The image of the fleeing woman seemed emblazoned in her mind. She woke the following morning with the image of her painted on the inside of her eyelids. The same woman she had seen so often before, coming in at late hours, after working God knows how many hours to find a different friend tending her arrogant child. Sometimes he was alone, which was how Janice wished to see all children. Abandoned and alone, as she saw herself at so tender an age. In truth, her childhood had not been very difficult. She had had parents who loved her and, though they were by no means wealthy, she never went a day without food in her wide mouth, or clothes on her broad back, or a roof above her square head. Nevertheless, in her mind, her childhood was of the Dickensian variety. She saw little Janice, eyes wide as the English Channel, her naturally auburn hair somehow blonded by youth, and cheeks rosied by some anonymous winter in Florida, her birthplace and home til the age of eighteen. She saw herself hungry and on the verge of tears, homeless save for a cardboard box, a far cry from the one floor bungalow she shared with her parents til the day she decided to take to the wild streets of New York for college, and what she had hoped, the promise of booze and jazz. Instead she found artists with little credibility and even less talent and men too eager to offer their hearts at the expense of one night.
It was perhaps this blandness of youth that encouraged Janice to invent a suitable past with which to comfort herself. Had the years grown so long that she began to believe her lies?
The baby is never going to cry, she thought, suddenly, standing at her window, observing the apartment across the street. Why had she gone to sleep? she then wondered. Where are the police? Shouldn’t the area be buzzing with burly men in tight-fitting uniforms? Shouldn’t at least a fat man in a tight-fitting uniform be around, asking questions of the people in the young woman’s apartment. What if they ask her? What would she say? Honestly, the image was so fast, the light flickering on and off so quickly, that the shadowy figure chasing the young woman could have been anything, Like, what, officer? She played out the scenario in her head. Should he be young and virile, she would have no problem working her womanly wiles on him. A slight throw of the head to one side, letting her curly hair slide ever so gently into her still attractive, albeit slightly worn face? Biting her lip with all the blithe assurance of a skilled ingénue, of not necessarily the youth. What if he were fat and his potbelly had already burst one or two buttons off a uniform he had been wearing since, if, he was young and virile. No matter. She could still seduce him, rubbing his belly, kissing his ear, God hoping there was no hair or wax or a deadly combination of both lurking there for her tongue to find. She’d cozy up to the officer or detective and coo that she was not even awake at the time the crime happened, which for all sakes and purposes, could well be true. Maybe she wasn’t awake. Maybe it had all been a dream after all. That would explain the lack of the proper authorities.
Still, the image of the woman strayed with her. She sipped her morning coffee, trying to squint into the woman’s darkened apartment.
The baby is never going to cry again. Was that a bad thing? No, she banished such selfish thoughts out of her head. When the little creature was born, about over a year ago, she immediately disliked it. At night it would keep the entire neighborhood up with its inhuman wail. During the summer she had been forced to get an air conditioner as to keep the windows closed and drown out the unhappy child’s incessant screams. Never had she seen such an insolent creature, but the thought of it being gone forever from the world, it saddened her greatly. Again, she pushed thoughts out of her head but these were thoughts, maternal thoughts she had long hoped dormant.
She finished her coffee and disrobed in front of the window in preparation for her shower. She liked giving the old pervert with the binoculars a good show. Oh, there he was, still kicking and pounding, one hand on the binoculars and the other god knows where. He was only two apartments over from the young woman, surely he would have heard something. Would have done something, if only call the police or see what was was going on with all that racket. For surely, there must have been some racket. Or the furious older woman, all dressed up with no where to go, she must have heard something, though she might be well into deafness and senility by now. But what of the transvestite. The young woman’s apartment is between his and the old broad. They would done something, Janice tried to assure herself. She turned on the shower.
The hot water ran over her tight-for-forty-something body, all she could hear was the lonely echo of the faucet and it occurred to her that if she died, none of her neighbors would know or, for that matter, care. She had lived in that apartment for thirteen years and had barely spoken to anyone in that building. But with rising rent and declining space, neighbors came and went so it was best not to get too attached. And the new resident were usually spoiled, trust fund babies who trashed the apartment and went on to another one, all without a care in the world. So she kept to herself. Maybe the young woman was the same way. Maybe no one knows she’s dead. She toweled her hair and slipped into her bath robe.
Janice tried her best to think of what the day had in store before her, but the young woman’s image became clearer and clearer by the minute. Her face, never pretty from what she could see, and Janice could spot ugly from three hundred meters, was contorted in a mix of anguish and fear, right before the light switched off. Just as quickly as it had come on. And what of that poor, insolent child? What had the shadowy figure done to it? To the young woman? And what if he had seen Janice watching? No, impossible. The buildings, although close enough to see into a corresponding apartment, are too far apart to see a youngish woman of late thirty-something, eyes half-closed, witnessing a murder in a flash of light. At least she hoped. She continued to dress in silence.
After checking to make sure the curling iron, the stove, the coffee maker and her vibrator were off, Janice prepared to go out. She had decided to go on with the rest of her day and not worry about an incident she could barely recall had even occurred. Janice grabbed her keys and opened her door to a familiar crying. A baby sat outside of her door, throwing an unholy tantrum.
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