Boston Noir

During one of those first nights, after Caroline Yip had left on her bicycle, Toua entered the house. From what he had observed, he was not expecting tidiness, but he was still taken aback by the interior’s condition. The woman was an immense slob. Her only furnishings were a couch and a coffee table (obviously street finds), a boom box, a futon, and a few ugly lamps, the floors littered with clothes, CDs, shoes, books, papers, and magazines. There was a thick layer of grease on the stove and countertops, dust and hair and curdled food on every other surface, and the bathroom was clogged with sixty-two bottles of shampoo and conditioner, some half-filled, most of them empty. No photos or posters adorned the walls, no decorations anywhere, and there were no extra place settings for guests. She didn’t need companionship, it appeared, didn’t need mementos of her family or her past, reminders of her origins or her identity. She was a transient. Her house was a functional dump. Her attention resided elsewhere.

By poking through her bills, pay stubs, calendar, and checkbook, Toua gleaned several more things: Caroline Yip had no money and lousy credit; she taught classes at three different colleges as a poorly paid adjunct instructor; she supported herself mainly by waitressing at Chez Henri four nights a week; she had no appointments whatsoever, not with a lover or friend or family member or even a dentist, in the foreseeable future.

He downloaded her e-mail and website usernames and passwords and configured her wireless modem so he could access her laptop covertly, but there wasn’t much activity there, nothing unusual. Nor did her cell phone calls, which he was able to pick up on his radio scanner, merit much interest over the next few days, nothing more personal than scheduling shifts at work. She was a loner. She didn’t have a life. Just like him.

She was also, like Toua, an insomniac. On consecutive nights, he saw her bedroom light snapping on for a while, going out, turning on, which explained the dark circles under her eyes and the strange ritual she practiced in the mornings, meditating on the living room floor, beginning the sessions by trying to relax her face, stretching and contorting it, mouth yowling open, eyes bulging-a horrific sight. What kept her up at night? What was worrying Caroline Yip, preoccupying her?

She would end up supplying the answers herself. He supposed, given their proximity, that it was inevitable they would run into each other. The morning of his fifth day, as he was walking down the driveway, she surprised him by coming out the side door, laundry basket in hand. He thought she’d left on her jog already.

“Oh, hey,” she said. “You’re my new neighbor, aren’t you?”

They introduced themselves, shaking hands.

“Where’d you live before this?” she asked.

“ Agassiz,” he said. “You know, near Dali.”

“I love that restaurant.”

“How about you? How long you been here?”

“Oh, four years or so.”

Up close, she was more appealing than he’d anticipated. As opposed to Marcella Ahn, she was exactly his type, natural, unpretentious, a little shy, forgetful but not at all ditzy, not unlike his ex-girlfriend. Toua had to remind himself that Caroline Yip was the subject of his investigation, and that she was, in all probability, unstable, if not out-and-out dangerous.

“Hey, I gotta go,” she said, “but if you’re not doing anything later, we can have a drink in the garden.” They both looked over at the “garden,” broken concrete slabs and crab-grass where a battered wire table and two cracked plastic chairs were perched, and they shared a smirk. “I make a mean gin and tonic.”

“I don’t drink,” he told her.

“Iced tea, then.”

It was a bit unorthodox, but Toua accepted the invitation. He thought it’d give him an opportunity to probe, so he met her outside at 6, Caroline Yip bringing out two tall glasses of iced tea, Toua a plate of cheese and crackers.

They made small talk, mostly chatting about the neighborhood, the laundromat, nearby stores, takeout places-soul food from the Coast Café on River Street, steak tips from the Village Grill on Magazine. Then, as casually as he could, Toua asked, “What’s the owner of this property like?”

“What do you mean?”

“She a decent landlord? She fix things when they break?”

“She’s a cunt.”

“Okay,” he said. He had thought he’d have to work a little harder to uncover her feelings. He had agreed to give Marcella Ahn daily e-mail updates, but thus far he’d had nothing to report. Caroline Yip wasn’t doing anything untoward in the house, and her water usage, according to the meter, which he dutifully checked every day, was normal. He had begun to think this was all a figment of Marcella Ahn’s imagination, that the gifts had been from a fan (did poets have fans?), that the meter had been malfunctioning or there’d indeed been a leak. But now, startled by the vehemence with which Caroline Yip said “cunt,” he reconsidered. “Why do you say that?”

“Let’s talk about something else. Want a refill?”