she kept moving.
She pushed open a door on the left. No window to climb through, just a cot and green wool blanket. A dresser with a photo of Edgardo and a portly, brown-haired woman. His wife? And next to that, a photo of a green-eyed brunette standing knee deep in snow. She looked like Audrey, only younger and angrier. Stephanie. So, none of it had been a lie. And where was he, Edgardo? Even if he’d been fired in a hurry, he wasn’t the type to leave his things behind.
She tried the next door. Locked. The next. Locked, too. The next, storage. Three rusted bicycles. The old-fashioned, reclining kind from the 1800s. A weathered Genus edition of Trivial Pursuit. A moldy cigar box. A pair of wooden skis. And in the corner, the trappings of the old Episcopalian Church. Crucifixes, chalices, wooden idols of Madonna and Child. Stone carved Archangels Michael and Gabriel. The former banishing Lucifer from heaven, the latter heralding the joyous news of man’s redemption. Full of cracks and missing limbs, they were heaped together like junk, and covered in more than a half century of grime.
She shut the door and kept walking to the end of the hall. The stink was overwhelming. She swallowed down her bile and gimped farther. Yes, this place was awful, but at least it wasn’t 14B.
She got to the end—the source of the stench: garbage. Grocery bags filled with kitchen offal, black Hefty bags, white toilet-room bags, and random crap piled fifteen feet high. Up above was the opening for the trash chute. A nest of red ants swarmed above the dross. Over the last few days or weeks or months, the tenants must have tossed their garbage as usual, but no one had carried it to the curb. It figured that behind the mess, she could see the red gleam of an EXIT sign.
“Oh,” she moaned. “Oh, screw you,” she said to God, or herself, or, most likely, the tenants of The Breviary. Then she did a strange jig. Her hands flailed limp wristedly, her head shook back and forth, and she hopped on her good foot. Rats! Literally!
When she was done, she sucked up her courage, along with her bile, and lifted the first bag. It made a wet, slapping sound as she separated it from the pack and flung it to the side of the hall. When she lifted the second bag, something squeaked. She would have mistaken the sound for a human scream if she hadn’t seen the big-eyed brown rodent. (Rat or mouse? She hoped the latter, but guessed the former, judging by its thick, ribbed tail.)
She scooped five more bags. She was getting there. She smiled at her accomplishment, and imaged the tenants’ faces when they discovered that she was gone. Or better yet, when the cops showed up.
But then, something brownish pink peeked out from two plastic West Side Market bags. She took a double take. A triple take. A human hand, and on its fourth finger, a copper ring.
“Oh, no,” she cried. She took a breath, turned away, then turned back and pretended that it was not Edgardo at all. It was a mannequin, the kind you use to sew clothes. But even as she lifted another bag, she remembered those tears in his eyes, and the way he’d tried to keep her from moving into 14B, all as penance for Stephanie, who would never know how much her father had loved her.
The smell was coming from him. His body had rotted. Ants chewed. Other things, too. With a few more grunts, she lifted the rest of the bags in her way. The path to the door was almost clear. Only one thing left to move.
“Sorry about this,” she said, then closed her eyes, and pretended he was a doll. Shoved him with her bare foot. His skin made a splatting sound, but didn’t give. Full of gas and rot. So she bent down and dragged him by the underarms. His neck rolled, and she gagged, then swallowed fast, because she didn’t want to lose the only lunch she’d eaten in a week.
His skull was cracked from temple to jaw. The cut was uneven, and the skin around it was torn as if by something barbed. A rebar, she guessed. Her rebar. The tenants. They’d murdered him, then tossed him in the garbage. What a bunch of shits.
She heaved him aside, then lifted one more bag. Then free! She twisted the handle. Didn’t