“You sure this is the right place, miss?”
I pressed my face to the window, trying my best to see what was going on. With the number of people already gathered, it was impossible to see what they were all looking at. But one way or another, I had a terrible feeling my twenty seconds had started a long time ago...
“It’s the right place, I’m afraid.” I passed up some money, but paused on my way out. “In fact, do you think you could actually wait? I shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”
And one way or another, it was likely I was going to need a quick escape.
“It’s your money, lady.”
With that, he leaned back in his chair to read, while I pushed open the door and darted across the sidewalk towards the mob, ready to silence them all.
Even once I was on the ground, it was impossible to see what was going on. There were too many people clustered around, and I was by no means the tallest person in the crowd. After my first cries of ‘excuse me!’ went unnoticed, I started elbowing my way to the front, using my oversized Dior bag to knock people out of the way—left and right.
A few choice profanities and possible lawsuits later, I was at the front. It was then that I saw it. Just in time to hear its dying breath.
There was a metallic groan, and Nick’s beloved coffee maker finally gave way. Beside it, scattered like dark funeral petals, were the prized African java beans. The airtight jar in which they were always kept lay in pieces not far away. Along with an array of tinted glass.
My eyes widened in shock. In the whole crowd, I was the only one not moving.
Nick loved that coffee maker more than most people loved their children. I honestly think that if it came down to it, he would sacrifice the life of a person he didn’t know just to keep the damn thing going. And now this...?
I lifted my head as my eyes made the slow journey up to the top story of the building. It was impossible to see anything from all the way down here, but I could easily picture exactly how it must have looked. The cord ripped clean from the wall. The stiffly blowing curtains.
That being said...
“I wonder whose it is,” a voice called out beside me. “I wonder what happened!”
My head whipped around as an unexpected silver lining suddenly presented itself.
“No idea!” someone called back. “It just went flying from one of those top story windows. We were lucky this whole sidewalk was roped off for construction!”
They didn’t know it was Nick?
They didn’t know it was Nick!
My heart leapt in my chest as I extracted myself from the horde, calling out a string of excuses and misdirection as I went.
“I heard it was that old lady on the fiftieth floor! Some sort of drunken accident!” In a much lower voice. “Maybe it was Rick Treaken—he lives in this building.” Then in the high falsetto of a cartoon mouse. “Maybe it fell off a moving truck that nobody saw...”
By the time I’d reached the doorway, I already heard the conversation of the crowd begin to change. As newer people came upon the scene, the dialogue had already shifted.
“This guy name Rick was moving—damn thing fell out of the truck!”
“Could have killed someone, dude was probably drunk!”
“He was celebrating his fiftieth birthday, after all,” a woman replied wisely. “Or maybe he lived on the fiftieth floor?”
My lips twitched up in a little grin as I hurried inside, but now was no time to gloat. As much as I’d love to blame it on a meteor or a narcoleptic weather man, I happened to know exactly who the coffee maker belonged to. I just had no idea how it had found its way outside.
But I had a sneaking suspicion it had something to do with a certain silicone nightmare and why Nick wasn’t answering his phone...
A quick jaunt in the service elevator, and I was shooting up to the top floor. Right away, I knew it was going to be bad. I heard the screams before the doors even opened.
“—had nothing to do with you! How could it have had anything to do with you, when you weren’t even here?!”
The doors whizzed open, and I ducked as a ceramic pot flew past me. It had been a gift from the Chinese ambassador last year. I recognized the markings.
“Exactly!” Nick yelled back, ducking as the priceless memento shattered on the wall above his head. “I wasn’t even here—so why the FUCK were you in my apartment?!”