Friends Without Benefits

Even so she took a step closer, her nose flaring. I assumed she was giving me a once over from behind her dark glasses. “You’re nothing,” She hissed.

I blinked at her, released a confused breath. “What was that?”

“You’re nothing special at all. There is nothing remarkable about you.”

“Okay. . .” Her presence was odd up until this point; now she was just seriously scaring me. My eyes shifted to the left and right looking for an escape. “Thanks for that.”

Ashley’s horn honked twice, startling the fancy stranger. She jumped backward and almost toppled over in her fancy boots. I took the opportunity to dart around her and jog—in my sensible shoes—to Ashley’s truck.

I locked Ashley’s doors as soon as I closed the passenger side, lifted my eyes and found that the stranger had turned and watched me depart. She was now staring at the truck. “Go! Go! Get out of here!”

“Who is that?”

“Just get out of here.” A chill spread through me. The woman was standing perfectly still. “Go!”

“Okay! Okay! You’re freaking me out!” Ashley put the truck in drive and pealed out of the garage.

I held on to the dashboard. “Hey slow down Fast and Furious—look out!”

Ashley swerved, nearly hitting a pedestrian, and merged into traffic, almost hitting a car.

“Why are you driving like a maniac?”

“Because you’re scaring the poo out of me, that’s why.” Her hands tightened on the steering wheel, and she stopped short at a yellow light. The car behind us pressed on their horn until the light turned red. Faintly, as though from a great distance, I heard someone yell an expletive.

“All right. It’s all right. We’re all right . . .” I was shaking, my jaw clenched, and I forced myself to relax, take a deep breath. “We’re all right.”

“Who was that woman? And why do you look like you’ve just seen the ghost of Attila the Hun? And what is that?” Ashley pointed to the envelope in my hand.

I stared at it dumbly for a moment then dropped it to the floor of the cab. “I don’t know. That lady gave it to me.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well who what she?”

“I don’t know!”

“WHY ARE YOU YELLING?”

“I DON’T KNOW!”

The car behind us honked their horn again causing us both to jump. Ashley grimaced then pressed on the gas and slowly accelerated to the speed limit. We both ignored the passing car as it gave us the middle finger.

“Okay. Let’s just get to Sandra’s apartment. We’ll . . . drink some wine, do a little knitting, and you can fill the ladies in on your very colorful week.”

I nodded, still staring at the envelope on the floor. “What should I do with that?”

Ashley hesitated, then said, “We’ll ask Fiona. She’ll know what to do.”

~*~

We arrived at Sandra’s apartment in one piece. I kept stealing glances at the envelope, rationalizing that it was too thin to be a bomb but freaking myself out with all the other possibilities. We ended up leaving it in the car, deciding that we’d wait till Fiona provided input on what to do next.

As soon as Sandra saw us she knew that something was amiss. She accepted our coats, pushed wine glasses in our hands, and shoved us toward the living room where everyone from our group but Janie was sitting happily, chatting, waiting for us to arrive. Janie was still in Boston and wasn’t set to return until Thursday.

“Ah, Elizabeth, Sandra tells us you have some peculiar news?” Fiona glanced up from her stitches and her ready smile slipped as her eyes moved over my face then Ashley’s.

“Are you two okay?” Marie’s voice sounded from the couch. I walked over to the empty spot next to her and sunk into the comforting cushiness.

“Elizabeth had a colorful week.” Ashley’s voice was deadpan, and she gulped her glass of wine, finished it, then held it out to the room for someone to pour another. “And I almost killed a person driving over here. How are all of you?”

This proclamation was met with stunned silence, their eyes bouncing between me, then Ashley, then each other.

Fiona finally spoke, ending the game of eyeball ping pong. “Okay. Well then. Why don’t we start at the beginning. Elizabeth, tell us about your colorful week.”

I nodded, then gulped the contents of my glass, finished it, and placed it on the table. “I’m going to need some more wine. Also, if anyone has some cashmere yarn I can pet, or even alpaca, I’d really appreciate it.”

“Good idea. Yarn fondling always calms my nerves. Make that two balls.” Ashley clinked her wine glass against mine.

The next forty-five minutes were spent filling the ladies in on the basics, but I left out the more sordid and personal details: I knew Nico from high school, he helped me through a hard time after my boyfriend died, I saw him last week at the hospital, his niece just joined the research study, Sandra and I saw him at the reunion, I yelled something crazy to break up the crazy lady dance floor molestation, he told me about his stalker, we kissed under the mistletoe, the YouTube video, Meg, Dr. Ken Miles, the cameras, the media, blah blah blah, then, finally, the encounter with the crazy woman at the hospital.

I left out the fact that Nico and I had slept together as teenagers, his visit to my room after the reunion, his confession of love, our friends-without-benefits discussion at the hospital. But I did tell them about megalomaniac Meg and finalizing the details with Dr. Ken Miles as well as the resultant not-date for our first benefits session.

Several times during the story Marie poured me a new glass of wine. I had to cut myself off at the third glass because I needed to be sober enough for a double shift the next day.

When I finished the ladies heaved a collective sigh, and the room plunged into a prolonged period of silence.

Unexpectedly, Kat was the one to speak up and ask the question I’m sure everyone had on the tip of their tongues; “What was in the envelope?”

“I don’t know. Ashley and I decided to leave it in the truck.”

“This lady could be Nico’s hands-in-the-pants stalker.” Marie added. “It could be anything.”

“Or she could just be another stalker and not the hands-in-the-pants stalker. Nico could have several stalkers.” Ashley hiccupped halfway through this observation then nodded at her own assertion. “Hot celebrities usually have more than one stalker. I read that somewhere.”

“That’s a cheerful thought. Here, have some more wine.” Sandra poured Ashley another glass then turned to Fiona. “What should we do about the envelope?”

I half-smiled. Neither Ashley nor I had said anything about consulting Fiona regarding the envelope. It warmed my heart that, by default and universally, we all looked to her to provide us with guidance in times of chaos and absurdity.

Fiona sighed. “The cautious part of me thinks that you should call the police, just in case it’s something dangerous. The curious and impatient side of me says that we should just open it.”

We all nodded.

“My two sides tell me the same.” Kat offered.

“Well then.” Sandra put the bottle of wine down on the table. “Give me your keys, Ashley. Since I’m a little cautious but mighty curious, I’ll go open it up.”

Ashley handed Sandra her keys and hiccupped.

Sandra pulled on her coat, gloves, then marched out the front door, wearing leather-soled fuzzy slippers and no hat.

We all waited. I tried to start a knitting project but couldn’t concentrate. Through my wine-induced cloudiness I had a sudden spike of adrenaline and shot to my feet. “I should stop her. I’ll—I’ll call the police. What if, what if it’s—”

Sandra reentered the apartment at that moment carrying the envelope in one hand. Her face was grim. She motioned with her hand for me to join her.

As I approached she pulled a picture from the envelope and handed it to me. I glanced at it then sucked in a sharp breath. It was a picture of me and Nico, at the hospital, walking out of the infusion room after our friends-without-benefits conversation. She’d first used a black Sharpie to scribbled over my face then some kind of sharp object to scratch at my image.

“There’s more.” Sandra flipped the photo over.

On the back of the picture was a very lengthy hand-written letter. The script was sporadic, sometimes large, sometimes small; in some places capital letters, other places in cursive. Certain words and phrases stood out: I love you, or be with me, or I hate you, and I’ll die without you. Mostly it just appeared to be a crazy, scrawling blob of indecipherable script.

I released a breath I didn’t actually know I was holding. “She’s bonkers.”

Sandra nodded. “You should probably call the police now.”

~*~

I ended up calling the police from my apartment when I got home. I explained the situation as much as was feasible over the phone and with a great deal of reluctance. I was passed from person to person until someone offered to take down my information and schedule a phone call with a detective for the following day.

Things progressed much faster the next day. The detective, it seemed, had looked me up on the Internet, seen the YouTube video, and offered to come down to the hospital to collect the picture. Detective Carey Long met me just inside the ER clinic and praised both Sandra and I for not touching the photo without gloves; she also admonished me for opening it at all.