She stopped at the edge of the cluster where Goosh was, on the other side of the apartment. She only opened her mouth to say something small, maybe ‘hi’, and then Goosh pointed.
Her eyes fell on me, and I saw the connection fill in.
It had looked odd because there had been no recognition. She knew of me, recognized me, but she didn’t know me? I didn’t know her?
My hand went to my waist. The hatchet.
Why the hell was she in my apartment?
She broke away from Goosh’s group, very awkwardly making her way through the crowd, avoiding eye contact, apologizing for every accidental bump.
Then I saw the person who had brought her, and it made sense.
The shortest person in the room, faint red dots of acne at the edges of her hairline, despite the fact that she was two years older than me, and the telltale bumps where she’d covered other spots with makeup. She wore her jacket indoors, and I wondered if she did it because it made her look bigger than she was. Her black hair was in dire need of conditioner, and the winter hadn’t been friendly to it. I suspected it had been wet when she’d left her place and it had frozen.
I liked the little flaws. I could somehow look at an attractive girl, someone like Amanda, or that Penelope Duchamp girl, and on some basic level, they didn’t rate as high in my estimation. They didn’t look interesting, their dark blue eyes didn’t have more of a hold on me because I spent every second I looked into them wanting to study their faces and figure out what it was that made me find her attractive despite the imperfect details.
She knew everyone, everyone knew her. She held her friend’s hand. Her girlfriend’s hand? Led the girl to the futon, where people automatically made room for the pair. She smiled easily, but went out of her way to cover her teeth with her lips, bit down to keep her lips in place, even, as she turned her head away to hide what she was doing. When she laughed at something Joel was saying, she almost doubled over, in part because she was really laughing that hard, in part because it meant nobody could see her face.
I was relieved to see that she was safe, her friend was safe, and they weren’t part of this whole business with Others and magic and whatever else. A glance at their connections told me they were safe.
“Blake, you going to stand in a corner for the entire night at your own party?” Joel asked.
“Was thinking,” I said, approaching the gathering of people at the one side of my living room.
“Think less, drink more,” Joseph told me.
“I’m not drinking tonight,” I said. “Already said. I might have to run. I’m all tied up in this bullshit drama that’s been going on this past week and a bit.”
“Are you going to be able to manage?” Joel asked. “I know people. Lawyers, mostly tied up in renter’s rights and tenant-landlord disputes, but it’s not a big jump to real estate.”
“Real estate’s only a bit of it,” I said. “It’s fine. I’ve just got to handle my own stuff.”
“Goosh was saying you didn’t sound fine about it,” he said. “You sounded pretty down. You still sound down.”
“It’s-” I very nearly said ‘it’s fine’, but it wasn’t, and a lie here among friends was still a lie. “I am. I’m going to strive to avoid being a wet blanket, though.”
“If you need to vent, or gripe-”
“I do,” I said, “But I also need to pretend I have a semblance of a normal life, and I don’t want this to be a pity party.”
“Come on, give us a taste of the griping.”
This from the shortest girl in the room, smiling wickedly even as she tried not to smile.
“Leave him be, Alexis.”
“A taste?” I responded. “I’m seriously wondering if someone’s going to try to kill me.”
I saw the shock on their faces, the stunned silence, but for Alexis’ sputtering coughing.
“When Goosh said you’d said your cousin’s death wasn’t an accident, I thought you meant it was a suicide,” Joel said.
“I’m almost certain it wasn’t,” I said.
“Because of the house?” Joseph asked.
“Because of what the house is, and power plays, and… I don’t even know all of the motivations at work,” I said. “But I’m spooked.”
“You should talk to someone,” Joel said. “Police?”
Police are part of the problem. “I’m waiting for a word from someone on the subject of my personal security. Local guy, knows who’s who, can probably point things in the right direction. Or leave me fucked. Which is why I might have to run any minute.”
There were nods.
“Whatever you need to do,” Joel said.
Still coughing a bit, Alexis asked, “Hey, Blake, can I smoke?”
“You most definitely can not,” Joel said.
“Who’s bright idea was it, inviting the landlord?”
“The landlord invited you,” Joel replied. “I have a hard enough time resisting giving you noogies, don’t tempt me by being a brat.”
“Give me a noogie and you die,” she said.
The brief silence that followed was pointed and awkward.
“Sorry, Blake,” she said, wincing. “That was in bad taste. I haven’t even had a drink yet, so I don’t have an excuse.”
“None needed,” I said.
“Go out on the balcony,” Joel said. “Have your smoke. You’ll be less irritable.”
“It’s cold out there,” she groused, but she stood.
“Want company?” I asked.
“Yeah. But before I go… Blake, meet Tiffany. Tiffany, Blake.”
“Hi Tiffany,” I said. I offered my hand for her to shake. She shook it.
My surface impression was that she was the least ‘Tiffany-ish’ Tiffany I’d met. Shy, awkward, quiet. I usually associated Tiffanies with blonde cheerleaders.
“I really like your tattoos,” she said, looking at my arms.
I smiled a bit. “I do too.”
“Color’s odd,” Alexis said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You get them touched up?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I haven’t had a chance to get a decent bit of shopping done this past week, let alone go to a tattoo parlour.”
“Damn,” she said. “That’s going to bug me.”
I opened the patio door for her, and she hurried through, with me right behind her. I shut it quickly before the people inside could get too cold.
The snow had piled up on the balcony outside my apartment, in uneven heaps, packed against one side. I took the spot that left me standing in a foot of snow, so she would be clear.
She lit the cigarette, used her jacket to wipe the railing of snow, and folded her arms over the top of it, resting her rather pointed chin on the back of one hand, cigarette in mouth.
“Tiffany seems nice,” I said.
“Yeah. She does splatter paintings. Mostly figures. She’s good.”
“Is she homeless? Or was she?”
“Lacks a home, but not homeless,” Alexis said. “Bad time of it, back there. Abuse. You know you don’t repeat any of this.”
“I know,” I said.
“Never had family, never had friends. So no, she didn’t have a home, even if she had a roof over her head. She’s in the building, now.”