She did, finally, and I stood in the hallway to watch her get into her Porsche, check her hair, and then pull away fast. Hernán came out to watch too, since nothing happened without his notice. “¿Qué coño?” he asked me.
“What…” I translated, but then stopped when I got to the second word, which I seemed to recognize. “No, that question doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s slang. What the hell?”
“You mean Vivienne? She was someone I knew, before.”
“Before your accident,” he expanded, and I nodded. “She was your friend? Besides Levi, you’ve never had anyone over here.”
He knew, since he kept track. He and Levi had gotten better acquainted in the last few weeks, because Hernán popped out of his apartment every time Levi’s old car stopped at the curb outside our building. He often beat me to it so he could speak Spanish with a person who actually understood.
Yes, Levi had been coming over, but not just to talk to Hernán. We’d been taking the walks that helped my hip to loosen up, for one thing. We’d gone for ice cream and more coffee and we’d headed back to the park to sit, but not near the ant hill. We just hung out, mostly talking about old movies and his family, because I loved to hear stories about them. He had been such a troublemaker growing up and it sounded like he had tortured his sisters, like when he’d “played football” with the younger one. That had consisted of her running as fast as she could to get away before he tackled her. But both those girls had given it back to him—and more than anything, it was always clear how much they loved each other.
“That’s so nice,” I’d said the day before, when he’d told me about Ava following him in her car when he went out with some people she didn’t approve of. She’d ended up calling him and feigningan emergency (their house had been hit by a hot air balloon) so that he was able to extricate himself when the new crowd had started shoplifting.
“Very nice,” he had agreed. “She wasn’t great at camouflage, though. If they hadn’t been so drunk, they definitely would have spotted her riding our bumper.”
That memory now gave me an idea. I saidadiósto Hernán and went out onto the front steps. One thing about my job was that I was able to set my own hours, so if I wanted to stop working in the middle of the day, I could. I would make up that time at night when I was alone but most other people were forming additional relationship bonds. Levi’s new job also allowed him to come and go as he chose, since he was working from his new apartment and not an office where coworkers would frown on him taking off in the middle of the day to go spy with me.
Because that was my plan. I texted and he said sure, he’d be over in a little while. I was already standing on the sidewalk when he pulled up so that Hernán wouldn’t be able to get involved. My neighbor must have heard something anyway because as I got into the car, I saw his face appear at his window.
“Go!” I said, and we did.
“Hi. What are we doing?” Levi asked me.
“Remember how Ava followed you because she was worried?” I reminded him, and he nodded.
“We’re going to follow someone?”
“Close. We need to drive by a few places.” The directions were already cued up on my phone and I started the route.
“Hernán texted me about your visitor,” he mentioned. “He called her a beautiful young woman who drives a Porsche.”
“Why are you texting with him?”
“He’s lonely.” We drove north on Woodward Avenue. “He misses his daughter a lot and he doesn’t have many other people to talk to. Who are we spying on?”
“We’re not exactly spying,” I corrected. “We’re assessing the situation.”
“Whose situation are we assessing?”
“First, a woman named Vivienne, then an older couple named Tony and Harriet, and the third person is Grant.”
“Grant is your former boyfriend who drove you into a wall,” Levi stated, and I nodded.
“Exactly, and his best friend from childhood is a guy named Lance. They used to play lacrosse together and they ended up going to the same college. Vivienne is Lance’s wife and she was the woman who came over to see me today. Tony and Harriet are Grant’s parents.”
“Why do you want to see all of them?”
“Something is going on. Why would she have visited me? When I asked, she only said that I should go back where I came from.”
“She used those words?”
If I’d had the transcript already prepared, then I could have given him a better idea of the exact phrasing, but I thought that I was pretty close so I nodded. “After the first few weeks, I didn’t try to contact any of them again. I have no idea what’s actually going on, but there’s something.”
“Why didn’t you hear from them before now? You said that your boyfriend didn’t want to deal with your injuries, but what about his parents? What about this Vivian woman?”
“Vivienne,” I corrected. “They didn’t like me.”
