The package

The cellphone rang at the same time my laptop beeped. Unless I guessed wrong, this meant a package was waiting for me at the front desk. Oh, goodie – but I wondered what it might be. I wasn’t expecting any packages.

So I put on some clothes (all right, I was masturbating, what’s it to you?) and ran downstairs. I saw Rachel on the catwalk, walking Coco, Estee, Passion, and Taylor, her four little Chihuahuas. Ever since Mark had died, it seemed like the dogs and cats in her apartment had just multiplied. But then again, so had mine – we now had Chester, Agnes, Patrick, and Dudley. A dog, two cats, and a bird.

“Thanks, Sean,” I said at the front desk when he handed me the package from Amazon. Amazon? I wasn’t expecting anything. And then I saw it was for Bill – but what’d he ordered from Amazon? Oh, well, I sighed, taking the package upstairs and back into the apartment.

Chester greeted me as if I’d been gone for four years, off to fight the wars and finally back from my grand mission.

“Enough, Chester,” I said, placing the package on the kitchen counter and diverting my attention to the dog – but what could it be, I said, looking back at the package. Bill had been awfully secretive in recent months, ever since he’d had the affair, even though he’d promised to stop it. What could it be?

That phrase that kept running through my head, whenever his cellphone rang, when he received a text message, when he excused himself quickly to send an e-mail, when he got any unusual letters, no return address, in the daily mail. What could it be? I asked myself, every time, unable to stop the little voice in the back part of my head, the part where danger lurks, the part where curiosity takes hold and spreads through the brain like wildfire. What could it be?

I looked at the package again, and then I decided.