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displayed smooth, sensual legs and a tight top. Like Blair, she wore no bra this day and in looking closely, one could see her nipples outlined beneath the fabric. They were apparently erect already.
    “Let me see if this Mercedes is here yet,” Blair said in a croaking voice, unable to take herself away from Tamara’s appearance. Though she had never really longed for another woman, she lusted now.
    With her apartment door open, Blair turned and went to the bedroom window, but to mild dismay, she saw no car she could tie to the night visitor of so many months before.
    Perhaps Mercedes had backed out after all? All the better. This would leave Darren to herself and to Tamara. With Tamara’s preference admittedly being for other girls, there was no fear of full time competition there.
    “There’s no one next door!” Tamara’s voice came from the doorway.
    “What?” Blair responded in disbelief. “We’ve been planning this. What do you mean by that?”
    “Come see for yourself. Maybe your boy lost his nerve.”
    Blair felt like Lazarus raised from the dead, for surely the bright daylight must have blinded his dead eyes when he emerged from the tomb. She too felt an odd sense of emerging from darkness into sunshine. She was about to become enlightened, but there was a feeling of dread rather than excitement surmounting from the same. It was just a feeling, but it hit her hard.
    “Look out, Goddamn it,” Blair muttered as she pushed past Tamara, ringing the doorbell herself.
    “Darren!” she called and again rang the bell. “Darren, open up!”
    “He lost his nerve,” Tamara proclaimed triumphantly. “That’s not surprising. Oh, well. I’m still up for the two of us.”
    Blair ignored the words, furiously ringing the doorbell and not understanding. It was then the words from the night before came back to her.
    “Fate saw to that.”
    “God damn it, Darren,” she answered herself. “Open the fucking door!”
    While Tamara watched in partial amusement, Blair continued to finger the doorbell, making it ring again and again.
    It was then a vaguely familiar voice came to her. She recognized it as a man a few apartments down, she had said greetings to now and again in passing. He was alone this time, rather than with his wife and kids, evidently going out for some quick morning shopping. In his hand he had a bag of some kind.
    “What are you doing?” he asked with utter confusion in his voice. “No one lives there.”
    “What was that you said?” Blair again questioned, unable to hide the confusion. “What do you mean?”
    “No one lives there,” the man responded. “They’ve used that apartment for storage for the maintenance and office for three years now. No one rents that place out.”
    “What?” Blair again mouthed.
    Nearby, Tamara stood speechless, likewise confused by what she was seeing.
    “I guess the office didn’t tell you?” he shrugged with a casualness unfitting the knowledge about to be revealed.
    Blair again shook her head in confusion.
    “They probably didn’t tell you what went on in there, but I guess since it was the apartment next to you and not your apartment they could get by without that disclosure bullshit, or whatever they call it.”
    Blair’s hands extended in an expression of perplexity, as if to implore the intruder for more.
    The man gave a grimace and looked toward his own apartment, which he now seemed too long for.
    “A guy named Darren lived there. I remember him. He seemed like a nice enough guy, around forty or something. Thing was, no one knew what was going on. He was seeing this chick who was going through a divorce at the time. The jealous soon-to-be ex-husband paid them both a visit. Caught them in the act inside and shot them both, then himself.”
    Blair’s mouth dropped unbelievably while Tamara, with an overwhelmed expression on her own face, started to back away and broke into an open run for her car.
    “Craziest thing I ever lived through,”