The Bloody Landing

I huffed up the grand staircase after work at the library and a stop at the market, my giant reusable shopping bag heavy on my shoulder. I always felt relieved that I lived in one of the two apartments on the first landing in my elevator-free building at moments like these. I was rummaging in my pocket for my keys when I reached the landing and practically didn’t register the pool of fresh blood on the parquet.

Ah. Reginald must’ve had some business again. It was an open secret that my only neighbor on the landing was some kind of spy or agent. If I ever decided to allege this and he tried to deny it, I could easily refute with facts that had few other explanations. There were too many men dressed to blend in going up and down the stairs at all times of day, too many times he’d had to pay for repairs to the staircase. As grand as it was, it was made of old wood. The ornaments gave way under the slightest kerfuffle, and from what I’d heard from behind my apartment door over the years, these were cinematic altercations with 200-pound muscled bodies taking fatal tumbles.

Reginald was a good neighbor who often helped me carry shopping bags, and I was certain he would clean up the new mess as soon as he got back from disposing of the body or recovering some top-secret files off a pen drive. I crab-walked over the puddle. The most disconcerting thing about the blood, aside from its freshness, was that not only had it landed right in front of my door, but there was also a streak under my apartment number, as of a bloody elbow or hand trying and failing to support a body as it fell.

The lock and doorknob were gold chrome—the owners took pleasure in these small adornments while refusing to install air conditioning, and I think Reginald’s place had the original hearths instead of central heating. What mattered at that moment was that the chrome was pristine, so I approached the door, keen to unload the groceries and pretend I hadn’t seen the blood.

My foot kicked something, and it skidded into the corner. I set the groceries down to lean toward it. It was a little black book with a plain white envelope sticking out of the middle. Luckily, I hadn’t seen a place to unload the produce gloves from the grocery store, so I fished them out of my coat and put them on. They should keep fingerprints off potential evidence.

The book was a nicely bound leather softcover, with matching black elastic to hold the covers shut in spite of the bulk in the middle. I slid the envelope from between the pages. It had a squishy, overstuffed feeling underneath the crisp white paper.

Cash money.

I dropped both items, but caught them before they hit the blood. I shakily forced my key into the lock and the book and envelope onto the entry table, then somehow had the presence of mind to drag my grocery bag in after me. I shut the door behind me and leaned against it, unsure whether to even look at the book and envelope. What was I in the presence of?

With the plastic gloves crinkling and apprehension making my hands sweat, I counted out the $100 bills on the kitchen counter, then counted again. There were 200 of them. Almost a year of my salary fit into that unassuming envelope. I didn’t work at the library for love of money.

What could I do with so much liquidity? I might be able to buy an apartment in a Spanish beach town, inland from the sea, maybe, but also possibly with access to a community pool. I could pay off my student loans and save the rest for vacations. Or I could join a dating site and use the rest of the money eventually to pay for a nice wedding with a moderate number of guests. I could buy a nice computer, take a sabbatical from work, and just stay in my apartment, writing my book. I looked up at the humidity-stained wall. I could move to a better apartment with an elevator and without festering walls or heating problems.

But then Reginald wouldn’t be my neighbor anymore. Who’d said this money was mine to fantasize about, anyway?

I undid the elastic and opened the book. It was pages and pages of lists. In one column, a full name. In the other, rather than an address or phone number, a date. The dates began more than five years before and worked their way steadily up to that very day. The last entry was on the page where the envelope had been inserted. To the left of that day’s date, Agatha Marie Pettit. My full name.

I dropped the book again and let its darkness smack on the counter under a bowl full of sunny oranges. Why was my name on what looked to my untrained eye like a hit list? Was this cash a price on my head? Had my trip to the market, a slight delay in getting home, saved my life?

The scene unfolded in my mind. A hitman, for unknown reasons, had me on his list, knew when I came home from work every day, and on the date he’d written on the middle page in his black book, he received an envelope full of money and came to my door to kill me. After work. On a Friday. After a long day of patrons asking for “that red book that came out a year ago” and other impossibilities. Unnecessarily cruel.

But he couldn’t complete his task because he was stopped by… My ear perked to almost imperceptible footsteps on the stairs. I hurried to the peephole and saw my neighbor’s commanding form coming up the stairs lightly, as if not to disturb anyone with what should’ve been heavy footfalls. He set a bag on the floor near the stain and crouched. He was fulfilling my prediction of his responsibility in cleaning it up. I put my hand on the doorknob, but then checked the peephole again to be sure no one had followed him and peeled the sweaty plastic gloves off.

The coast clear, I threw open the door and managed to whisper-shout, “Reginald! Did you save my life when I wasn’t even here?”

He looked up from the foaming pink mass that resulted from some kind of absorbent material he’d tossed into the stain.

“Agatha,” he murmured.

He twisted to scope out the staircase, and seeing that we were alone, he pulled himself to his full height and strode over the blood more elegantly than I had. I backed into the apartment, and when he was so close to me, I could see that one of his eyelashes curled more than the others, he shut the door behind him.

Reginald had never stepped into my apartment before. His height made my low tables and shelves slightly Lilliputian. His practical haircut proved the extravagant Victorian sensibilities of the weathered wallpaper. He was magnificently out of context.

“You didn’t see any of that.” It was a fact issuing from his mouth, but a plea from his dark brown eyes.

“I’m afraid I did see it. And look at this.” I retrieved the black book and opened it to my name. “I think you saved my life.”

“Where did you find that?” Reginald took the book and flipped through it. With each page, he seemed to understand more. He took in the stack of cash on the counter. When his gaze returned to me, he seemed apologetic. “I expected more from this guy. Who writes down their hits? This could be used in court.”

“Right?” I said, taking the book back. “But the real question is, why am I, an unassuming librarian, on this list?”

He studied my face as if to determine how much truth I could handle. He sighed, his shoulders heaving deeply. “They’re trying to get to me.”

“To you?” I walked away from him to set the book on the two-person dining table. “But you’re not on the list. I am.”

When I turned around, I saw that Reginald had followed me.

“They want to get me in a position where they can control me.” He slid his hands down my arms and held my hands. They were still sweaty. “They’ve figured out that if you die, I’ll have nothing left in the world.”

I was glad of his strong hands, because a wave of faintness washed over me. The slightest thread of voice was all I could muster. “Do you love me, Reginald?”

In reply, he placed his lips on mine, transporting us to a safe place, outside of time.

For pillow talk, I told him my ideas for the $20,000. “Maybe I’ll go live in the Beast’s castle. I’d like to take a crack at his library,” I mumbled, delirious with pleasure. He assured me the money would’ve been thoroughly laundered before they’d given it to the hitman. We decided together that I was the most deserving party in all this. I mean, what were we going to do? Give it back to the people who wanted me dead?

In spite of the looming danger, I felt so comfortable in Reginald’s arms that I fell asleep. When I woke, he was leaning over the bed, the moonlight gleaming in his eyes.

“Promise me you’ll take the money and go abroad, Agatha. That no one will know where you are. It’s the only way I can protect you.”

I nodded at him. “Of course.” I brought his face to mine and he climbed back into bed.

The next time I woke, the sunlight was making ribbons through the shades and all was stillness. I kicked off the covers, stumbled to the entry, and opened the door. The landing looked perfectly normal, with no trace of blood even on the door, which I shut and locked. My grocery bag wasn’t where I’d left it. I wondered if the previous day had been a dream, the result of thousands of accumulated images of Reginald and millions of thoughts I’d had about him over the years. I rifled through the kitchen cabinets and fridge and found all the items I’ve bought at the market except the ice cream, which would’ve melted. The sad, smudged box was in the trash.

I could see from the kitchen that the dining table was free of the black book, but the counter still displayed all the bills and the envelope. But now, the envelope had writing on it. The script was a bit ragged because Reginald had used the leaky pen I kept for making shopping lists, but otherwise, it would’ve been as smooth and well-formed as the rest of him.

“$20,000 is insultingly cheap for you,” it started, and then listed suggestions for choosing the best foreign country to escape to and how to make the money grow. I packed a small bag and gazed longingly at Reginald’s door before I headed down the grand staircase for the last time. He probably wasn’t home, anyway.

I don’t live in a castle yet, but I can step out my door and see it at the end of the lane. Every two weeks, I write a coded post card to Reginald and mail it through a system that makes them appear to come from different locations each time. When he’s ready, if he ever is, he’ll crack the code and be able to find me with my stack of bestselling novels. I’ve made up a new pen name every time, but it’s always an anagram of “Reginald.”