Mrs. Adler Was In On It

Mrs. Adler was in on it. That is the part I keep turning over in my head. Not the man in the black coat from yesterday. Not Mr. Pereira using my real phone at eleven like it was a leash he hadn't tried yet. Mrs. Adler. The thimble woman. The one who treats me like a person.

This morning her granddaughter brought me a juice box and asked me to braid a doll's hair. I tied a tiny satin bow at the nape of its skull. The girl was so pleased she held it up to show her grandmother through the doorway. And Mrs. Adler, in the kitchen, asked me — that specific casual voice she uses when a sentence has been rehearsed — whether I was still seeing the nice doorman in Kips Bay.

I know what that question was now. She has been filling in the picture. Where I get coffee. The bodega woman. The prepaid refill at the post office. The doorman. She has been whispering my summer into the same circle that built the Park Avenue room while I pinned hems for her and called her by her first name.

I am not going back next Tuesday. The thimble can stay hostage. That is the cleanest I can make it.

The second card is in tomorrow's coat now. Same handwriting. Same stock. Same weight as the one I found in the Park Avenue lining last week. I found it this morning tucked inside Mrs. Adler's cashmere. I did not photograph it. I pocketed it.