I find another bunch of flowers in a vase next to my bed. This bouquet is a combination of white and pale pink gardenias. They fill my bedroom with an intoxicating floral aroma.
My cell phone beeps with a message on my Snapchat app. I open it to see a photograph of the gardenias next to my bed along with a message.This is how a boyfriend is supposed to treat the woman he is dating, Liv.
Who is this?I write back.
By the time I press Send, the original message has disappeared, as if it never existed. I kick myself for not taking a screenshot of it.
I call the police. This time two detectives arrive half an hour later. The first is the surly detective I talked with a few days ago when I made the report about the milk carton. His partner, Detective LarryRegan, is around my age. He has rich chocolate-colored hair and matching velvet eyes.
“I remember you,” says Krause, the surly detective. “Did someone leave you eggs this time? Or maybe a loaf of bread?” He laughs at his own joke. It makes me instantly regret calling the police, and reminds me why I’ve never trusted cops.
