Chapter 5
In general, I was not a particularly observant person. I often missed the obvious. However, once something had my attention, I could be relentless. If there was something I really wanted, I could almost always found a way to get it. If something felt wrong or askew, I couldn’t ignore it. This trait was part of what drove people away from me. But it also served me well at times. For instance, some years earlier, I’d had reason to suspect that my boyfriend, the aforementioned Andrew, was cheating. There were little signs, like being uncharacteristically vague about where he’d been and whom he’d been with, along with a sweet scent emanating from him that I hadn’t noticed before. When I’d confronted him he’d denied it, but I hadn’t let it go. I could never let things go. I brought it up regularly, constantly.
Finally, beaten down, he’d admitted to cheating, and he’d also thrown in the comment that the other woman was a lot easier to get along with. That had felt like a low blow at the time, but I eventually had to admit to myself that he was right. I was unrelenting at times, and I knew it had cost me relationships. However, I just didn’t know whether I was capable of not digging to the bottom of things that troubled me.
One day in April I found myself riding up the elevator with the Virginia couple and thinking, Funny how both Jeff and I noticed how mismatched they seem. The man smiled at me as I got on. The woman pretended to have some important business on her phone, typing feverishly.
“How are you finding Seattle living thus far?” I asked the man cheerfully.
He perked up. “Oh, we find it just fine. Very mild here. I was prepared for constant rain, but I tell you, it’s not that bad. You know, I think it rains more in Manhattan than it does here,” he said earnestly but with a smile.
“I thought you were from Virginia,” I said, puzzled.
“We are from Virginia,” the woman said coldly.
“Oh” was all I could think to say in response. The man became sheepish and clammed up. The woman, having spoken, had opened the door, and I was able to get a better look at her without seeming rude. She wore a lovely forest-green blouse with matching slacks, belt, and pumps. Her hair was in a tidy French twist, with long tendrils hanging down about her pale face. Her eyes were ice blue, like all the nefarious characters in my books (brown=good, blue=bad). Her lips were full and pouty, with bright-red lipstick, and her cheekbones jutted out like Cruella de Vil’s but more attractively. She was so beautiful she could have stepped out of any one of my novels.
The door opened, and I nodded awkwardly and said good-bye as they stepped out. I watched the elevator door close and rode it up to my floor.
“Wow! How very strange,” I said out loud.
I couldn’t shake the experience on the elevator. What was going on there? Why the secrecy? Why the move to Seattle? Had they family here? A job? No, I’d heard he had retired when he’d sold several coal mines in Virginia. So, if they were open about that, why not about their Manhattan connection? I took these thoughts with me as I let myself into my apartment.
I started to think about the other people who resided in my building. There were several other interesting characters as well. There was an older couple, she mid-sixties and he seventyish. The woman was ash blonde, with bulbous, watery blue eyes, and red-faced as if from a sunburn that never faded.
The man, also blond and blue-eyed, was tallish and rotund. His face was red too, but from drinking (or so I’d been told). He had a Muppet mouth and a Michelin Man neck, with fold upon fold as if a small snake were forever strangling him. He rarely spoke to me, but when he did, it was always with an air of disdain, as if he thought I was hiding something or had some ulterior motive (like what?). I could not stand him. He seemed immune to his wife’s constant chattering. When she was not talking, she was singing, “La la la” as if she had a happy tune in her Disney heart and just had to let it out for everyone to hear how joyful she was. There was no way she could be happy living with that man.
I’d found out all about them when they’d moved in the year before. He’d made a fortune selling cars; he’d owned several dealerships, and she’d worked for him for many years. One day they’d just run off together, he leaving his wife and kids bewildered. They were both very religious, attending their Evangelical church every Sunday, the hypocrisy seeming conveniently lost on them. Our building was nice, but I wondered why they would live there if they were so fabulously wealthy. As it turned out, they spent most of their time in Arizona, where they had some ridiculously huge, opulent home. Bully for them.
One time, while riding up with them, the woman had smiled at me and said, “So, we live in the same building and I don’t even know your name.”
“Jill van Doren.” I’d responded with a slight smile.
The woman held out her hand. “I’m Connie and this is Fred.” She’d said amiably.
“Nice to meet you.” I’d said as I shook her hand then just nodded toward her husband.
The elevator door opened and they’d gotten off. The woman turned around toward me and said cheerfully, “Really nice to finally meet you too!” As the door closed.
Another couple I’d met lived one floor down. They’d moved in about two years before, the woman in her late sixties or maybe early seventies, the man seeming a little younger. I’d ridden up and down enough with them to know I didn’t like the woman at all. She was aggressively homely, with coal-black-and-grey hair that fell loosely around her face. She had crooked teeth, sunken eyes, and a creped turtle-like neck. She was short, maybe five feet tall, lumpy and shapeless. She was impossibly arrogant, scarcely looking at me when we shared a ride up or down and always talking to her husband about the symphony or the opera or referring to some famous writer. It seemed deliberate, as if she were trying to impress me or, more likely, to make me feel intellectually inferior to her, as if she were royalty and I a mere commoner. I was certain she knew what type of books I wrote and thought them drivel. They were drivel, but that didn’t mean I was—or did it? The man was of medium height and extremely feminine looking. He actually looked more like a woman than his wife did. Very odd. I’d found out a little about them, as well. She’d been married before and had a few kids, but her husband had divorced her, and she’d never gotten past it. She would tell people about her first husband while forgetting to introduce her second.
“Can you believe the Connors actually enjoyed The Symphany last night? I really don’t like Wagner. He’s so overated. Really just a hack who was foisted upon us by psychotic propagandists,” the woman had complained to her husband one afternoon as we rode down.
“You wanted to go.” Her husband had responded.
“One doesn’t say no to the Nordstoms.”
There was a crotchety old geezer, Mr. Katz, who lived on the second floor. He was given to filing complaints about people playing music, leaving anything out in the hall, talking loudly, holding the elevator open until it beeped while loading something—whatever. Once. when I got stuck on the elevator with him he groused about the smell of garlic. I just pretended to be engrossed in my phone while he rolled his eyes. Kids these days with their technology! Harrumph! he seemed to be thinking.
“Sorry you’re so old,” I wanted to say, but of course I didn’t. I’d heard he’d lost his wife years ago and had never gotten over his sorrow. Or was it resentment?
On the first floor there resided a drunk couple who got hammered every single night, shouting at each other about transgressions from 1975. They were on a first-name basis with the police. The next day they would always act as if nothing had happened, as if the screaming at each other for hours was normal. The only reason they hadn’t been kicked out yet was that their son was a wealthy businessman and greased palms to keep them out of his hair.
The reason I knew so much about my neighbors was that I was friendly with the superintendent, Gary. He was a greying, leathery, unkempt man in his sixties who’d worked in the building for years. He was grumpy with everyone else, but for some reason he was nice to me. He told me