Standing before her apartment door, Kelley took a deep breath and turned her key in the lock.
“Tyff?” she called out tentatively. “Um…I’m home-and-really-sorry…”
Silence.
“Tyff?”
“He ate my soap.” Tyff walked slowly out of the bathroom, arms folded across her chest, the tone of her voice pleasantly conversational. “My eighty-dollar bar of hand-milled Japanese herbal complexion soap. From Japan. He ate it.”
“Oh…”
“He also ate your two-dollar bar of Irish Spring. I let him eat that one.”
“Tyff, I’m really, really sorry-”
“Actually, I gave it to him to eat.” Tyff smiled sweetly. After a moment of staring honeyed daggers at Kelley, she frowned and said, “Did you know you’re soaking wet?”
“I kinda got caught out in the rain…”
“Go put on a robe or something before you warp the floor, will you?”
Kelley looked down at her feet and saw that there was a puddle forming around her. She scooted past Tyff, who stood in the bathroom doorway, shaking her head. Kelley heard a whinnied greeting from over Tyff’s shoulder.
Stripping off her jacket and jeans, she slipped into her big fluffy bathrobe, thinking how much she was not enjoying coming home soaking wet twice in a row. A cup of tea would be nice-and give her an excuse to avoid the bathroom while she put the kettle on.
“Did…um…did he eat the oats?” she asked, smiling tentatively at Tyff as she edged past. “You know…after the soap?”
“He did not.” Tyff followed her into the tiny kitchen. “However, in an effort to avoid the further consumption of toiletries, I tried giving him some of your ridiculous kiddie cereal.” She waved at a box of Lucky Charms that was sitting open on the counter. “That seemed to go over well. So did scratching him behind his left ear.”
Kelley glanced at her roommate, extremely surprised by how well Tyff was taking all of this.
“Not that I’m becoming attached or anything!” Tyff said. “Because I’m not.”
“Okay…”
“I mean-even though he’s been a very well-behaved horsie so far and hasn’t even made a horsie mess-” Tyff stopped suddenly, realizing that Kelley was staring at her. “Never mind.”
“Okay…,” Kelley said again. She turned to make the tea.
Tyff was silent for a moment. “Winslow…what happened to you today?”
“What do you mean?”
“You look kind of…spooked. Wiggy. And it’s not because there’s a soap-devouring pony in the apartment. What’s wrong with you?”
Kelley bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling. Now that she was home safe in her own apartment, the thought of what had happened in the alley came rushing back. She suddenly realized what a very scary situation she had been in.
“Kelley?”
“There was this guy in the park yesterday. I’ve never seen him before, but he gave me a rose and…well…then he just sort of disappeared.”
“So? What about him?”
“I think he might be…following me.”
“Okay,” Tyff said slowly. “I know you’re new to the big city and all but, see, that’s not a good thing, Kelley.”
“He was in the alley outside the theater this afternoon.”
“An alley? Oh, even better! Did you call the police?”
“No, but I told him to stop following me.”
“Oh, good-you talked to him,” Tyff said sarcastically. “That’s nice and safe!”
“I know, I know…” Kelley stirred distractedly at her tea. “But he had a lot of opportunity to hurt me if he’d wanted to. And he didn’t. He said I should trust him.”
“What? Trust him? He’s not some guy your wacko aunt hired to follow you around or something, is he?”
“Like a detective?” Kelley blinked away the sting of unshed tears. It hurt her somehow to know that the random act of kindness he’d presented her with in the form of that beautiful flower might, in fact, have been just a calculated move to get close to her. It had seemed such a lovely gesture at the time.
“Yeah, or some kind of bodyguard,” Tyff said. “We all know how deeply unenthusiastic dear old Auntie Em was about you moving here.”
Kelley thought about that for a moment. “Maybe…,” she said. Emma could be freakishly overprotective.
Tyff sighed, checking the time on her watch. “I have to go. I have a date and, thanks to your heroic horse-rescue efforts, I’m going to have to shower at the gym. Are you going to be okay by yourself?”
“I’ll be fine,” Kelley said. She was feeling a bit better now that she was home and had told someone about her encounter. It didn’t seem quite like such a big deal anymore. Just Big City Weirdness, and she could handle that.
“Look-just do me a favor and don’t do anything stupid?” Tyff said, swinging a pashmina over her shoulders and heading for the door. “Our little buddy in there might be well-behaved, but so far, he hasn’t contributed to the rent, so I still need you around.”
Kelley grinned and nodded. She couldn’t believe how understanding Tyff had been so far, but she was grateful.
“Maybe you could spend the evening trying to figure out a way to get Mr. Ed out of the tub,” Tyff suggested as she opened the door and stepped into the hall. “But if you do go out, watch your back, okay?”
“I will. I promise. Have fun tonight.”
The door closed behind Tyff, and Kelley went into the kitchen. She picked up the box of Lucky Charms and shook it. It was half empty. At the sound of the cereal rattling, she heard an answering whinny. She headed toward the bathroom, poking her head around the door. The horse flicked his ears in her direction. He snorted, and a large, iridescent bubble appeared, inflating from his left nostril to the size of a small balloon before popping loudly. Kelley laughed out loud at the surprised expression on the animal’s face, and he answered her back with a whinny that sounded distinctly like a bashful chuckle.
“Come on, horse.”
Kelley felt stupid.
For one thing, the horse seemed as if he might be smarter than she was. He refused to fall for her trick of moving the handful of cereal farther and farther away in an attempt to get him out of the tub. He just stretched out his neck until she was out of reach and then tilted his head, looking at her with big sad eyes, until she relented and sat on the edge of the tub, feeding him marshmallow moons, horseshoes, and clovers.
For another thing, she couldn’t just keep calling the horse “horse.” It felt…well, rude somehow.
Kelley poured out another handful of Lucky Charms, holding them up to the velvety-soft muzzle. The animal’s eyes seemed to brighten with enthusiasm, and he nuzzled around in her palm. It tickled and Kelley laughed. A name occurred to her.
“Lucky,” she murmured.
The horse lifted his head as though responding and gazed at her, munching placidly on the sugary treat. Well, it kind of fit. He was lucky that she’d been in the park that night, and he was lucky that Mrs. Madsen in the apartment next door hadn’t heard all the commotion and called the cops. He was lucky that the landlord hadn’t paid a visit. And he was extremely lucky in that Tyff, for some unfathomable reason, hadn’t killed either of them yet. Lucky.
Kelley scratched behind his left ear, and Lucky whickered softly with pleasure. Kelley got the impression that if he were a cat instead of a horse, he would’ve started to purr.
I just hope for both our sakes that you’re a “Good” Lucky, Kelley thought, and not a “Bad” Lucky. She was perfectly well aware that luck could go either way.