“Perfect for you.”
I checked the price and closed the box’s lid firmly. “Yes. But not today.”
“No?” Miriam tutted. “Why is it you know so well what everyone else needs, but not yourself? Such a shame, Paige. You should buy it.”
I could pay my cell phone bill for the price of that box. I shook my head, then cocked it to look at her. “Why are you so convinced I know what everyone else needs? That’s a pretty broad statement.”
Miriam tore the wrapper off a package of mints and put one into her mouth. She sucked gently for a moment before answering. “You’ve been a good customer. I’ve seen you buy gifts, and sometimes things for yourself. I like to think I know people. What they need and like. Why do you think I have such atrocities on my shelves? Because people want them.”
I followed her gaze to the shelf holding more porcelain clowns. “Just because you want something doesn’t mean you should have it.”
“Just because you want something doesn’t mean you should deny yourself the pleasure,” Miriam said serenely. “Buy yourself that box. You deserve it.”
“I have nothing to write with it!”
“Letters to a sweetheart,” she suggested.
“I don’t have a sweetheart.” I shook my head again. “Sorry, Miriam. Can’t do it now. Maybe some other time.”
She sighed. “Fine, fine. Deny yourself the pleasure of something pretty. You think that’s what you need?”
“I think I need to pay my bills before I can buy luxuries, that’s what I think.”
“Ah. Sensible.” She inclined her head. “Practical. Not very romantic. That’s you.”
“You can tell all that from the kind of paper I buy?” I put my hands on my hips to stare at her. “C’mon.”
Miriam shrugged, and it was easy to see how she must have been as a young woman. Stubborn, graceful, beautiful. “I can tell it by the paper you don’t buy. When you’re an old lady, you’ll be wise like me, too.”
“I hope so.” I laughed.
“I hope you’ll come back and buy yourself that box. It’s meant for you, Paige.”
“I’ll definitely think about it. Okay? Is that good enough?”
“If you buy the paper,” Miriam told me, “I guarantee you’ll find something worth writing in it.”
Chapter 02
Shall we begin?
This is your first list.
You will follow each instruction perfectly. There is no margin for error. The penalty for failure is dismissal.
Your reward will be my attention and command.
You will write a list of ten. Five flaws. Five strengths.
Deliver them promptly to the address below.
The square envelope in my hand bore the faint ridges of really expensive paper and no glue on the flap, like the reply envelope included with an invitation. I turned the heavy, cream-colored card that had been inside it over and over in my fingers. It felt like high-grade linen. Also expensive. I fingered the slightly rough edge along one side. Custom cut, maybe, from a larger sheet. Not quite heavy enough to be a note card, but too thick to use in a computer printer.
I lifted the envelope to my face and sniffed it. A faint, musky perfume clung to the paper, which was smooth but also porous. I couldn’t identify the scent, but it mingled with the aroma of expensive ink and new paper until my head wanted to spin.
I touched the black, looping letters. I didn’t recognize the handwriting, and the letter bore no signature. Each word had been formed carefully, each letter precisely drawn, without the careless loops, ticks and whorls that marked most people’s writing. This looked practiced and efficient. Faceless.
The paper listed a post-office box at one of the local branch offices, and that was it. Since moving into Riverview Manor five months ago, I’d received a few advertising circulars, requests for charitable donations addressed to two different former tenants and way too many bills. I hadn’t had any personal mail at all. I turned the card over again, listening to the soft sigh of the paper on my skin. It didn’t have a name or address on the front. Only a number, scrawled in the same languid hand as the note. I looked closer, seeing what in my haste I hadn’t noticed before.
114
That explained it, then. This note wasn’t for me at all. The ink had smeared a little, turning the one into a passable version of a four, if you weren’t paying close attention. Someone had stuffed this into my mailbox, 414, by mistake.
At least it wasn’t another baby shower or wedding invitation from “friends” I hadn’t seen in the past few years. I wasn’t a fan of being put on a loot-gathering mailing list just because once upon a time we’d been in a math class together.
“What’s that?” Kira had come up behind me in a cloud of cigarette odor and now dug her chin into my shoulder.
I don’t know why I didn’t want to show her, but I closed the card and slipped it back into the envelope, then found the right mailbox and shoved it through the slot. I peeked into the glass window and saw it resting inside the metal cave, slim and single and alone.
“Nothing. It wasn’t for me.”
“C’mon then, whore. Let’s get upstairs. We have a threesome with Jose, Jack and Jim.” She held up the clanking paper grocery sack containing the bottles.
Every woman should have a slutty friend. The one who makes her feel better about herself. Because no matter how drunk she got the night before, or how many guys she made out with at that party, or how short her skirt is, that slutty friend will always have been…well…sluttier.
Kira and I had traded that role back and forth over the years, a fact I would never be proud of but couldn’t hide. “It’s not even eight o’clock. Things don’t start jumping until at least eleven.”
“Which is why I stopped at the liquor store.” She looked around the lobby and raised both eyebrows. “Wow. Nice.”
I looked, too. I always did, even though I’d memorized nearly every tile in the floor. “Thanks. C’mon, let’s grab the elevator.”
She had to have been as equally impressed with my apartment, but she didn’t say so. She swept through it, opening cupboard doors and looking in my medicine cabinet, and when it came time to eat the subs we’d bought for dinner she made a show of setting my scarred kitchen table with real plates instead of paper. But she didn’t tell me it was nice.
It was almost like old times as we giggled over our food and watched reality TV at the same time. I hadn’t forgotten what a bizarre and hilarious sense of humor Kira had, but it had been a long time since I laughed so hard my
