the confidence a forty-three-year-old man should have but should never exercise around throngs of postgrads. He’d inherited the lofts in his thirties and would only periodically maintain them, showing up primarily for unscheduled appearances at parties and shows. He’d called Edie “Red,” and she’d feigned disgust while complaining that he’d burst into the apartment right as she was getting out of the shower to let her know about a new building code, refusing to leave as she stood there dripping. Even the guys had begrudgingly thought Anthony was cool, with his sleeve tats and long hair and wild stories about touring with his band in the nineties.
He was around a lot, but I’d interacted with him directly only a handful of times. Once I’d been stumbling out the front door, hungover from the night before and rumpled from sleeping on SAKE’s couch. I’d been wearing something ridiculous, my top and bottom both inches too short—a sexless walk of shame. Anthony had been standing out front, surveying from a few yards away an overflowing and likely vomit-splattered Dumpster.
“Hey, you got any cigarettes?” he asked.
I did, a pack I carried around like gum, although I rarely smoked, and only when drunk.
“I’ll pay you for it,” he offered, but I waved his dollar away.
He smiled at me, then leaned in for a light. I always felt self-conscious about this part, concerned I’d mess it up, but I didn’t.
“Smoke with me?” he said, but my stomach was already convulsing with nausea from all the booze I’d consumed the night before.
“I promise I’ll find a way to make it up to you,” he said, smirking again, and for a moment I felt special, even though he promptly forgot me.
God, how could we not have seen that he was the biggest, creepiest loser in the world?
Not that he deserved to die. Probably.
My phone rang and my heart skidded up my arms and out my fingers. I stared at Alex’s name for a moment before answering, briefly blanking on why I’d decided to call him.
“Lindsay! What’s going on, are you okay?” He still had a rich voice, low and resonant.
Suddenly I clammed up, and the enormity of what I needed to ask rushed in: Why did you hate Edie? What really went down between you two—when you were together, as you split, and then afterward, while you continued breathing the same beer-smelling Calhoun air? But it was my turn to speak, so I began forming words, the way you make up lyrics to sing along to a song you only sort of know.
“Sorry if I worried you,” I heard myself say. “I know this is out of the blue. I’ve been reading through my journals from back in, you know, our party era.” A lie: I hadn’t kept a diary during those years, instead abandoning journaling sometime in early college. It was something I always vaguely regretted but felt too old to change, like being unable to play the guitar or sail or understand football. “We had so much fun. Like, so much fun I don’t understand how we functioned on a daily basis. Do you remember that?”
He chuckled but still sounded bewildered. “Of course! That whole era was crazy.”
I opened a silence and he filled it. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, too. We were poor as shit and living in that shithole and had no idea whatsoever.”
“Right? We were basically living in squalor. Which got me thinking about that horrible landlord you guys had, remember Anthony Stiles?”
Another beat, too long. “Yeah, that guy sucked.”
“I did a search for him the other day,” I went on. “After he came up in my journal, like, whatever happened to him, right? Turns out he died in a fire over a year ago. Isn’t that insane?”
“Whoa. Just like a random house fire?”
“Yeah, they never figured out the cause, but it was in the middle of the night. And I looked back even further and it turns out he was convicted of statutory rape a few years before that, which is especially terrifying. Because wasn’t he, like, sniffing around at parties and stuff all the time?” The rape charge was a lie, but Alex wouldn’t think to investigate it.
He kept his voice even. “I think so. Although I feel like he was dating someone in the building those last few months we were there. Right?”
“I have no idea.” Had that person called Anthony the night of Edie’s death? It was like a mosquito bite, south of painful: