Envy is one of the 7 deadly sins. I’m not dead yet. It sneaks up on a soul, envy, like the hiss of snake through grass.
Her hair was long and shiny and her legs shapely. She wasn’t on my arm or laughing at my jokes. Sure, I envied the guy but only at a distance. Maybe I could have shaken the green-eyed monster off, but I had to see her every day walk out with him.
“Hi, how are you?” Her voice chirpy as she shuffled through her mail.
“Okay, how are you?” Me the regular guy who wore plaid shirts and worked construction. The guy she hung out with wore suits that glistened and white shirts so bright they appeared to glow. One night as they went out arm in arm. I imagined his conservative tie with a snorting pig on it and a bulbous tie pin. Fact is he didn’t wear tie pins.
They were an item for about a month, maybe a month and a half, then the cops were knocking on my door.
“Did you know her?”
“We said hello in the mail room.”
“See her often there?”
“She lived on the floor above me. I saw her around.”
“So, you were near neighbors.”
“Yeah, her and her boyfriend.”
“Anybody you know?”
“No. Some slick guy in expensive suits.”
“She was a looker.”
“So are lots of women.”
The murder made the papers and of course my fellow tenants were up in arms and worried about their kids and apartment safe dogs. It was too bad, and I had to squelch my grandmother’s voice in my head, “girls like that deserve what they get?”
I went to work the next day and the next and thought about her nearly constantly. The next week I was invited out for a beer with the guys and was glad to go. I walked into my apartment and realized I hadn’t thought of her for several hours. In a month I thought of her occasionally.
I woke up one night with a gentle tapping on my bedroom door and she stood there looking at me all worried.
“How did you get in?”
“Through your window.”
“I live on the 8th floor.”
“I came in through your window.”
She stepped toward my bed and I as up and out and pressing myself against the wall.
“Get out!” I shouted and she stopped. She was dressed how I remember her the last night I saw her alive; her slinky pink dress looked stained and her hair a mess.
“I was nice to you, I invited you in,” she whined.
I was careful and I did get away with it in a sense, problem is I see her now and again.