Page 4

4

Single upstairs bedroom available immediately in Upper West Side brownstone on a quiet tree-lined street. Bedroom is fully furnished and has two large windows and lots of closet space. Large shared kitchen, dining area, and living room. Subway adjacent. No pets, no parking provided.

We have two prospective tenants coming to look at the spare room in the next hour.

I’m not optimistic. Since Krista posted our ad all over town and on the internet, we have had about a dozen people look at the room, and all of them were awful . I’m not exaggerating. “Awful” is a charitable word for what they were.

One of them was a self-professed kickboxing fanatic. He then demonstrated by kicking a hole in our wall. So now we have to get that fixed. Another woman showed up with the most ferocious animal I’ve ever seen. She claimed he was a dog, but I’m not convinced it wasn’t a wolf or worse.

The worst one by far was two days ago—a short guy with a scraggly goatee wearing a white Linux hat. He grilled me relentlessly for twenty minutes about the internet capabilities of the place. After I did my best to answer his questions, he reached into the sack he was carrying and pulled out a drill . He said he needed to drill through the wall to check the wiring, and I had to physically stop him, or else he would have done it. I didn’t need a second hole to patch up.

Now we have a woman named Elizabeth coming in about five minutes, then another woman named Whitney in half an hour. I’m sure they’ll both be awful. But in case they’re not, we have cleaned the house from top to bottom. I even sponged off the inside of the refrigerator in case they look in there.

Krista places a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies on our small dining table, and when I try to grab one, she swats at me. “That’s for guests .”

“Krista, this isn’t an open house. There are two people coming and, like, twenty cookies on the plate.”

She shoots me a look, and I withdraw my hand. Her gaze sweeps over me as she does one last check to make sure I’m wearing pants today, which I am . I’ve even shaved, which makes me look significantly less like a homeless person.

“Do I meet with your approval?”

Her lips twitch. “I suppose.”

“You know,” I say, my eyes dropping lower, “you’ve got flour all over your shirt.”

Krista drops her eyes and gasps when she sees the flour speckled all over her maroon tank top. She attempts to brush it off, but that only seems to spread it out more.

“Hey, let me help you with that,” I tell her, and she’s not even the tiniest bit amused when I fondle her breast. But hey, it’s not like these prospective tenants will be any good. May as well have some fun.

“Blake!” she scolds me, although she’s suppressing a smile. “Cut that out. They’re going to be here any minute.”

As if on cue, the doorbell rings.

“Shoot,” she says. “Blake, that must be Elizabeth. Can you let her in, and I’ll join you in a minute?”

Before I can answer, Krista hurries off to change her top for the benefit of this woman who we will surely never see ever again. I go to answer the door, but not before grabbing a chocolate chip cookie to stuff in my mouth. Man, there’s nothing like good home-baked cookies.

When I throw open the front door, a woman about the same age as my mother is standing there, dressed in robes. Yes, you heard me— robes , like the plural of a robe. There are at least three robes that I can identify. She has long white hair, frizzy from the humidity, which is covered by some sort of silver hat. I’m not saying she’s wearing a tinfoil hat, but I’m not entirely sure it’s not a tinfoil hat.

“Uh, hello,” I say.

“Drake?” she asks me.

“No, Blake,” I say.

She looks disappointed.

“And you must be Elizabeth,” I say.

She shakes her head. “No, it’s Quill izabeth.”

“Quill…lizabeth?”

“That’s right,” she says, like it’s a common name I ought to know.

“Okay,” I say. “Well, please come on in…Quillizabeth.”

Quillizabeth looks down at the threshold of our home and crinkles her nose. Then she reaches into one of her many robes and pulls out—I kid you not—a salt shaker. She sprinkles salt liberally at the entryway.

“It’s an important thing to do,” she says sagely, “to keep any evil spirits from entering the premises.”

“Uh-huh,” I say. Great. Now I’m going to have to clean up a bunch of salt after she leaves.

“I’m sorry about this.” She continues to spread salt around and even says a few words to herself. “But I tend to have a very strong connection to the spiritual world, especially if I don’t take the proper precautions.”

“Huh,” I say. I have a piece of chocolate stuck in one of my back molars. “To be honest, I don’t believe in that stuff.”

She straightens for a moment and fixes me with a calculating gaze. “You’re a Scorpio, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know,” I admit.

She looks at me like I admitted I don’t know my own first name. This is going to be a long thirty minutes.

Finally, after our doorway has been sufficiently seasoned, Quillizabeth follows me into the brownstone. Her sharp eyes are taking in every nook and cranny, lingering on the photos of me and Krista on the mantel, studying our dark brown sofa, judging the sixty-two-inch TV in the corner of the room.

With each new object her gaze comes in contact with, she clucks her tongue like we have committed some cardinal sin. It’s really annoying. If I didn’t think Krista would be mad about it, I’d ask her to leave right now. I don’t need this crap.

“My girlfriend made some cookies,” I finally say.

Quillizabeth takes in the plate of chocolate chip cookies. They’re still warm enough that the chips are slightly melty. I’d grab another one if Krista weren’t about to burst into the living room any minute now.

“Blake,” Quillizabeth says, “are you aware that the sugar in cookies is both toxic and highly addictive? If sugar were introduced to the market right now, the government would never approve it for consumption. You may as well lick the sidewalk outside your house.”

Has she seen the sidewalk outside our house? But fine. Don’t have a cookie then.

“Also,” she adds, “cookies are loaded with saturated fats and empty calories.”

As she says those words, she looks pointedly at my abdomen. I glare at her and decide to go ahead and take another cookie for myself.

“Anyway,” she says, “you said in the advertisement that you have a single furnished room available?”

“Yeah,” I confirm between bites of the cookie. “But actually, we may have someone already. So…uh…you know, I don’t want to waste your time.”

Quillizabeth licks a finger and holds it up in the air. “It’s quite drafty in here, isn’t it?”

“Uh, I hadn’t noticed.”

“You know what that is, don’t you?” Her expression is deathly serious, like she’s telling me the secrets of the universe. “It’s all the past owners who have lived here before you. They create quite the draft, milling about. I can help you get rid of them with a simple channeling ceremony once I move in. That will get rid of the draft”—she snaps her fingers—“just like that.”

Krista chooses this moment to come out of our bedroom, wearing a brand-new shirt that looks almost identical to the one she had on before, except no flour this time. Why does it take women so long to change clothes? I could change my shirt in five seconds, maybe less.

“Is that Elizabeth?” she calls out as she sprints down the steps.

“Quillizabeth,” I mumble under my breath.

Krista descends the last of the steps, and when Quillizabeth looks at her, it’s with the only shred of approval I’ve seen since she stepped into the house. “My dear!” Quillizabeth exclaims. “You are such a pretty girl!”

“Thank you,” Krista says as her cheeks go pink. The woman has good taste, I’ll give her that. Krista holds out one of her pale hands. “My name is Krista. It’s so good to meet you, Elizabeth.”

“Quillizabeth,” she says.

They shake hands, but a split second after their palms make contact, Quillizabeth yanks her hand away as if she’s been scalded. She stumbles back, her hands trembling.

“I…” Quillizabeth’s voice has gone suddenly hoarse. “I actually have to go. This place…it’s too small. I won’t be renting it after all.”

Thank God. Maybe I’ll nab another cookie. “Okay, it was nice meeting you,” I say, trying not to sound too pleased.

But Krista frowns. “Is everything okay? You haven’t even seen the bedroom yet.”

Quillizabeth shifts her gaze to look at me, and there is real fear in her eyes. When she turns back to Krista, her tone is urgent. “Could I…speak to you outside, Krista dear?”

Krista looks at me for permission, and I shake my head no. “What is it?” Krista asks.

Quillizabeth takes another step back. “Outside. Please .”

Her watery eyes are locked with Krista’s. What the hell is wrong with this lady? I’m sorry I even invited her in. Once the salt shaker came out, I should have slammed the door in her face.

“Look, Quillizabeth,” I say. “We have another prospective tenant coming soon, so…”

“He’s going to kill you,” the older woman blurts out. “Blake is going to kill you, Krista. You have to get away from here.”