| |
Eden tried to look interested as a man she’d barely met poured his soul out about the way his boss had terribly mismanaged the suggestions box at work. Colin had wispy blond hair and large, sad eyes. Eden had only met him an hour ago, but he hadn’t left her side since, even though her hints that she’d wanted him to hadn’t been subtle. Eden’s across-the-hall neighbor owed her dearly for dragging her to this party.
Someone tapped Colin on the shoulder and Eden took her chance to slip away into the crowd. As she searched for Cindy, her stomach turned at the overpowering scent of perspiration mingled with alcohol. Finally she spotted her, laughing with her head tipped back as her hand rested on a tall man’s shoulder.
Before Eden could get a closer look, Cindy caught her eye and hurried over.
“Are you having fun?”
The words Eden wanted to say caught in her throat. She’d rather be shaving her legs with lemonade and a jagged razer. She’d been hoping to grab Cindy and get out of there. But she’d seen all the signs. Cindy was interested in the man she’d been speaking to. And the man was not Dirk, Cindy’s jerk of a boyfriend.
“Sure,” Eden finally said. “It’s great. Who’s the guy?”
“Oh, it’s a funny story. I’ll have to tell you some time. He actually works in my building and we’ve never talked to each other. But it turns out he’s really nice.” Cindy covered her mouth as she laughed. “Okay, so that’s pretty much the whole story.”
Cindy grinned as he turned and gave a little wave.
“He’s cute,” Eden said. It didn’t take much to make the guy more attractive than Dirk, but she kept that part to herself.
Cindy’s eyes lit up. “I know. His eyes are like an October sky, and you should just feel his arms. I mean—not that I—I mean, we did dance.” Cindy’s shoulders slumped. “I shouldn’t be talking like this. I have a boyfriend.”
“I’m not judging you,” Eden said.
“That’s because you can’t stand Dirk.”
“That’s because you’re too good for Dirk.”
Cindy scooted closer. “The thing is—Dirk’s not the one for me.” Cindy’s mouth fell open, as if her words had surprised her again. They probably had. It was a phenomenon that occurred regularly when people spoke to Eden.
“I guess I’ve always known it. I just never admitted it,” Cindy continued. “Not even to myself. I knew it would get ugly if I broke it off, and then there was the guilt he laid on with his sick mother and everything.” Cindy made a rough, disgusted noise in her throat. “And yet he still brings her his laundry.” Her eyes widened and she covered her mouth. “I can’t believe I told you that. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. But while I’m at it he keeps his toenails in a baggie in his bathroom drawer. Maybe he thinks they’ll be worth something when the economy tanks. He’s always talking about that, but he still wastes all his money on video games.”
Eden’s lips puckered, as if she’d taken a bite out of a lemon. “I definitely could have done without that visual.”
Cindy giggled. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Go have fun.” Eden sighed, pushing her friend away a little more roughly than she’d intended. Then she searched the room for Colin. If she could escape his notice long enough to make it across the room to the door, she could send Cindy a text and walk home. It wasn’t that far, and if a few of her toes blistered from being squished into the heels she usually limited to three hours or dinner-only-dates, escaping Colin was worth the cost.
Eden barely missed the swinging elbow of a woman who’d started dancing as she passed, then slipped around a grinning man who held out a drink to her. The door was in sight when someone laid a hand on her arm.
Eden closed her eyes briefly, then pasted on a smile and turned. Colin smiled as if he’d found buried treasure, and yet his eyes somehow retained their depths of tragedy.
“There you are,” he said. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
Eden forced a smile. “It was nice talking with you.” As if she’d done any of the talking. “But I was actually just about to leave. I have to catch up on some work in the morning.”
Colin’s face fell. “Already? Do you have time for a cup of coffee or something? We could get out of here. Go somewhere where we can really talk.”
Eden gulped. More talking? People had always loved talking to Eden. They said it was as if without even pressing, they found themselves revealing everything. As if she were some secret-sucking sponge.
Some—like Colin—found it therapeutic. Others resented her for it. Eden assumed that when someone told her something, it was a burden they were relieved to unload, at least on some level. But that didn’t protect her from the backlash of their regret. Even someone like Colin could end up wishing he’d never met her.
“Please. It’s just that—No one listens to me,” Colin said. “Or maybe it’s that I have a hard time speaking up, saying what I think. It’s nice, talking to you.”
Eden looked at Colin’s sad, pleading eyes. She sighed, mentally kicking herself for being such a sucker. “No coffee. I can’t be up all night. How about a cup of cocoa across the street? One cup.”
Colin smiled as if yet another burden had been lifted, and Eden hurried out into the fresh evening air with Colin following close behind like a yellow Lab.
***
Eden turned the radio on, hoping to drown out Colin, who was calling out to her from the sidewalk below. She’d seen or heard something from Colin every day for the past week. Her cup of cocoa with the man lasted half an hour; that hour that had somehow stretched into two impossibly long hours of listening and nodding and stifling yawns, making Eden wish she’d gone for the coffee. As much as she’d wanted to leave Cindy alone to bond with the guy who was not Dirk, Eden had finally had to text her to come pick her up. Colin was nice and all, but she could practically hear her mother’s voice screaming to her that it was a bad idea to lead a strange man who was like human super glue to your front door. Cindy had dragged her out of the shop with a pretend emergency and taken her home.
The following Monday he’d sent her flowers with a note to her work. It was an ode to her beauty. Her deep green eyes, like a hidden forest lake, her wide smile and full lips, her strong cheekbones and wild, dark hair. She noticed he’d skipped over the nose, oversized with a slight bump. Why did that never make its way into the love poems? She ran a finger along it. A heritage from her mother’s side, she’d been told. It was about all her mother and grandmother had told her about their side of the family.
Eden cocked her head, straining to listen. Was he still there? Finally, curiosity got the best of her and she crept towards the window to take a peek.
“Eden!”
She cringed.
“You have to understand. I’ve never told anyone the things I told you. We forged a bond that you can’t ignore.” Colin’s voice rose dramatically.
Eden raised the window. “I’m sorry, Colin. I really am. I just don’t feel the same way. I need you to respect that. Please go home.” A woman passing by shot her a critical glare as she closed the window. The woman probably didn’t know that Eden had already told Colin in a kinder way that she wasn’t interested. She’d also told him over the phone. And via text. She wasn’t even sure how he’d gotten her number, or her address, for that matter. She didn’t want to hurt the guy, but she did want him to leave her alone, and continuing the dialogue would just make it worse.
Eden went to the kitchen and pulled out her sweet orange and ylang ylang relaxation oil blend. She was dripping the oil into the diffuser when there was a loud bang on her front door. She dropped the bottle, spilling some on the counter.
“Open up!”
Eden clenched her teeth and turned the radio up, but the small speakers were no match for Cindy’s loser ex-boyfriend.
“I know you’re in there. Cindy dumped me.”
“It was about time,” she called. Eden liked the man bellowing in the hallway as much as he liked her, maybe even less. She breathed in deeply, but there was no amount of oil that would ease her nerves on a night like this.
He banged harder. “After two years, she’s just going to walk away from me. And you know what she said? It wasn’t until she talked to you that she realized it.”
“I never told her to dump you, Dirk,” she yelled. Then again, she’d never exactly kept her feelings a secret, either.
“Why don’t you mind your own stupid business? Maybe you’re just jealous, seeing as how I haven’t seen you with a man in over a year. Unless you count that loser outside.”
Eden dropped into the rickety chair beside her tiny IKEA table and glared at the door, resentful that the barb had hit its mark. She shook her head, determined not to start thinking about the last three men she’d dated, or the fact that she’d just celebrated her thirtieth birthday, and here she was, alone. Not that it mattered. Her mother had been married with two children at Eden’s age, but she’d ended up alone anyway. She’d been better off, too. They all had.
Eden’s phone chimed. She grabbed it, eager for the distraction, and tapped the text.
Don’t you dare repeat what I told you about that claim.
Eden rolled her eyes, tossing her phone back on the table. It wasn’t her fault that her coworker had omitted information on a claim submitted by a friend so that he could get his kitchen upgrade paid for. Eden hadn’t asked for a confession, either. It was bad enough being an insurance salesperson, a profession mocked and hated by most of humanity. But when co-workers, or even policy-holders, tended to give you way more information than you asked for, it became an extremely messy business.
Being easy to talk to had been nice when Eden was a kid. It had helped her make friends. Children rarely wanted to take something back once they’d said it. But as she got older things had become more complicated. Her unwelcome personality trait caused her nothing but trouble these days.
Eden hadn’t decided what to do about the co-worker, and it didn’t seem like she was going to have a moment to think for the rest of the evening. Dirk continued his tirade at her door as Eden wondered if it was time to call the cops. Would it just make everything worse?
As she stared at her phone, a bright yellow card sticking out from the pile of mail sitting on the edge of the table caught her attention. She reached over and slipped it out of the pile, sending all the other mail cascading onto the floor. Eden was so focused on the photo on the front of the card that she hardly noticed. Inside the bright yellow border was a sweet little house. The white print on the corner of the picture said it had three bedrooms, so perhaps it wasn’t really so little, especially compared to the apartment Eden was living in. It was painted a deep, subtle blue with white trim. Something about it called to her.
For a moment Eden felt herself drifting away from this sad apartment with worn, musty-smelling carpet and far too many neighbors who, for some inexplicable reason, told her far too many things. She could feel the secrets eating her up, could literally hear the resentment banging on her door. She imagined the scent of the earth as she dropped bulbs into the flower beds around that blue house, and the feel of cool dirt slipping between her fingers as she filled in the holes.
She flipped the card. In neat, cursive handwriting, it said, “Dearest Eden, we’re waiting for you at Pleasant View Estates.” The handwriting looked really convincing, as if some stranger had really, personally invited her to drive for an hour to drop by an open house in Lincoln. She licked the tip of her finger and touched the words. The ink smudged.
Eden dropped the card on the table, smirking at herself. They’d probably just pulled her from some kind of list. Maybe the kind where they follow all the pathetic things you buy and then figure out exactly what you dream about and then sell your name to someone who wants to offer it to you. Maybe she was pathetic, but she wasn’t a sucker—if you didn’t count the thing with Colin—and she had no need for a house all to herself in a city where she had no job.
The angry voice at her door welcomed her back to reality, a reality where people were shouting her name from the hallway and the street, but it didn’t make her minimally-decorated apartment feel any less lonely. A reality where her job involved getting pats on the back for selling people more insurance than they needed, and denying claims because of one insignificant detail or other. Where people told her things of their own accord and then punished her for it. It was a sad reality, but it was better than sitting around dreaming about things that would never happen.
Eden was ready to rip the card in half, just to remind herself that it was all very ridiculous. You didn’t up and move yourself to another city on a whim, just because a card came in the mail and told you to, and even if you did, all your problems didn’t just vanish. She’d seen those TV shows about suburban drama. The difference was, when you owned a home, you couldn’t just pick up and leave when your neighbors started coming after you.
Her phone buzzed again. Eden picked it up, glancing at the text despite her better judgment.
Fine. But remember that I’ve been with the company for twelve years. I send the birthday cards around. You’ll be the one eating lunch in the corner of the break room.
Eden almost laughed as she chucked her phone at the sofa on the other side of the apartment. It sounded like whatever she did, she had a new enemy at work. One that was already planning ways to make her life miserable.
She jumped up when something hit her window hard enough for her to hear it over the radio. She hurried over to it, cursing under her breath as she ran her finger over a chip in the glass. No doubt her landlord would make her pay for the damages. She scowled at Colin, who had his hand raised to throw another stone.
Just then her landlord’s voice boomed in the hallway. He shouted at Dirk before pounding on Eden’s door. “I’ve had four phone calls already about the noise. Get rid of these two, or you’re gonna be the one out on the sidewalk. You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
Eden took a deep breath, holding it in and letting the pressure build inside of her. She had a feeling that in a few more seconds, there would be an explosion that would send all of them scurrying for safety. As she was about to stomp to the door and tell her landlord what she thought of him, her eyes traveled over to her little table. The yellow card beckoned to her again, calling her to another life. She exhaled slowly, ignoring the turmoil all around her little apartment as she walked over and picked up the card.
The house looked back at her, inviting her to sit on its front porch and look out over the green grass. It whispered to her about a life with no landlord and no neighbors either making a racket on the other side of paper-thin walls, or calling in complaints rather than showing some smidgen of concern. Her eye caught on another line of script on the bottom, as if it had been added last minute. A chill ran through her as she read it. “We can tell you where you come from. We can tell you who you are.”