Over My Live Body by Susan Israel

two. Maybe even longer if I promise to do the watering.
    I fumble with the keys and drop them. My whole body is stiff from the pose I held for so long. Maybe not long enough. At least I got a nap out of it. I insert the key on the second try and totter up the stairs almost noiselessly, tiptoeing like a prowler who doesn’t belong here. I gasp when I reach the top of the stairs. Somebody dumped a heap of chrysanthemum blossoms at my doorstep in an arrangement that would make Martha Stewart lose her lunch. Yellow petals are scattered everywhere, and near them there’s a note written on a sheet of paper torn from a yellow legal pad. I crouch to pick it up and read it:
    I’ve picked you. You’re mine. It’s just a matter of weeding out the competition.
    My hands shake as I quickly gather up the flowers—what there is of them—by their short stems and squeeze them in my fist. I thrust the note in my pocket and head down the stairs and out of the building and keep walking. I turn down West Tenth Street, clutching at the bundle of decapitated chrysanthemums, and walk faster until I see a blue-and-white, an RMP , pull out of a driveway and I know I’m close to my destination. I run the rest of the way until I’m safely inside and pull up breathlessly at the front desk, in front of a big red STOP sign. I hold out the flowers to the first police officer I see.
    “For me?” he smiles quizzically.
    “These were left for me,” I babble, “like this, on the floor in front of my doorstep, with this note…” I fish it out of my pocket with trembling fingers and thrust it in the smirking officer’s face. I look around the room for either of the officers who came to my place Friday night, a familiar face, someone familiar with my situation. “Could I speak to Officer Venison?”
    This just prompts a bigger grin. I hear somebody somewhere behind the tall desk to my left say, “Didn’t know he was such a dear .” I feel my face turn cadmium red medium. “Vinson,” I correct myself. “Officer Vinson .” The officers continue to chuckle. Mixed in with their whispered giggles, I hear the names Bambi and Thumper. “Somebody’s stalking me,” I finally shout too loudly. “He left this pile of flowers at my doorstep. He left this note. It’s not the first note he’s left me. I want to file a complaint.”
    A man in plain clothes signals me to one side. He reminds me of one of those hundreds-of-years-old men in the Caucasus who stay young by eating yogurt and probably could use some. He has a huge bushy gray mustache and a shaven head, but is by no means even a half century old. The job must have taken its toll. He looks very dour. I’m very grateful for dour. Dour is exactly what I came here for. “Let’s see the note,” he grumbles, and I hand it to him. He doesn’t move a facial muscle. “This isn’t overtly threatening,” he says solemnly, handing the note back to me. “Are you sure it isn’t from some boyfriend of yours just trying to be clever?”
    Leaving flowers at my doorstep is very easily something Ivan would do, but he would leave four dozen red sweetheart roses mixed in with birds of paradise and white carnations, all with stems attached, something I could stick in a vase and add water to, thereby constantly reminding me of his existence. That’s more his style. Not that that would be any less threatening.
    “These weren’t left by any boyfriend,” I insist. “These were left by the guy who’s been calling me and following me around, I’m sure of it. He left me another note Saturday, when I was working in the art studio over on West Eighth. Now he’s left this right at my front door. Inside . And defaced private property besides!”
    “You have the other note?”
    “Not with me,” I admit. “It’s in my apartment. I didn’t even go inside. I just took off and rushed here as soon as I saw this.” I feel weak-kneed. “I don’t even know if he got in my apartment. He could have been