Excerpt
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Defenestration was going to be a bitch. Patience didn’t like touching unsealed wood, a quirk of hers since childhood, and there wasn’t a window frame in the place that wasn’t paint-curled and splintered. She didn’t care for the sensation of freefall either, and—despite the impression people seemed to form at the sight of her tattoos and fuchsia streaked hair—she abhorred a public spectacle. Also, she was afraid of heights.
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She crouched in the living room window of her fifth story apartment, gazing across the neighboring rooftops at the skyline of downtown Boston, and disappointment hung about her like a tuba. Patience didn’t want to die.
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Patience.
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She wouldn’t have heard the building explode with the wind in her ears, but The Voice was as clear in her head as a live mic in an empty auditorium. She fought through the torrent of air to be just as clear as she told it to fuck off.
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It sighed. She ignored it.
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Her descent into schizophrenia had been marked by the intrusion of an auditory hallucination more passive-aggressive than her mother’s Aunt Prim. The Voice sighed. It cleared its throat. It complained when she didn’t respond and typically ended up insulted when she did. She’d slept little the past few weeks, and fitfully when she did—dreaming vividly of laboratories and boy band singers—despite the double shifts she’d been pulling to exhaust herself beyond its reach. It didn’t work, nothing ever did. The Voice interrupted as she took orders and followed her into the walk-in freezer. It commented if her plates weren’t carried straight enough, or if she spilled some juice over onto her tray, always insisting that it was just trying to help. Her head hurt all the time now, and she was done. For years she’d felt this was coming, and now that it was here, she could think of nothing but making it go away. The culmination of a decade’s anxiety and anticipation had turned out to be something of a fucked up joke, in her opinion. She’d be damned if she wouldn’t handle the punch line herself.
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Patience.
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“How many times do I have to tell you?”
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It sighed again, and then her cell phone rang inside. Its chimes were clear though the window, as impervious to the wind’s dominance as The Voice. She glanced back to where it lay atop her coffee table, and as she looked back again she caught sight of a man standing at a window across the street. He didn’t look much older than she was, and he was dressed in pajamas with a cup of coffee in his hand. She stared for a moment, confused at finding him there, and then he confused her still further by smiling at her and waving.
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Patience recoiled and tightened her grip on the frame. It occurred to her then that her plummet to the street below was likely to cause a fair amount of danger and discord to the people around her. She’d managed to miss that detail in her distraction and fatigue, and she was curious now whether that sort of disregard for the welfare of others was a condition of the schizophrenia, or if she’d simply become an asshole over the past several weeks and had somehow failed to notice.
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She slid her hands back to pull herself inside again but a torrent of wind bent a path around her and drew her forward, breaking her grasp of the frame. She hung suspended over Commonwealth Ave for one miraculous moment as the shackle of air completed its arc around her body. It pulled her back into the apartment and dropped her onto her living room floor, and the wind quieted to a reassuring breeze that brushed the hair back from her eyes as her heart thumped in her ears. She coughed for air, and then, slowly, she began to quiet as well. It was as though a persistent humming she’d never noticed had suddenly stopped and a new sort of peace existed beneath the world’s general blare. She pushed herself up again to sit beneath the window and let her head fall back against the sill. Her apartment seemed brighter than before, the air more transparent. She turned her eyes up to the light shining from the uncovered bulb above and she wondered if it always felt this way when an episode passed. The sensation wasn’t unpleasant. It was something—she wasn’t at all sure what—but the moment was tolerable.
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Her phone chirped on the table beside her pile of unopened mail and she nodded. She reached back to the sill to pull herself to her feet. If she wasn’t going to kill herself, she’d probably better check her messages.
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The neighbor across the street was still at his window, just as he had been when she’d first caught sight of him, except that his mug was now overturned and empty in his hand and coffee was streaming down the front of his pajamas. She waved back apologetically and pulled the window shut.
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***
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A text message was waiting from someone who called himself The Biz. Patience frowned at the fifteen cent addition to her phone bill before pressing the button. She didn’t know anyone called The Biz. She didn’t want to know anyone called The Biz.
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CAN U HEAR ME NOW?
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She checked the sender field again and deleted the message. Cell phone spam could get to be a pricy invasion for a girl without a text plan, and Patience didn’t care for texting in the first place. There was an immediacy and an expectation about it she found annoying and harsh, and text speak generally made her want to put her head through a wall. She hit the power button to shut the phone off, but it lit up again in her hand.
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THERE IS WRK 2 DO! : )
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It had been a stressful enough morning as it was, she was in no mood for a lecture from some anonymous ass with a cell phone. She had nimble dialing fingers, herself, and an excellent vocabulary. She hit reply, fully prepared to spend another fifteen cents unloading her displeasure onto The Biz and his work ethic, but the field was empty where his number should have been.
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“God damn it!”
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HEY!
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She stood very still beside the table, staring down at the admonishment as a prickly feeling started at the back of her neck worked its way down her spine. This would be the paranoia, of course, right on cue. She leaned her back against the wall and raised a hand to her throbbing forehead.
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“Would you at least lay off the caps lock? It’s too early for the noise.”
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The chime seemed somewhat more sober this time. Patience opened one eye and glanced down.
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Sorry.
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The prickly feeling turned to a cold sweat. She turned slowly around the apartment before stepping back over to the window. Her neighbor’s was empty now, and she appeared to be alone. But Patience was not alone, she was certain of it. Someone was there with her, watching. Taking inventory. She grabbed her coat on her way to the door and took the stairs down two at a time.
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***
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“I’m being followed.”
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The officer at the front desk looked up and Patience dropped the phone without invitation. She pushed it across the counter as he rose from his chair.
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“I’ve been receiving text messages from some person I don’t know, and I think he was in my apartment just now.”
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“You think he was in your apartment?”
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“I’m pretty sure. Yes.”
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“Did you see him?”
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“No.”
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“Did you hear something?”
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“Nothing but the phone.”
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“Miss…”
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“Look,” she said. “I’m getting messages from someone who calls himself The Biz. I don’t know who he is, but he’s been responding to the things I do and say, just as I’m doing and saying them. He was there this morning, I’m certain of it.”
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The officer just stared back at her for a moment and then he picked the phone up from the counter and shrugged. “It’s probably kids. What they can’t do with cell phones these days, you’d be amazed. I let my twelve year old get his hands on mine a couple of weeks ago, so he could set up my voicemail for me, and in the five minutes it was in his possession he’d downloaded over thirty bucks worth of the video games—including something called ‘Zombie Cop Killers,’ the little shit. I never knew a thing about it until the bill came.” The officer paused in his perusing and looked up at her. “Did you erase the messages?”
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“Why would I ask you to look if I’d erased them?”
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“There’s nothing here now.”
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He passed the phone back and Patience grabbed it from the counter. The messages were there, just as they had been. “What are you talking about?” She held it up to him again. “They’re all right here, including one that I’ve deleted twice. Look!”
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The officer glanced down again through the glass and his expression grew increasingly cop-like. “Miss, I am looking at a screen that says zero messages. What’s your name?”
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She stepped back with her hands up. She’d come in looking for help, and had wound up the remedy for some cop’s boredom instead. Unless the messages she could see as clearly as the suspicion in the officer’s eyes weren’t actually there at all, of course, and the episode from the morning had never really passed.
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“My mistake,” she smiled. “You know, I think it was actually a different phone I was thinking of. Thank you for your help, officer. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”
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She turned away and pushed through the precinct door, praying no one would follow her outside. The phone went off again as she was halfway down the steps and she froze. She pulled it from her coat pocket and glanced back toward the precinct, and then she slammed it against the frigid iron bannister ten or twelve times until it was a mangled mess of plastic and metal. She yanked the battery from its remains and shoved it all back into her pocket before hurrying the rest of the way down to the street and turning in the direction of the wireless store.
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