32.
Daisy
I didn’t know what my plan B was supposed to be. I hadn’t gotten any call backs from any of the resumes I’d sent out, and now I was officially without a job. I spent the day on as many different jobs sites as I could, sending out my resume, trying to come up with a cover letter that would get me noticed. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be because everything I seemed to write sounded inauthentic or ridiculous.
I jumped when I heard my phone ring. I looked at it and saw that it was my mother.
“Hi, Mom,” I said when I picked up.
“Hello, Daisy. I was just taking a break from my book and I thought I’d give you a call. How are
you?”
“Not great, actually.”
“Why? What’s the matter?”
“I quit my job.”
There was a pause. “Oh. How come?”
“It just . . . it wasn’t turning out to be the best work environment for me.”
“I’m glad that you’re self-aware enough to know when it’s time to leave a toxic environment.”
“Well . . . thanks,” I said, surprised that she wasn’t going to start giving me a hard time.
“This might be a good time to work on your writing, Daisy,” she said. “I know that you’ve been resisting the idea in the past, but really, that’s what you went to school for, so don’t you think you should put it to some use? There are grants you can apply for. Fellowships. All sorts of programs.”
“Right, but it takes a lot of time to apply and hear back from those things. And they’re all really competitive. And I haven’t really published anything, so I’d probably get looked over.”
“With that kind of attitude, you certainly would. Do
you have any money saved?”
“I’ve got a little.”
“I’m not suggesting that you exhaust your savings, but maybe it would be a good
idea to look into some grants, take a little time to work on your
writing—perhaps while you’re looking for another job—and see what pans out. I
have another colleague who runs a well-known blog, and she’s looking to feature
some articles written by younger people, you know, someone like yourself. I
told her I’d mention it to you. She knows Carl, too. He said he had a very good
interview with you, and that you’re a lovely girl, which of course made me
proud to hear.”
“Thanks,” I said. “He was nice. And very helpful. What
does your colleague want the article to be about?”
“Anything, really. Any relevant topic to someone your age. She’s thinking between eight hundred to fifteen hundred words.
And it will pay, too. Honestly, Daisy, you might just want to think about
starting a freelance career, and writing articles for people. I’ve read your
writing before and I know you’d be very
capable of doing that. Plus, you’d be
good at meeting deadlines.”
“Maybe,” I said. There was a certain appeal to that sort of thing, but the writing world seemed like it was highly competitive and hard to break into. “I’m just sending out resumes now, and it’s kind of depressing.”
“Don’t get too down on yourself. Are you at home?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe you should take your laptop and go to a café. A change of scenery always helps me. Send out a few more resumes, then see if you can get something written for that article. It’d probably be good to get your mind on something else, too. And if you can’t get it written, that’s fine, but when she mentioned it to me, I immediately thought that it would be something you’d be interested in.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said. “I’ll at least give it a shot.”
And when we got off the phone, I did take her advice. I packed up my laptop and walked a couple blocks away to Café Paris, where I sat at one of the outside tables, under the awning, and drank iced coffee and sent out some more resumes. I also opened another blank document and stared at the screen for a while, trying to come up with an idea of what to write.
I thought when I graduated from college, I’d have my whole life figured out.
I stared at the sentence for another minute, reading the words over and over in my head. Then I started to type.
By the time I finished typing, it was late, and my article was about three times the length that my mother had said it should be. It would need some serious editing, but I left the café feeling productive, like I had done something right. I walked back home, encouraged that maybe things would work out after all.
There was something happening outside my apartment building; I could see that right as I turned the corner. At first I thought it was a couple of guys just horsing around, maybe they’d had a little too much to drink. But as I got closer, I realized that they weren’t just having fun, and that one of the guys—Noah—was being restrained, by Ben and another guy I assumed was Kevin.
“Daisy!” Noah yelped
when he saw me. There was a little trickle of blood coming out of his left
nostril, and Kevin was standing behind him, both Noah’s arms pinned behind his
back. His eyes were wide, and for the
first time, he looked scared. “Daisy, who are these guys?”
“We’re the guys who are around to make sure creeps like you don’t get to do
whatever fucked up shit is running through their heads,” Ben said. He looked at
me. “Hi, Daisy. Looks like it was a good thing that we were out here. We
finally caught him trying to get into your building. He actually snuck in when
someone was coming out, and was trying to
break into your apartment.”
“I just wanted to leave you those,” Noah said, looking
woefully down at the ground where a tattered bouquet of flowers lay. “I was just going to leave them for you on
the table and leave.”
“But he couldn’t pick the lock. So that’s how we found him when we got
in—standing at your door, trying to jimmy his way in with a bent paper clip.”
“How did you get in, though?” I asked
Ben.
The tiniest of smiles appeared on his face. “I picked the lock.” He looked back at Noah. “So. Should we take your ass down to the police station and have them throw you in jail? Bet you didn’t think that’s how your night was going to end.”
“I wasn’t doing anything illegal!” Noah said, looking truly distraught. “I just wanted to leave those for you—I wasn’t going to stay. I knew you’d know who they were from when you saw them.”
“Stalking is a criminal offense, you know,” Kevin said. “You feel like spending a couple years behind bars?”
“I have done nothing wrong!” His voice cracked, and he struggled against Kevin’s grip, but got nowhere, his feet scrambling
underneath him. He looked at me, his eyes wide. “Daisy, please. I would never
hurt you. You’ve got to know that, don’t you? Have I done anything to harm
you?”
“No, but you haven’t listened to me when I’ve repeatedly told you to leave me
alone. When I told you that I wasn’t interested. You just seemed to think if
you were persistent enough that I’d eventually give in, which isn’t going to
fucking happen! So why shouldn’t I let them take you down to the police
station? Why shouldn’t you get locked up for a while?”
I could see the realization dawning on him slowly, just how much trouble he
could be in for these actions of his that he’d originally thought were so
innocuous. It was like spilled ink spreading on a linen cloth, the way his
expression changed.
“Hold on one sec,” Ben said to Kevin. “Let me talk to Daisy for a sec.”
He motioned for me to follow him, and we walked a few paces away.
“So,” he said. “This asshole has clearly been following you around. We noticed him a few night ago, but he wasn’t really doing much more than just lurking, making it look like he was waiting for someone.”
“I don’t know if I think he’d actually do anything to hurt me,” I said, “though I do know I have told him dozens—if not more—times to leave me alone, and he just hasn’t gotten the message. And he hasn’t tried to get into my apartment until tonight.”
“That you know of.”
“Right—that I know of.”
“So we could haul his ass down to the station if you wanted. Though if he’s going to deny everything, there’s a good chance he’ll get off with a fine, maybe a little jail time, no more than a year.”
I glanced back over at them. Noah looked like he’d given up; he was just standing there, arms still pinned behind his back, shoulders slumped, head down. I was starting to feel a little bad for him all of the sudden, which was the last thing I wanted to be feeling for him right now, but I couldn’t help it. If he would just promise to leave me alone now, then I’d be okay with that—that’s all I had wanted to begin with.
“Say he ended up having to go to jail,” I said, “and he gets out, and he’s even more pissed than before? What if he comes back and tries to kill me or something?”
“I’d say that’s something that would more likely happen in a movie, but it’s always possible,” Ben said. He leaned toward me. “There have been a few instances in the past where we could’ve taken people down to the police station, but in those cases, too, there probably would’ve ended up being a court hearing, and we’d have to testify, and Ian prefers if we can avoid getting involved with that sort of thing. So we . . . handle things our own way. We could do that now, if you wanted.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, in this case, it means we kick his ass—not
enough to permanently disable him or anything, but enough to make him realize
that if he does this sort of thing again, it’s not going to end well for him.
And trust me, Daisy—the message will get through. He’s in way over his head now; he doesn’t actually realize what he’s
fucking with here. Some guys are hard and can take a beating and just brush it
off. Not him. We won’t even need to hurt him that badly.”
I nodded slowly. It felt strange to be the one in the position to be making this sort of decision. There was a part of me
that wanted to just say to let him go, so long as he promised that he wouldn’t
come around anymore. But I’d told him that before and he hadn’t listened, so it
seemed like he did need something a little more . . . memorable.
I followed Ben back over to where Kevin and Noah were standing. “So, Daisy,” Ben said. “You think we should bring him down to the station? And don’t worry—if he tries to deny anything, both Kevin and I will happily testify that he was trying to break into your apartment, and he’ll probably be going away for at a couple years.”
“I’m thinking more like five,” Kevin said. “Especially if Judge Carter hears the case.”
“Kevin knows him,” Ben said to Noah. “Judge Carter. And while it’s true that judges try to be impartial, the judge is going to believe Kevin over you. Trust me. So what do you think, Daisy?”
He was talking loudly, almost in a theatrical voice, and I realized that he wanted to make Noah understand that whatever happened next was solely up to me.
“I’d like nothing more than to see an asshole like this locked up for a good long time,” Kevin said, playing right along. “A guy like you in Suffolk County Jail? You’ll get to know real fast how it feels to be the one getting preyed upon.”
Noah had started to cry, tears silently running down the sides of his face, a sniffle escaping him every now and then.
“I don’t think we’re going to do that,” I said. “I
think it’d be better if the two of you took care of it.”
But instead of looking relieved, a look of horror exploded across Noah’s face.
He thought that meant they were going to take him out back and kill him or
something. He started to open his mouth to say something,
but no words came out.
I walked over to him, stopped when I was about an arm’s length away. “Noah,” I said. “They’re not going to kill you. But if you ever come back here again, they will.”
There was a little alleyway between two buildings near the other end of the block, and they brought him down there. I stood there, not sure what I was waiting for, but it seemed as though a very short amount of time passed when they reappeared again, all three of them walking, Noah no longer being restrained. He was lurching a little, and I could see as they got closer that he was going to have quite the black eye tomorrow, but other than that, he didn’t seem too bad off.
“Noah has something he’d like to say to you,” Ben
said, “and then I’m going to drive him to Dorchester,
and he’s going to have to find his own way back to Mission Hill.”
“I’m sorry, Daisy,” Noah said. “And you have my word that I’ll leave you alone
from now on. This is the last that you’ll ever see of me.”
“Good,” I said. “I hope you mean that.”
“He means it,” Ben said. He nudged Noah toward his
SUV. “All right, champ, why don’t you hop in. You can ride shotgun; Kev will
sit in the back.” Ben turned to me. “You want me to walk you inside?”
“No, I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you though. I . . . I’m not sure what I would’ve
done if I got home and he’d been in my apartment.”
Ben smiled. “Just doing our job. Have a good night.”
I stood there on the sidewalk and didn’t go in until the SUV disappeared around the block. It felt as though a weight had been lifted off my shoulders; I was pretty sure that I would never see Noah again. I went inside, tossing my purse on the table as I went over to sit on the couch.
It dawned on me then that Ian hadn’t told Ben and Kevin to stop watching out for me. So even though he was telling me that it was over between us and we couldn’t see each other anymore, he’d left them out there. Didn’t that mean he did in fact still have feelings for me? Or was that just wishful thinking?
I wanted to call him. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t let
myself do that.