"Great," I muttered.
I wasn’t about to stand outside a building like this and just buzz random doors, so I decided to try jiggling the door handle, on a whim. It didn’t give, of course, but through the filthy frosted glass windows, I could see someone or something stirring inside. Well, at least I was making progress.
The door creaked open. An enormous, greasy, sullen man stared me down in complete silence.
"Hello," I said, smiling. "I’m here to see the detective agency?"
He grunted, turning and shuffling away but leaving the door open. I took this as a signal to come in, and followed him.
"Second floor," he wheezed, sinking back into a lopsided folding chair in the lobby. "There’s a sign."
"Thank you so much," I said, shutting the door behind me and then immediately wishing I hadn’t, when the smell hit me.
I made my way up the ancient stairs, beginning to think I’d made a horrible mistake. But I’d walked all this way; I had to see it through.
There was, in fact, a sign on one of the doors. It was scrawled on cardboard, with what looked to have been a ballpoint pen, so that I had to get close before I could read it.
PRIVATE EYE
Fantastic.
I raised my hand to knock on the door, and just as I was about to connect, it swung open.
"Oh," I said, startled. "Hello, you must be-"
"Kelly," said the woman standing there, flatly. "The private eye. Come in."
I stepped into the tiny, tiled mudroom and looked around. The smell didn’t seem to be as bad in here; there were stacks of newspapers all over the place, but I supposed they might have been for legitimate research purposes. We briefly passed by the kitchen, which was grimy in the way that only 40-year-old kitchens could be, with mustard yellow appliances and dishes piled in the sink. In the back of the apartment, there was a cluttered desk with an old banker’s lamp and many overstuffed manila folders. I sat down gingerly in an industrial-grade padded chair that looked as if it had been stolen from a ‘70s office building. Inwardly, I berated myself for assuming that Kelly must be a man, just because she was a detective. After all, I’d wanted to be a detective when I was a kid. Kelly was living the dream.
"Hello," said Kelly, sitting down heavily behind the desk. Her tone was flat, but not in a hostile way - it seemed to speak more of general exhaustion and irritation with the world. She was slightly disheveled, but it was obvious she was making an effort. Her hair was smoothed back, and she’d dabbed on enough eye makeup to make herself appear somewhat awake, if you didn’t look too closely. "How can I help you?"
"I need you to look into something for me," I said. I pulled out the envelope of photos. "Do you think you can find out who this woman is?"
She studied the pictures for a moment. "Where is this?"
"The address is on the back of the first one," I said. She flipped it over and looked at the location that Gen had scrawled there.
"All right," she said. "Do you have any suspicions?"
"Yes," I said. "But not much to go on."
"Well, tell me what you know." She interlaced her fingers and leaned forward.
"Her name is Florence Allen. We used to work together, over at the main office of Plum Tech. Then I married my boss." I hesitated, and looked up at her. "Daniel Thorne."
"I know," she said. "I know who you are."
"Ugh," I said. "That stupid blog."
"That stupid blog," she agreed, smirking. "So, you married your boss."
"I married my boss, and then I found out that he used to date her. She went completely apeshit and tried to ruin our lives. Stalking, threats, the whole nine yards. Then she sort of disappeared, and now…other things are happening. Well, I’m sure you know."
"And you think she’s behind it." Kelly looked down at the pictures. "Interesting."
"I know I sound crazy," I said. "Paranoid, even."
Kelly was silent for a long, long time. Finally, she looked up at me.
"You don’t sound crazy," she said. "But, I’ll have to track her down. She might be staying somewhere under a fake name."
"Can you even do that anymore?" I glanced at the half-empty bottle Johnnie Walker on the desk. "Doesn’t every place want, like…a credit card on file?"
Kelly gave me a withering look.
"Okay," I said. "So I don’t know the criminal underworld. I’m sorry. But I can pay you. That’s not an issue. How much do you need to get started?"
She raised her eyebrows about half a centimeter. "It’s three hundred dollars a day, plus expenses. But I don’t usually take anything up front."
"Well," I said, taking one of the hundreds out of my pocket. "Let’s get you off to a good start, huh?"
"Thank you," she said, taking it and giving me a slightly amused look. "You’re not used to being rich, are you? I can always tell."
"Hate it," I said, without thinking. "Well - I mean - I don’t hate having money. But, you know."
"Sure," said Kelly. "How can I contact you?"
"Oh, right - I’ll give you my number." She handed me a pen, and I scribbled it quickly on the back of the one of the photos. "I don’t think Daniel answers my phone, but on the off chance he does…"
"…I’m your yoga instructor. Got it."
"It’s just…" I hesitated. "I…he doesn’t think it’s her, he thinks I’m just seeing what I want to see. But I know I’m right. I can just…I can smell it."
"Sure," said Kelly. "You know, this isn’t the first time I’ve looked into something like this." She sniffed, rubbing her finger under her nose briskly. "God damn allergies. Sorry. I mean, not exactly like this. But you know - when people have suspicions like this, there’s usually a reason."
"That’s what I thought," I said, standing up. "Thank you, Kelly."
She accepted my hand to shake, looking slightly confused by the gesture. After she’d showed me to the door, and I was halfway out into the hall, she reached out and grabbed my arm.
I froze.
"Yes?" I said, gingerly twisting free of her grasp.
"I’m sorry," she said. "I should have told you earlier. But I couldn’t decide if I should say anything or not."
"…Yeah?" I stared at her, apprehensive.
"Just, uh…" she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. "God, I shouldn’t have said anything. Just…don’t look at any of the newspaper boxes on your way home, okay?"
"Oh, please." I smiled at her, reassuringly. "I promise you it’s nothing I haven’t seen before."
Her mouth was twisted into a sort of grimace. "Trust me," she said. "Just keep walking."
Of course, as she’d feared, she had only ignited my curiosity. As I left, down the creaky stairs, I turned back to see her still standing outside her open door with a worried look on her face. I gave her a reassuring smile and little wave, as if to say, don’t worry, I won’t look.
I was totally going to look.
The man in the lobby stared at me balefully as I left, and after I’d finally stepped out onto the sidewalk, I took a deep breath. Even the faint smell of garbage and burning tires passed for "fresh air" after what I’d just been breathing.
There was a newspaper box just a few blocks up. As soon as I saw it, my throat constricted. If I had an ounce of good sense in my head, I’d take her advice and just walk right past, never thinking twice about it.
But I’d never been one for good sense.
Before, I’d been so focused on finding the place that I hadn’t let my eyes wander to any of the headlines in the dilapidated boxes. Outdated mode of news reporting that they might be, I still found myself looking at them on occasion - as a kid, I’d gotten used to them being a primary form of information delivery, even if all I got to see was the front page.
I planned to keep my head high as I walked past the first box; at the very least, I wanted to make it to a box that wasn’t possibly within eyesight of Kelly’s office. She’d been nice enough to warn me off. I didn’t want her to see me openly defying her kindness.
But then, I caught something in my peripheral that made me stop dead in my tracks.
THE WOMAN BEHIND THE MAN
It was giant white text, laid out artfully over a blown-up version of that very same coming-home-from-yoga picture that had already been a thorn in my side. Was this really happening? An entire article about me?
I reached over and opened the box - it was one of the free papers, of course - wanting more than anything to turn and walk away, to pretend I’d never seen it. But there was no closing this Pandora’s box.
Since the advent of the insider trading scandal, there’s been one question on everyone’s mind - who is that woman? We know this much: her name is Madeline, and she’s Daniel Thorne’s wife, whom he met and married when she was his subordinate over at the main offices of Plum. But where did she come from? How did she capture a billionaire’s heart? And how does she feel now, having boarded his sinking ship?
One imagines that she was quite pleased with herself, back when she first managed to nab his attention. Thorne was a billionaire before he rose to his current level of media prominence, so he wasn’t exactly a diamond in the rough - unless, of course, you count his renowned anti-social tendencies. It’s not hard to see what she saw in him. But what about Thorne? When he first laid eyes on her, did he think to himself - yes, I will make her my bride?
There is most likely no way to plumb the depths of Daniel Thorne’s mind, to understand his motivations for doing what he does. And if anyone did have such ability, they’d do much better to make themselves into billionaires as well, rather than waste any energy trying to figure out what Thorne sees in this plain, ordinary - let’s be completely honest - frumpy aspiring artist who was once under his employ.
I sat down heavily on a nearby bench.
The article went on, but for some reason, I didn’t feel in the least compelled to read it. And not because I was angry, either. I looked at the cover again - at the absurdly unflattering picture of me - the huge headline, and took a moment to sit back and really appreciate the fact that everyone was expending this much energy wondering about me. Plain, ordinary, frumpy old me.
Suddenly, I was laughing.
It was just too ridiculous. How could I do anything but laugh? It wasn’t even worth feeling outrage anymore. This was what these people did. This was their bread and butter. And me? I could still buy my groceries and draw my pictures and go to my classes and do whatever I wanted to do, regardless of what they said about me. None of it mattered. I didn’t have the time or energy to worry about it anymore.
I laughed and laughed, knowing that passers-by must be deathly curious, but this was a part of town where you didn’t ever look someone in the eyes. I laughed until my stomach hurt, and then I finally got back to my feet, walked up to the corner, and hailed a cab.