The Girl Next Door by Elizabeth Noble Read Free Book Online Page B

were quite likely to be taken off at the ankle by an old lady, hunched over a shopping trolley with murder in her eyes. They had something like thirty‐five different types of olives at the olive bar in Zabar’s. It wasn’t worth it. Fairway was, to her, the grocery equivalent of the Tower of Babel. She had never come out with the ingredients she had gone in for, and without a headache. Dean & Deluca she could handle. They might need to start selling body parts to pay for it eventually, but at least she didn’t get an adrenalin rush at the door.
    ‘Do you know what this means, Raoul?’ she asked him.
    Raoul peered at the note. ‘That’s 4B.’ He always identified everybody with their apartment number. It made Eve smile – it seemed Orwellian. ‘Mrs Wallace. She’s English, like you.’
    ‘Really? Where’s the space she’s talking about?’
    ‘On the roof.’ He said it as though it was obvious.
    ‘Oh.’ Eve waited for Raoul to expand. He usually did. Jesus, the night doorman, who normally worked the midnight to 8 a.m. shift, never said a word that wasn’t necessary. Che, 4 p.m. until midnight, said a little, but his Cuban accent was so strong Eve didn’t understand much of it, although she liked his face, and his ready, shy smile. Raoul, she had realized, was her best bet if something needed to be explained. He was like Les Dawson in a pinny and fake boobs leaning on the garden fence.
    ‘Mrs Wallace has been trying to make a garden, up on the roof, for years. I don’t even remember when she started. With the board, with the management company… These things take forever. Every year, they talked about it, and nothing happened. Last year, they finally decided to do it. Turn the roof into a terrace. There’s money, you know, now, for seats, and flowers and things. To make it nice. Now Mrs Wallace wants to make a committee, of people who live in the building, to help her.’
    ‘What a lovely idea!’
    Raoul smiled. ‘So she’s gonna get one helper, I see…’
    ‘More than one, surely. It’s such a nice plan. And I suppose most people would like to use it.’
    Now he snorted. ‘They’d like to use it, all right. That’s not the same as wanting to do the work, though, Miss Eve.’
    Eve shrugged.
    ‘I tell you who won’t be helping, that’s for sure…’ Raoul leant in conspiratorially, and lowered his voice to a stage whisper. He smelt like cigars.
    She leaned back. ‘Who?’
    ‘The Stewarts. Eight A and B.’ He placed heavy emphasis on the ‘and’. ‘Penthouse. Mrs Stewart is always with the little dogs, you know?’ He shrugged, making dismissive tiny dog shapes with his chubby hands, and chuckled. ‘Not happy, not happy at all.’
    Eve whispered back. ‘Why not?’
    ‘They knocked through the two apartments, made one huge place. They have the whole floor now. That took so long, so much noise and mess, you know. They wanted the roof, too, just for themselves. They don’t want nobody above them, you know?’ He put one hand on top of his head, palm upward. ‘Nobody higher.’
    Eve nodded, ‘I understand.’ She thought she almost did. ‘And Mrs Wallace?’
    ‘Mrs Wallace has lived here since before me. And I came in 1978.’
    ‘She lives alone?’
    Raoul nodded. ‘Now she does.’
    He might have said more, but the young Chinese guy Eve had seen a few times in the elevator came in to check his post. She tried to make eye contact with him, said ‘hi’, but got little back except a distracted mumble. She got better conversation out of the doorman than she did out of her own neighbour. Nice.
    Raoul went to answer the phone, and Eve took one last look at the flyer, memorizing the date – Wednesday at 8.
    *
    ‘You should definitely do it! Sounds great! You’re the green‐fingered one in the family.’
    Ed seemed disproportionately keen on the beautifying committee – his response was affectedly animated when she told him about it over dinner. Eve felt guilty. She knew he was