Read On Unfaithful Wings for Free Online

corner of my mind, I hoped to throw open the refrigerator door and find the usual pizza box, empty mayonnaise jar and something no longer recognizable in Tupper-Ware. And behind them, way at the back, an empty Arm and Hammer baking soda box hiding a skimpy roll of twenties. A small hope in a small corner completely surrounded by doubt.
    I opened the door and the interior light came on, which hadn’t happened in the time I’d lived In the apartment, though I always intended to replace the bulb. Inside, no shaggy carpets of mould grew anywhere; it held no cans of beer, no half-eaten Chinese take-out in little white boxes. Instead, seemingly color-coded containers organized left-overs on the spotless glass shelves while bottled water with an Italian name--an item which never found its way into my life--crammed one door shelf full. If it didn’t come out of a tap, it wasn’t real water in my book.
    “Damn it.” I slammed the refrigerator door, setting the green water bottles clinking, and stalked back to the living room where I sank down on the floral-print sofa.
    Nothing here belonged to me: not the blue glass vase holding fresh flowers, not the shelf of books I’d never read by authors I’d never heard of, not the framed print that looked like someone threw paint against a canvas instead of taking the time to create a work of art. My things were gone, my emergency fund was gone. The walls in the living room were a different color than they should have been, painted a yellowish-tan to go with the sofa that wasn’t mine. I sniffed deeply but didn’t detect the odor of fresh paint. It hadn’t been done recently.
    What do I do now?
    I leaned forward, elbows on knees, eyes darting from big screen TV to patterned rug to the Us and People magazines arrayed across the coffee table. I reached for one, looking for a clue to make sense of this. In my confusion and despair over my situation, I never considered there might be someone in the apartment.
    “I’ve called the police,” the woman said, her stiff tone belying the fear hiding below the surface. “They’ll be here before you can do anything to me.”
    I looked up at her standing in the bedroom doorway and, for a a second, didn’t know what she meant. The disarray of her shoulder-length dark hair suggested she’d just woken. She held the front of her pink, fuzzy robe closed with one hand while the other held a small caliber pistol pointed at the floor. The sight of the weapon brought me back to reality and I pushed myself up from the sofa, banging my knee on the coffee table in my haste. A People magazine slid off the top of a pile and I managed to glimpse the date on the cover: October.
    Trevor’s birthday was in April.
    “It’s not what you think.” I showed her my palms. The gun moved a little, not quite aimed at me. Yet.
    “You broke into my apartment.”
    “No, I didn’t. I have a key.”
    I reached for my pocket to show her and realized my mistake as the barrel of the gun found a target in the middle of my chest. I didn’t like the look of the minor quake in her arm or the strained expression on her face, but if she shot me, it would answer most of my questions. I considered provoking her, but remembered how real the doorknob felt in my hand, and the bedspread at the hotel.
    “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
    “Look, this is all a big mistake. I used to live here.”
    She raised an eyebrow but didn’t lower the gun.
    “And you still have keys?”
    I nodded.
    “Take them out and put them on the table. Wait. Use two fingers.”
    I did as she said, wondering if she’d learned the technique while watching TV. The keys jingled as I pulled them out of my pocket and tossed them onto the coffee table. She glared at them for a second then looked back at me. I raised my hands again.
    “When did you live here?”
    “Right before you.”
    “That can’t be,” she said, the look on her face clearly demonstrating she didn’t believe me. “The guy