Chosen Girls

Chapter 4

4

Apartment 17 sat on the fourth floor of the old Smithfield Printers' building. A small, shabby affair with white walls that hadn't sniffed a new coat of paint in a decade. It was a controlled explosion of mess. A small red sofa with a threadbare gray throw over the back. An adjoining kitchenette and a tiny bathroom with a shelf cluttered with pill bottles.

Inside the bathroom was a clear two-liter jug for a shower and a half-broken toilet seat. And through the next door along, a cramped bedroom with a large, white IKEA chest of drawers stuffed with clothes. Boxes were stacked at the foot of a double bed topped with a messy, faded red and white-striped duvet. And throughout the apartment, case files and books sat in random stacks. The living area was lit by a thin. single-pane window overlooking a noisy street full of honking traffic. In front of the window sat a desk, overflowing with overdue demand letters. Amid the chaos, a gray tabby with a white bib rubbed up against Alice's stretch-denim shins.

"Hey, Axl," Alice said, as she walked with the cat at her heels, a fresh batch of demand letters in hand.

She tossed them on the pile, dumped her bag on the kitchen countertop and dished out a pouch of cat food. She took a Greek yogurt from a small, yellowing fridge, rinsed off a spoon, and wandered over to her desk. She fell into a faux-leather chair she'd rescued from a street skip and plonked both feet on the desk. She scooped a spoon of yogurt into her mouth. Her eyes wandered to her growing collection of unpaid bills. The cat leaped on the desk and watched her, tail flicking, licking its lips.

"Yeah, I know," Alice said to Axl. "We've both got to eat."

Alice put down her yogurt container. She reached over to a folded-up newspaper, spoon hanging from her mouth. She leafed through to the employment section, folded the paper out and wrestled open a half-stuck drawer. She grabbed a red pen and scanned the page, checking salary, skills, and experience.

Alice frowned. All the closing dates had expired, like the date on her yogurt. She checked the front page of the paper. Two months old. She folded it up and hurled it across the room, before dialing up the voicemail on her cellphone.

You have three new messages.

"Hi, Alice, it's Aaron, um, just seeing how you are. I enjoyed our second date, but, um, you didn't call me back."

Alice rolled her eyes and rubbed her brow with a thumb.

"Was it something I said?" Aaron continued. "I know we've not been dating long, but I feel we've got something. So, I dunno. Give me a call when you get this."

Message deleted.

Second new message.

"Hi, Alice. Aaron again. Is this ghosting? If it is, could you just let me know? A call or a text. That'd be great. Thanks. It's Aaron."

Message deleted.

"Listen, b***h, I know you're ghosting me. Well screw you, you frigid f**k. I'm dumping you. Remember that. I dumped you, okay? Yeah, that's right. Aaron's gone, baby!"

Message deleted.

You have no more messages.

“Thank god for that,” Alice said.

Dressed in black sportswear, with a matching fanny pack strapped around her waist, Alice took her usual route. It took her over one of several yellow-painted bridges that connected the city. Over to Point State Park, a beautiful, green expanse shaped like a fat slice of pizza, where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers flowed into each other at the outermost tip. Downtown Pittsburgh rose high into view, glass skyscrapers glinting in the September sun. It was a world away from Alice's rundown street, but only a short walk..

Alice liked to run along the waterfront and around a large circular fountain. She’d always follow the footpaths through the park, before re-joining the streets.

As long as she was running, nothing and no one could touch her.

The city had a habit of grinding the edges off a soul like a pepper mill. Yet she had an acute aversion to open, rural spaces too. It was better to be anonymous. To melt into the crowd. Which meant if it had to be anywhere, it had to be the city.

So it was Point State Park, once a day. A hard and fast run to blow away the red-letter cobwebs.

Halfway through her return leg, Alice sensed another runner shadowing her route. It bugged her, so she deviated off the footpath and across a stretch of grass.

Still the mystery jogger followed. A wiry, sandy-haired man fitted out in a pale-blue running vest and shorts, only a short burst of speed away from grabbing her and forcing her into a bush.

Alice stepped on the gas and put some distance between her self and the man behind. She ran over a grass hump and stopped behind the trunk of a large oak tree. She unzipped her fanny pack and felt inside with both hands. One on a can of mace. The other on a switchblade. The man closed in. Alice tensed up.

The man passed her by, re-joining a stone path that ran around a small, picturesque lake. He stopped in front of an old fashioned stall, where a teenage girl sold ice cold refreshments. The runner opened a pocket on his shorts and pulled out a dollar bill. He paid for a bottle of water and downed a third of it. He held a hand to his ribs and continued his run.

Alice shook her head and let go of the weapons inside her fanny pack. She zipped it closed and breathed out the tension under the shade of the tree. Talk about paranoid.