Finding Anabelle Glass: Part IV
5th April 2007
The morning of the 5th of April in 2007 started the same way it usually would: ventilation.
Spring and summer had always blurred into one long, uncomfortable period for Heston. The apartment’s ventilation was a more laborious task and he had to keep the windows open for hours on end, unlike the quick turnaround the autumnal and wintery months let him have.
As Heston made his first cup of tea of the day, his fingers dancing across the counter to the milk, sugar, tea bags, the slam of a door reverberated through the building, stilling his hands.
Whilst interruption was something Heston detested – especially whilst he was doing something as routine as making tea, which was a timed activity – he had long ago had to think through his priorities, and recording his apartment building’s happenings in his notebook was pivotal. So, he left his tea in favour of heading to the front door, where he peered through the peephole, house martin notebook in hand and rollerball pen poised.
Footsteps. Heston’s heartbeat accelerated with a rush of adrenaline: where would he stop? Who would he be visiting today? Did he have a delivery? Was he a guest of another tenant? Standing behind his door, Heston waited in anxious excitement.
A woman appeared at the very edge of the peephole: tall, thin, thick black boots with several silver buckles, a dark jacket and a short skirt. Heston took all of this in with laser-like precision, his years of watching letting him see much in moments.
The woman paused between Heston’s door and Anabelle Glass’s. She rummaged through a ragged brown satchel hanging off her arm until she pulled out a crumpled piece of lined paper. Heston took this moment to note more of her appearance. To his previous annotations, he added:
6. She has a very white face – make up? – and very dark purple-red lips.
7. She is chewing gum.
8. Her hair is dark brown and curly with pink streaks.
9. She has an eyebrow piercing: two balls on either side of her left brow.
10. Her nails are long and fake, painted dark red. The colour almost matches her lips.
Bent over his paper a moment, Heston almost dropped both pad and paper when the door in front of him vibrated with the force of a knock. Three knocks, to be precise – quick raps, impatient.
Heston gulped.
There were several long moments, then.
In this time, the girl in the corridor started to chew her gum faster and planted a hand on her hip as she scrutinised the peephole. She didn’t get paid an awful lot, and it wasn’t by the hour, it was by the visit, so she didn’t exactly want to stand in a dirty, stale-smelling hallway for hours on end.
In this time, Heston had contemplated his options. Where pretending not to be in was the most obvious option, there was something about walking away from the hallway when it was occupied that went against everything he believed. Heston was a meticulous journalist – how could he record what was happening when he wasn’t there? His head had started to swim and his vision was blurring a little, but he couldn’t help but lean into the lens – he couldn’t leave, though he didn’t want to stay.
“Dude, I can see you moving, seriously.”
Heston jumped at the sound of her voice and impulsively, the fingers clutching his pen moved across the page:
11. Deeper voice than expected.
How could she see him? Maybe his shadow underneath the door – this was something Heston had learned in previous years, along with the horrifying realisation there was nothing he could do to fix it. Putting fabric underneath to block it out made the apartment even stuffier and got in the way when he was trying to use the fisheye lens.
“Dude,” she said again, glaring at the door. “I need you to sign for this package. I can’t fucking leave it in this shithole of a corridor.” Her gum-chewing was getting faster and faster, it was mesmerising in a less-than-pleasant sort of a way.
He cleared his throat a little, though it felt like his whole voice had deserted him.
The girl was tapping her foot. “Look, you either sign for this package or I have to call my supervisor and I don’t get paid if it don’t get delivered, you get me?”
Heston’s hands were twitching, shaking his pen and notebook in agitation. He opened his mouth to say something through the door but couldn’t get any words out. They were there, on his tongue, teasing him with their closeness – but they wouldn’t leave the safety of his mouth. They refused, stubbornly, frustratingly, infuriatingly.
“For fuck’s sake,” the girl was muttering, digging through that satchel of hers again. This time, she came out with a shiny flip-up mobile phone, which she started pressing buttons on.
Heston’s heart was beating so hard that his pulse was everywhere and it was all he could hear. He was envisioning her talking to her supervisor, rallying the troops – envisioning more people coming to try and get him to sign for the stupid package. What was in the package, Heston couldn’t even remember. At the moment, whatever it was didn’t seem remotely worth it.
“Hi Ron, yeah sorry – I’m at my first delivery of the day… No, no shit… He won’t open the door.” Pause. “Of course I’ve fucking told hi- yes. Yes, I know he’s in there.” She kicked Heston’s door, making Heston jump back and sweat a little more. “Jesus fuc- no. Yeah, well that’s why I’m ringing you, isn’t it?” Pause. “Ron.”
Heston wasn’t doing so well on the other side of the door. His notebook and pen were on the floor and his hands were running themselves over his head, gripping strands of hair and pulling – he could feel hair coming out, but the pain didn’t make him stop. His eyes were blurry, head painful, throat parched, limbs heavy-
She kicked the door again.
Heston jumped again – and a whimper tore free of his mouth.
“Yes, I just fucking heard him. Or his dog. What-the-fuck-ever, I know he’s there. What do you want me to do? You could-”
She broke off and from his position curled up on the floor, where Heston had crumpled to somewhere in the last few moments, Heston’s head lifted.
The door across the hallway had opened and the soft, familiar tones of Anabelle Glass from Apartment 5b managed to penetrate the fog in Heston’s head. His hands still shook, but a little less. His breath still came in short bursts, but he could breathe. His back and underarms were still damp with sweat, but he didn’t feel so uncomfortable.
“I can sign for Mr Chadwick,” she was saying.
“The neighbour’s here, Ron. She’ll sign – yeah, whatever. Fuck off.” The sound of the phone snapping shut. “That would be cool of you.”
Moments of silence. Heston stayed on the floor, ears straining. Though the observer in him hated that he wasn’t watching, he felt like he couldn’t stand. His bones wouldn’t hold him up.
“Thanks,” the girl was saying. Retreating footsteps.
A soft knock on Heston’s door – Anabelle’s knock. “Mr Chadwick, I’ll leave this on your doorstep for you. I’m going back into my apartment now. Hope you’re okay.”
Footsteps. Apartment 5b’s door shutting. Quiet.
The quiet was a reassuring quiet. Heston stood, shakily. All around him, clocks ticked and everything sat exactly how it was supposed to sit. He took a breath and undid the chain on his door, slid open the locks above and below it, stretched an arm through the crack in the door he made by opening. His hand felt around blindly, before coming into contact with a small, flat package on the floor.
With the locks firmly in place and the door shut and Heston sitting in his armchair in front of his television, Heston turned the package over in his hands and used an envelope cutter to open it. Nestled between two layers of bubble wrap and with a slip of paper from the seller – saying thank you – lay a tiny ceramic Maneki-neko, a Chinese knocking cat.
Slightly hysterical laughter bubbled up from Heston’s stomach as he released the cat from its protective packaging and turned it over in his hands. It had been the closest Heston had ever gotten to an impulse-buy, clicking the ‘buy now’ icon next to the cat on the website he’d found it on. Some lucky charm, he thought, continuing to turn it over and over between his fingers, stroking over its smooth surface.