Honest to God

By Aletta Silver

Dear Josh,

I hope you enjoyed Italy. I hear the coast is beautiful this time of year, and after that trouble with the gas main below your building and all the strange sounds coming from your upstairs neighbor, you certainly deserved a vacation!

As we agreed, I stopped by your apartment every other day to care for your peace lily (the doorman can verify this—Mr. Rufus is quite a likeable fellow and deserves to be well-tipped). Despite your concerns, the lily has survived, just as I promised. However, I wanted to drop you a little note explaining the one or two teensy differences in her appearance so you are aware of what happened.

You might notice that the lily’s leaves are a tad limp, as if she’s been over-watered. I am sure you didn’t follow the local weather while you were overseas, but we had two very rainy days in the middle of the week. After the storm on Wednesday evening, I came in to find the window open next to the lily. The puddle on the floor suggested it had been ajar for some hours. If you are surprised to learn that the windows in your condo could open, just imagine my shock! I’d never heard of a twenty-third-floor unit with openable windows, and I knew for certain that it had been closed when I was there on Monday.

At any rate, you can’t blame me for not immediately questioning the circumstances. I was subsumed by worry for your dear plant, which was clearly suffering from an overabundance of water. I rushed over and pulled it toward the kitchen, thinking that once I got her out of the rain, I would decide on the best course of care.

However, as I was rounding the corner of the dining table, I heard a noise from your bedroom and froze. I could only assume it was your housekeeper, and that the open window was part of some ill-advised modern mopping technique. I called her name and waited for a response.

The response came, but not from a plump, cheerful lady of middling years. A black-clad, masked figure dashed from your room, leapt over the lily, and tackled me to the floor, ripping off a few precious flowers as he passed. He raised a knife threateningly over me. I was too petrified to think of anything except that I’d really wanted to get promoted to the development team before my death.

As he was plunging the knife in a fatal arc toward my fluttering heart, a muscular, square-jawed blond swung in through the still-opened window. He knocked the man back against the wall. The next few minutes (which, in my mind-numbing terror, felt like hours!) were a blur of chaos. Of course, my sole concern was trying to keep your poor lily away from the pandemonium erupting around us. I ducked beneath flying kicks, whirled past battering punches, and pulled Harriette (I hope you don’t mind that I named her; after all we’ve been through together, I really felt it was appropriate) a hair’s breadth out of the way of sudden lunges. She suffered a few torn leaves, but given the combatants’ shocking lack of concern for collateral damage, it’s a miracle I protected her as well as I did.

Finally, it became clear that the blond had the masked attacker outmatched. The man turned and ran for the window. Just as he was about to escape, the blond pulled Harriette out of my hands and broke her pot over the intruder’s head.

I stood, horrified, over the ruins of my charge, who looked far too much like a bouquet on a freshly dug grave. I could scarcely consider my options. But I did have the presence of mind to tell the victor he would have to pay for the damage. He looked irritatingly confident, draped the unconscious villain over his shoulder, and informed me that it was no use pursuing him for reimbursement—no one would believe my tale.

Then he grabbed a rope and swung away into the night.

I did my best to keep your lily safe overnight in your stock pot (don’t worry, it has since been scrubbed and sterilized). The next afternoon, I returned with Paul Giddings, because he studied tae kwon do in college, and not because he is a professional botanist, no matter what his conversation with Mr. Rufus suggested. Amazingly, the windows in your apartment had already been replaced with the sealed-closed variety, which you would’ve assumed ought to have been here in the first place. All traces of Wednesday night’s events had vanished—except Harriette sitting in the stock pot. Paul and I were able to transplant her into this new planter, where she seems to be steadily recovering from her ordeal.

I do not know whether you or the building’s owner is involved in a scheme so nefarious that it necessitates the use of undercover operatives (I suspect the latter, given how quickly and quietly your windows were replaced and what you’ve mentioned about the upstairs neighbor), but either way, I do not feel safe continuing to care for Harriette. I am afraid you will need to find someone else to fill in during your Caribbean vacation in the spring.

Yours truly (in everything but plant care),
Carrie

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aletta Silver is a sucker for immersive fiction. She has studied geology (she’d be happy to point out the tectonic boundaries on that fantasy map), costume design (the fancier the dress, the better!), and she’s always looking for an excuse to make themed snacks. Though she’s been writing since age five, she is just now making her first foray into publishing her work, now that her youngest child is that same age.

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