Remember, I’m seeing three seconds into the future all the time.
That’s how I suddenly know there’s someone here waiting for me.
The hallway up here is a straight run from one end to the other, with rooms on both sides like a hotel except more drab, with brown carpeting and yellow wallpaper and crown molding that’s too ornate for a place like this. Halfway down on the right is my apartment, and above the door I’ve got a sign sticking out on a metal hanger so it can be read either from the stairs on this side or the elevator on the other. “Stone Investigations,” it says in big white letters on a black background. Can’t miss it.
Which is probably how that guy standing there figured out which place is mine.
He’s in khakis and a blue dress shirt tucked into his waist, very professional looking, carrying a long cardboard box that’s maybe six inches square and at least seven feet from end to end. On the one side I can see a white address sticker. Must be a delivery guy.
“That for me?” I ask him.
He blinks a little uncertainly at me. Turning the box, he reads the name off the delivery sticker. “Uh, are you Sidney Stone?”
“Yup. That’s me.”
“Oh.” He fumbles the box from one arm to the other, balancing it on its end. “I was kind of expecting a man. You know, with a name like Sidney.”
If I had a nickel for every time I heard that… but I let it go this time. My mother had very good reasons for naming me Sidney. I’m fine with who I am. “Just hold on a sec. I’ll get the door and we’ll get that inside.”
He shrugs. “Uh, okay.”
Not really working his way up to a big tip, this guy. I wonder what delivery company he’s with, and also… what’s in the package? I’m not expecting anything. Certainly not anything the size of a small flagpole.
My key turns the lock and then we’re inside. I kick my sneakers off, like I always do, more to give my feet a rest than to keep from tracking dirt onto the neutral-colored rugs. I was always that girl who ran barefoot on the beach all summer long. Then I grew up and learned that adulthood means wearing shoes. Sometimes, being a grownup sucks.
“Just put it down over there,” I tell the guy, pointing over to the standup cabinet where I keep the broom and the vacuum and my pump-action shotgun that isn’t technically legal for someone like me to possess. I hardly ever bring it out. Still has that new gun smell.
With a dull thud, he drops the package right in the corner there, leaning it up against the wall. Whatever’s in there must be heavy.
Between the stove and the dining table there’s a half wall that sort of kind of divides the two spaces and creates a shelf of polished wood that I use as a catchall for my mail and my purse and other things I don’t really need all the time, or just want to forget about. In my purse is my wallet, and from the wallet I take out a five-dollar bill. If he lugged that box up the elevator to my door then he deserves it.
“Here you go,” I say, handing him the folded bill.
He looks down at it, and then up at me, and a realization passes over his face. “No, no, you don’t understand.” Laughing nervously, he waves his hands in front of himself. “I’m not the delivery man. He was here, I mean, he was standing out there in the hall and I had to wait for you anyway, so I offered to hold that package there until you got here. Man, you’ve never seen a guy zip off faster than that guy when I said that. I guess he had a lot of other deliveries or something. Um. I may be talking too much.”
Well this was getting confusing. “Let’s try this. Why don’t you take a breath, and we can take a seat and you can tell me why you’re waiting for me out in the hallway. You’re not here to kill me, are you?”
“What? No! Of course not, why would you even ask such a thing?”
I shrug, and then flash him a smile to let him know I wasn’t being serious. “You’d be surprised. A girl can’t be too careful.”
