From Corinth, With Love

Originally published in Unbound Octavo: Volume 1, now unavailable

***

He didn’t see me watching him from my apartment window, my eyes fixed on his easy stride, his new suit. He adjusted his tie—he had always hated the choking feeling of a tie—and nodded to a woman he passed. She ignored him.

Keep trying, baby. You don’t belong here.

A downhome Georgia boy trying to blend into New York City was like a Clydesdale trying to pass itself off as a racehorse.

He was nearly out of sight now. I leaned closer to the window, my right eye an inch from the glass, and watched him disappear down the sidewalk. I leaned back in my chair and balled my hair onto the top of my head before letting it fall again. It would be nearly ten hours before he passed by on his way home, his dark hair gleaming beneath the streetlights, his tie undone and his steps short and exhausted. He would glance nervously toward darkened alleyways, wondering if he would be mugged tonight. And he would never know that I was watching him.

He had no idea I’d moved to New York. When he left Georgia two years ago, he made a clean break. His mom had died of cancer a month before, and his dad had been AWOL for years. He had nothing holding him in Corinth.

Except me.

He sat me down on the floral couch of his mom’s house and spoke gently. Told me he was selling the place and moving to New York. Told me I had to stay here. Told me he needed a fresh start.

I told him I wanted to get married.

“You will,” he said, “someday. Just not to me.”

Then he left, just like that. Took the Chevrolet and a few hundred bucks and started over in New York City. He never knew I followed him, never knew how close I was, how easy it would be to reach out to me.

I didn’t contact him at first—I wanted to see how things were going. Had he found a job at an ad agency? Had he gotten a good apartment? Was he dating?

A few days passed, then a few weeks. Before I realized, it had been almost a year. And then it was too late to reach out to him because what could I say—I’ve been watching you for a year, but how you been?

So I sat in my apartment, living off savings and the money the pawnshop gave me for grandma’s wedding ring. I watched him go to work, watched him come home from work, sat outside his apartment building and eyed the flicker of the television through his partially drawn curtains.

Then it happened for the first time. I was sitting on the bench outside his apartment, reading a paper. It was raining, and the newsprint ran in blotches as the paper tore between my fingers. I felt mascara running along my high-set cheekbones and pretended I wasn’t staring at his window.

A woman walked toward the building. She was wearing a tight dress and heels so high she seemed to be standing on the tips of her toes like a ballerina. She carried a bubble umbrella, the clear kind that wraps around your head. She buzzed up and went inside the building.

I saw the television in his apartment click off.

I dropped the wet newspaper onto the sidewalk and watched the third-floor window like a stargazer, wishing I had binoculars. I’d thought about buying some, but they seemed so conspicuous. Maybe if they looked like glasses.

I saw the woman in his apartment, just before he drew the curtains. I didn’t think to hide my face, didn’t care whether he saw me through the rain fogging the air. I watched his dark window and knew he was fucking that bitch.

I knew.

I fell asleep on the bench and woke just after dawn to the rumble of morning traffic. His window was still dark. I ran fingers through my hair, frizzed and matted from the rain.

It was another thirty minutes before the slut left the apartment building, her folded umbrella slung over her shoulder, her heels pinched between fake nails. Her bare feet sidestepped broken glass at the bottom of the stairs, and she started down the sidewalk.

I followed.

I stayed far behind, watching her fat ass swinging like a cow’s tail. Every now and then, she would give a small skip. I rolled my eyes and spit into the gutter.

When she turned off the sidewalk, through the door of her apartment building, I kept walking. Twenty yards later, I doubled back and watched the front of a building, waiting for a light to come on. Second floor, third window from the left.

I walked home, pulled a chair to the window, and stared at the street until he passed by on his way to work. He walked faster that day, with his chin up, his hands in his pockets. I wanted to throw something at him.

That night, I didn’t watch him walk home. I sat on my couch reading a book, turning the pages with harsh fingers. I gave myself a paper cut.

The blood oozed from the thin line, a diagonal slice through my fingerprint. I covered the cut with a bandage—then with cotton gloves. It was past midnight when I left the apartment.

This time of night in Corinth, there would be nowhere to go except the Quick Stop in the middle of town. You couldn’t even buy gas after nine P.M., but the convenience store sold Twinkies and milk until two. I remembered driving into a field, parking his truck with the headlights off, and climbing in the bed, my sandals fast on the tire’s black rubber. I remembered sitting there for hours at a time, talking about how much trouble I’d be in if I ever made it home. Once, blue lights had rolled up when his mom had gotten worried. The cop found us making out against the truck’s rear window and told us to get home soon.

It was different here. The streetlights were on, and the bar lights were on, and the headlights were on—people taking taxis from party to party like they didn’t have to get up for work in the morning. By the traffic, it could have been eight in the evening. I passed strangers on the street and nodded politely. None of them nodded back.

I walked up to the apartment building like I belonged there and tried the door. Unlocked. Didn’t they realize this was New York? Not like Georgia, got to be careful.

I slipped through the hallways, up the stairwell, counting off doors until I found hers. Tried the knob. It was locked so I pulled a pin from my hair and jiggled it into the cheap lock. Popped right open.

It was a studio apartment with a bed in the living room and a kitchenette shoved in the corner. Clothes were tossed everywhere, along with baby things—rattles and blankets and stuffed animals. An empty crib sat beside the twin bed. Must be with the father.

I kicked a stuffed turtle out of the way as I headed for the bed, a tuft of blond hair poking out of the blankets, and drew the roll of duct tape from my otherwise empty satchel.

Her neck was so skinny, it might have been easier to just snap it. But I didn’t. I pulled off a piece of silver tape slowly, quietly, tore it along the seam. Pinched the ends between my fingers and held it steady above her still form, readied myself.

I pressed the tape over her mouth in one quick motion and couldn’t help but grin when her eyes opened wide, ripped from sleep like an airbag ejecting during a car crash. She tried to scream, but the tape muted the sound. I tore the pillow from beneath her head and pressed it against her face, resting my entire bodyweight on my gloved hands until her kicking subsided. I removed the pillow and whispered into her still-warm ear: “Shouldn’t have fucked my man.”

Then I left. I saw her on the news the next day. The police questioned her friends and family—found no leads, no one with motive. The next week there was another murder case to be solved, and nobody cared about the slut who was suffocated in her shitty apartment.

I began to watch closer.

It happened again. Different heels, different boobs, the same tearing sensation in my gut. I followed her. I bought binoculars.

There were four, total, before I decided it was enough. Maybe it was because I ripped a hole in my glove—the left one. I bought a nice, leather pair and a sexy red dress. Then I walked to his apartment, late, almost one in the morning.

I buzzed him and heard his sleep-laden voice through the intercom.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me,” I said. “From Georgia.”

It took him a moment, but he finally buzzed me up. I made my way to the apartment, the window I knew so well. My stilettos echoed through the stairwell.

I knocked on the door, waited for him to answer, my hand stuffed into my satchel. He opened up, wearing boxers, bare-chested. He looked more like a man than I remembered. His smile was sleepy and confused, but it was a smile. He let me in. I waited until he turned to lock the door, couldn’t look in his eyes.

I pulled the gun from the satchel and drove a bullet through his back.

Blood splashed onto the door, and he slumped to the carpet. I set the gun and the satchel on the kitchen table and slipped my hands under his arms, dragged him through the apartment to the queen-sized bed where he had fucked those women.

I pulled him onto the mattress, the wiry muscles in my arms straining, then lay down beside him, wrapping his thick arms around me and stripping the leather glove from my hand to touch the bloody wound on his chest.

The cops knocked the door down an hour later. They found me fast asleep in his cold arms, perfectly content in New York City, for the first time.