“I can hear something behind the wainscoting,” Penny replied. “Maybe mice, or maybe it’s baby possums caught in the wall between the bedroom and kitchen.”
Mrs. Stahl looked at her. “Is it after you bake? It might be the dampers popping again.”
“I’m not much of a cook. I haven’t even turned on the oven yet.”
“That’s not true,” Mrs. Stahl said, lifting her chin triumphantly. “You had it on the other night.”
“What?” Then Penny remembered. It had rained sheets and she’d used it to dry her dress. But it had been very late and she didn’t see how Mrs. Stahl could know. “Are you peeking in my windows?” she asked, voice tightening.
“I saw the light. The oven door was open. You shouldn’t do that,” Mrs. Stahl said, shaking her head. “It’s very dangerous.”
“You’re not the first landlord I caught peeping. I guess I need to close my curtains,” Penny said coolly. “But it’s not the oven damper I’m hearing each and every night. I’m telling you, there’s something inside my walls. Something in the kitchen.”
Mrs. Stahl’s mouth seemed to quiver slightly, which emboldened Penny.
“Do I need to get out the ball peen I found under the sink and tear a hole in the kitchen wall, Mrs. Stahl?”
“Don’t you dare!” she said, clutching Penny’s wrist, her costume rings digging in. “Don’t you dare!”
Penny felt the panic on her, the woman’s breath coming in sputters. She insisted they both sit on the fountain edge.
For a moment they both just breathed, the apricot-perfumed air thick in Penny’s lungs.
“Mrs. Stahl, I’m sorry. It’s just — I need to sleep.”
Mrs. Stahl took a long breath, then her eyes narrowed again. “It’s those chinwags next door, isn’t it? They’ve been filling your ear with bile.”
“What? Not about this, I—”
“I had the kitchen cleaned thoroughly after it happened. I had it cleaned, the linoleum stripped out. I put up fresh wallpaper over every square inch after it happened. I covered everything with wallpaper.”
“Is that where it happened?” Penny asked. “That poor man who died in Number Four? Larry?”
But Mrs. Stahl couldn’t speak, or wouldn’t, breathing into her handkerchief, lilac silk, the small square over her mouth suctioning open and closed, open and closed.
“He was very beautiful,” she finally whispered. “When they pulled him out of the oven, his face was the most exquisite red. Like a ripe, ripe cherry.”
Knowing how it happened changed things. Penny had always imagined handsome, melancholy Larry walking around the apartment, turning gas jets on. Settling into that club chair in the living room. Or maybe settling in bed and slowly drifting from earth’s fine tethers.
She wondered how she could ever use the oven now, or even look at it.
It had to be the same one. That Magic Chef, which looked like the one from childhood, white porcelain and cast iron. Not like those new slabs, buttercup or mint green.
The last tenant, Mr. Flant told her later, smelled gas all the time.
“She said it gave her headaches,” he said. “Then one night she came here, her face white as snow. She said she’d just seen Saint Agatha in the kitchen, with her bloody breasts.”
“I... I don’t see anything like that,” Penny said.
Back in the bungalow, trying to sleep, she began picturing herself the week before. How she’d left that oven door open, her fine, rain-slicked dress draped over the rack. The truth was, she’d forgotten about it, only returning for it hours later.
Walking to the closet now, she slid the dress from its hanger, pressing it to her face. But she couldn’t smell anything.
Mr. D. still had not returned her calls. The bank had charged her for the bounced check, so she’d have to return the hat she’d bought, and rent was due again in two days.
When all the other crew members were making their way to the commissary for lunch, Penny slipped away and splurged on cab fare to the studio.
As she opened the door to his outer office, the receptionist was already on her feet and walking purposefully toward Penny.
“Miss,” she said, nearly blocking Penny, “you’re going to have to leave. Mac shouldn’t have let you in downstairs.”
“Why not? I’ve been here dozens of—”
“You’re not on the appointment list, and that’s our system now, miss.”
“Does he have an appointment list now for that squeaking starlet sofa in there?” Penny asked, jerking her arm and pointing at the leather-padded door. A man with a thin mustache and a woman in a feathered hat looked up from their magazines.
The receptionist was already on the phone. “Mac, I need you... Yes, that one.”
“If he thinks he can just toss me out like street trade,” she said, marching over and thumping on Mr. D.’s door, “he’ll be very, very sorry.”
Her knuckles made no noise in the soft leather. Nor did her fist.
“Miss,” someone said. It was the security guard striding toward her.
“I’m allowed to be here,” she insisted, her voice tight and high. “I did my time. I earned the right.”
But the guard had his hand on her arm.
Desperate, she looked down at the man and the woman waiting. Maybe she thought they would help. But why would they?
The woman pretended to be absorbed in her Cinestar magazine.
But the man smiled at her, hair oil gleaming. And winked.
The next morning she woke bleary but determined. She would forget about Mr. D. She didn’t need his money. After all, she had a job, a good one.
It was hot on the lot that afternoon, and none of the makeup crew could keep the dust off the faces. There were so many lines and creases on every face — you never think about it until you’re trying to make everything smooth.
“Penny,” Gordon, the makeup supervisor, said. She had the feeling he’d been watching her for several moments as she pressed the powder into the actor’s face, holding it still.
“It’s so dusty,” she said, “so it’s taking a while.”
He waited until she finished. Then, as the actor walked away, he leaned forward.
“Everything all right, Pen?”
He was looking at something — her neck, her chest.
“What do you mean?” she said, setting the powder down.
But he just kept looking at her.
“Working on your carburetor, beautiful?” one of the grips said as he walked by.
“What? I...”
Peggy turned to the makeup mirror. That was when she saw the long grease smear on her collarbone. And the line of black soot across her hairline too.
“I don’t know,” Penny said, her voice sounding slow and sleepy. “I don’t have a car.”
Then it came to her: the dream she’d had in the early morning hours. That she was in the kitchen, checking on the oven damper. The squeak of the door on its hinges, and Mrs. Stahl outside the window, her eyes glowing like a wolf’s.
“It was a dream,” she said now. Or was it? Had she been sleepwalking the night before?
Had she been in the kitchen... at the oven... in her sleep?
“Penny,” Gordon said, looking at her squintily. “Penny, maybe you should go home.”
It was so early, and Penny didn’t want to go back to the Canyon Arms. She didn’t want to go inside Number Four, or walk past the kitchen, its cherry wallpaper lately giving her the feeling of blood spatters.
Also, lately she kept thinking she saw Mrs. Stahl peering at her between the wooden blinds as she watered the banana trees.
Instead she took the bus downtown to the big library on South Fifth. She had an idea.