By Lawrence Eliot-Wallace
As Francis peered out and looked down the hallway, he saw nearly every other apartment door opened slightly, just like his. Around he corner of each doorway, a resident’s face could be half-seen. All eyes were fixed on the doorway at the end of the corridor where the paramedics had just entered with a stretcher. Two police officers stood outside, waiting for Miss Petrea’s remains to emerge.
Miss Petrea had been a frequent sight in the building, but he hadn’t seen her since two weeks ago when he had held the front door open while she pulled her wheeled grocery cart inside. Now he knew why. Francis and his deceased neighbor hadn’t been particularly friendly, but everyone in the building was familiar with each other’s routines, at least within the boundaries of mutual, cultivated distance which all urban apartment dwellers learn to keep.
Francis had lived in the building for more than ten years, now one of a minority of tenants who were not students. When he’d first moved in, Francis managed to support himself in a limited manner, as what a former boss once described as a “functional alcoholic”. He had arranged his life around drinking, selecting jobs that would not interfere with his habit: low-level shift labor, with hours to pick up when he needed them, or decline when he was “unavailable for engagement”. He’d been a banquet server, a telemarketer, a warehouse packer, and a dozen more things that would fit the gaps between binges. After he got sober, he still kept the same arrangement because he found it suited him well, and now that his availability was wide open, he could work quite a lot. The past year, he’d made enough money to live quite comfortably, if simply, in his small apartment.
Early on, there had been a girl, Alice. She was pretty, with dark hair and brown eyes thickly fringed with black lashes. He remembered Miss Petrea hadn’t liked her, giving her dirty looks every she saw the two of them together.
When they first got together, he’d liked hard liquor and she liked wine. Where Alice was, there was a glass and a bottle nearby. They met while drinking (of course), but somehow that never seemed to cause problems between them. Then one night they had a fight. Not just a fight; a loud, savage, irrational explosion. He still couldn’t remember what it was about, but it had seemed to come suddenly out of nowhere. Even though it was the only fight they’d ever had, it was enough to end the six month affair. Afterward, Alice grabbed her things and left.
He only saw her once again after that night, a couple of years later in a restaurant where he took shifts washing dishes. Alice never saw him, but every time the swinging double doors opened he stole a glance from the kitchen. She was with a date, looking healthier and happier than he had ever seen her. When the dishes came back from her table, he saw they drank Italian sparkling water with lime. He saw the half-bow print of her dark chocolate matte lipstick on the glass.
Francis resented her happiness, her apparent new sobriety, her life without him. That night, he took the single photograph he still had of Alice and stared at it for a long time. He felt a wave of spite rising in him as he contemplated burning the picture. He couldn’t, so he jammed it into an old tea tin. He swore that if she could stop drinking and be happy without him, then he could do the same. He kept half his promise and never drank again, but never managed to achieve the happy part. For a long time afterward, he fantasized that she would fall off the wagon and return to him, a sorry drunk begging him to take her back. He imagined looking down at her with pity, handing her a wad of twenty dollar bills and telling her to “take care of yourself” as he shut the door on her, this time his way.
Later on that year, Francis found his sobriety tested alonst to the breaking point when he learned that Alice had died. She’d been struck in traffic when she slipped off the curb, a mutual acquaintence told him one night when they were both on a restaurant job. Francis said nothing, rushing to the restroom. Mercifully, the initial shock was just enough to delay the sobs that spilled out when he closed the bathroom stall.
After the news, he socialized very little. Francis found it next to impossible to meet people, especially women, without a liquid third party to introduce them. He’d remained alone ever since. Alone, except for Alice one last time, in a dream.
She stood in front of him, silent, desiccated, and pale in the short, grey dress she wore the last time he saw her. Dust came off her long, dark eyelashes like the wings of a moth. She held a bottle in her hands, one open palm grasping the bottom and the other twisting at the cork, which wouldn’t budge. As she struggled to open the bottle, she began to gnaw at the cork, snarling and whining like an animal chewing at a limb caught in a trap. Francis closed his eyes tightly and covered his ears, and then she was gone. He slept no more that night.
When he was new in the building, it seemed like there were more old-timers like Miss Petrea living in small apartments downtown. Some were old couples who hadn’t moved out to the suburbs when the highways cut off the old neighborhoods, but most were solitary souls like himself. The building was clean enough, and even it hadn’t been updated in a long time, that detail kept the rent low. It had radiator heat, and old casement windows which meant when he did save up enough for an air conditioner, it had to be a hard-to-find upright. In the fall and winter, it was impossible to control the heat, and at any given time during the cold months, more than half of the windows in the building were open at least a crack. Alice, who always kept her own place, called it the “hot building” when deciding where they should spend the night together.
Miss Petrea was old when he had moved in, and looked more or less the same for all these years: small, squat, and foreign with old-fashioned clothes, never without a kerchief on her head. At one point, when he was talking to Luli, the clerk at the office downtown where he paid his rent, the topic of Miss Petrea came up. Luli was chatty, not really friendly, but always ready for an audience. She said she used to see Miss Petrea at dinners at the Albanian Catholic church, especially when stuffed peppers or lamb with rice were on the menu. Miss Petrea got in a fight with some of the women in the congregation and stopped going. “They said she had the evil eye,” she stated, matter-of-factly. “That’s why I figure her family doesn’t want anything to do with her. A couple of times a year relatives out of town send her rent in advance, I guess so they can make sure she’s not where they are.”
Francis laughed and said, “She puts the evil eye on them?” Luli looked annoyed, tightening her brow and shaking her head. “It doesn’t work like that. You’re born with the evil eye. It’s like a disease that comes from a jealous heart. People who have it hate because they want what you have. They want your happiness, your luck, your health, your wealth. They can’t help it.” Francis dropped his smile and said, “It sounds like they only hurt themselves.” Now it was Luli’s turn to laugh. “Think so? Huh. What they really hate, is they hate God for loving other people more than them. They hate God and the Devil loves them for it, but they don’t even know. You should pity them because they are damned to Hell for it. In Hell, envy is forever.”
Francis felt his skepticism fade along with his nerve, and Luli kept talking. “The gift the Devil gives them is that their envy can make the gifts God gave you go away. They can’t take it for themselves, but with the Devil’s blessing they can make it so if they can’t have it, neither can you.” Luli took a sip from a teacup, leaving a smear of ruby gloss, and continued. “Worst of all is when they envy a new mother. My nonja told me she knew an old lady who made a baby die because she was jealous.” Francis was shocked at her bluntness. “It was when grandma was a little girl. A young mother was showing her new baby to some other women, and the old lady came up and said, “Such a pretty baby! If only I had been so blessed”. She touched the baby’s foot. That night, the baby died in her crib. Nonja said she put its soul into a moth and smothered it in a little bottle.” Francis shuddered, then thought to himself, sudden infant death syndrome or something like that. No such thing as the evil eye. But, as he tried to say it out loud, he found that he could not. All he could utter, quietly, was, “That’s awful” as he slid the envelope containing his rent money under the slot in the window.
After that, Francis thought about Miss Petrea’s family. He never once saw her have a visitor, or getting picked up by anyone except a taxi driver. He saw Miss Petrea frequently in the corridor over the years, but had only heard his elderly neighbor’s voice a few times. Two weeks ago, he’d held the front door for her, and she’d spoken then. The other, more memorable time Francis heard Miss Bell’s voice was several months ago, when she was having a fight with some neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Bell, in the hallway.
As Francis held the door, she had said in a heavy accent “Good boy. Glad that girl gone. I didn’t like her.” He realized she must have meant Alice. He was disturbed at the thought that after all this time, she was still thinking about Alice; more specifically, Alice and him.
The sound of the front door slamming open returned him to the present moment, still standing in his doorway, watching with all the neighbors. The police held the door open for her as her porters carried her down the front stairs. Francis was struck by the smallness of the shape beneath the sheet. In death, Miss Petrea was no longer the thick-set figure that had come and gone like an unhurried badger. Death had reduced Miss Petrea, as though condensed to fit a small container.
It had been more than an hour since the ambulance had arrived. The police hadn’t spoken much, except initially to confirm that the deceased was Miss Petrea. He anticipated questions about the last time anyone had seen her, or did she have relatives, or was there anyone to call. Maybe they would speak to Luli if they already hadn’t. It occurred to Francis now that, with Miss Petrea and the Bells gone, he was the old-timer on the 1st floor.
Francis’ thought about the Bells, the couple who had fought with her. He hadn’t liked Mr. and Mrs. Bell, though he had spoken with them occasionally. He had even gone to their apartment for drinks once, after Alice had left, but before he swore off drinking. The couple was odd, but inseparable. He never saw them apart. Short, skinny Mrs. Bell with her blue-black hair was always bossing around her husband, who seemed more than happy with the arrangement, as though born to be her dog. The Bells had money, or at least they seemed more comfortable than most living in the building. Their furniture was nice, and they always had groceries delivered from a gourmet shop north of downtown. Mr. Bell was friends with the owner of the shop, who even had a key to let himself in for deliveries. Their liquor was top shelf, and though Francis was no connoisseur, he wasn’t going to turn down good whiskey.
That evening, Mrs. Bell shared her opinion of their elder neighbor in meandering stream of religious judgment, unhinged accusations, and thick smoke from the long, brown cigarettes they both smoked. Hot as it was, skinny little Mrs. Bell wore a bulky cardigan pinned at the throat with a nice brooch. Mr. Bell brought scotch and sodas for himself and Francis and martinis for his wife. He sat and nodded his gigantic, bald head at his wife’s every remark about “the old witch” and “papist idolatry”. By his third strong drink, Francis realized that Mrs. Bell might just literally mean “witch”. He made some excuse to leave, something about getting up early, and kept his distance afterward. And, if getting sober hadn’t led to keeping better company, no more drinks with the Bells was the next best thing.
Francis had exchanged stiff greetings with the couple in the hallway for months following that evening. Then one night that October, he heard a commotion in the hallway, and looked out to see Miss Petrea and Mrs. Bell shouting at each other. The solitary old woman’s voice was shrieking two octaves higher than he had heard before, and she waved her hands and pulled down imaginary fistfuls of foreign words from the air. Mrs. Bell retaliated, stabbing a bony index finger at her adversary to punctuate each insult as her husband nodded, arms folded. Both women paused a second to draw breath, then Miss Petrea fixed both of them with her intense, dark-eyed stare and said, “Why you have so much? Why you so lucky? Why I gotta struggle? You don’t deserve!” The Bells looked momentarily stunned. Miss Petrea turned, grasping up her overstuffed shopping bags and storming inside her apartment, slamming the door. Mrs. Bell recovered a portion of her rage and shouted back, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” Then she and her husband went back inside their own apartment, slamming their door in a feebleresponse.
That was the last time anyone saw the Bells alive. The fire department said they had probably suffocated from fumes from a space heater found in their room, exhausted of fuel. The Bells’ apartment had a small back bedroom like all the places on that side of the building, surrounded by masonry walls. Francis couldn’t imagine anyone needing a space heater in the “hot building”, much less closing the window with the radiators going full blast.
He jumped at the clattering sound of the paramedics rattling past his doorway. The ambulance drove away, the police left a now-empty apartment at the end of the hall.
Francis had stayed in the day after the Bells had died. He wished he could remain another day, but a call from the temp agency meant a chance to work a late shift, and anyway it was time to go downtown to pay rent. In cash, because he had never gotten himself together enough to have a bank account. He washed at the sink, dressed himself and stepped outside into the corridor, patting his pocket to made sure his keys were there before his apartment door latched behind him.
As he started toward the door, something made him stop and look in the other direction. Gazing down the hallway, he saw that the door to Miss Petrea’s apartment was slightly ajar. Francis walked toward the open portal and ducked his head inside the doorway, without placing a foot beyond the threshold. It appeared that the place had already been cleared out. Hardly a trace remained of the old woman. To the left, just inside the door, whoever had hauled everything away had left a table, the sort that concealed a sewing machine underneath. On it rested a chipped porcelain saucer with the stub of a candle and a burnt match, and a few small medicine bottles and jars. The place was littered with patent medicines for all that ailed you. Francis took the candle and smelled it. It was scented with some kind of spice which he couldn’t identify. He picked up a pretty cobalt blue glass jar and a couple of small bottles with foreign labels, all of which felt empty. Without knowing precisely why, he put them in his coat pocket along with the candle, and resumed his journey to the office downtown to pay his rent.
Francis opened the office door and walked up to the glass window with a small opening to pass payment to the clerk. Luli had seen him walk through the door and looked up. Francis slid an envelope with cash through the opening. As the clerk counted it, she seemed more distant and cold than usual. Francis’ fingers found the cobalt blue jar in his pocket, and he pulled it out to examine it. Luli stopped counting and looked over her reading glasses. He suddenly felt self-conscious and slipped the jar back in his pocket with a clinking sound as it impacted the other bottles. Luli remained silent, then looked back down to the assortment of large and small bills he had given her, pretending not to pay attention to his awkward expression.
“Miss Petrea passed away,” Francis said, quietly. “I know,” Luli said. “Some of the women from the church went over and tried to talk to her but she never answered. They called the police. They said she must have been sick, because there were medicine bottles all around. They found her in a back room with the window open, door shut. Maybe that’s why nobody smelled anything.” Francis stared dumbly as she spoke, all the while stamping rent receipts and other documents. “All that time and nobody even noticed. Disgraceful. You would think after so long, someone would go knock, or maybe call somebody before now.”
Francis got the distinct impression that Luli was trying to shame him. The implied blame in her words was clear, and he felt pressure to defend himself. It had been a couple of weeks since he had seen the old woman, but that wasn’t really unusual, and anyway, it wasn’t as if he had any special responsibility to look after her. He thought about what he should say, but only ended up mumbling, “Two weeks isn’t all that long…”
“What are you talking about?” Luli said, with an edge to her voice. “Well, I hadn’t seen her in maybe two weeks, but…” Luli looked at him with a confused, serious expression. “Two weeks?” she said in a challenging tone. “Yes,” Francis rebutted, lifting his head in weak defiance. “She passed me coming in in maybe two weeks ago but I keep late hours right now and…” Luli cut him off, shaking her head and stretching out her palm to halt his speech. “Months. The police said she was dead for months.”
Francis stepped backwards, shaking his head. “That can’t be right. I saw her…” Luli cut him off, stating bluntly, “She was already dead.” The blood drained from Francis’ face as he staggered back slightly. Luli jumped to her feet, as he began to wobble backwards. He found himself landing in an old, hard chair across the room from the clerk’s window. Luli jumped up from her desk and opened the office door. She paused to observe him, satisfied momentarily that he would not hit the floor. Her eyes moved down, fixing on the candle stub and jar which had tumbled out of Francis’ coat pocket. She reached her plump fist adorned with rings to retrieve them. Francis gaped as he saw the clerk’s eyes widen as she opened the blue jar, then abruptly put it down, wiping her hands on a wad of tissues.
Francis stared at her. Looking directly at him, Luli held out the open jar and pointed a thick, crimson-manicured finger at the contents: two desiccated, dead moths. He fumbled to remove the three smaller bottles from his pocket, opened them and emptied the contents, grimacing as powdery wings fell to the carpet. She crossed herself, then parted her ruby-painted lips to expose rows of gritted yellow teeth, as the words escaped in a sharp, breathy hiss: “Envy is forever in Hell.”
