A Visitor

How she was the first to notice her there, Nell couldn’t say. 

Nell was startled enough to jump back with a yelp when she saw the baby sitting in a high chair, pushed up to a table that had appeared to have been vacated hours ago. A sandwich sat untouched. A flat glass of soda sent up a last few apathetic bubbles. A napkin still folded, but Nell could see now, clearly scrawled upon, in tiny, urgent script.

It was as though a fog had cleared instantly, and she blinked away light that was too bright. She put her hand to her ear, offended by too-loud clatter, almost surprised when she pulled it away and it was clean of blood. There was a final customer in Terri’s section paying while Terri obscured her look of annoyance behind a tightly drawn smile. It was 10:16 pm and the restaurant was closed as of a quarter of an hour ago. 

Nell couldn’t explain why the table hadn’t been cleared after so long, much less how an unattended child had gone unnoticed by all of them for any length of time.

Nell caught the eye of other servers cleaning across the dining room. Everyone seemed to notice the baby then, at the same time, and the baby stared back at them silently, as in reproach at their cowardice at hanging back, as if offering a dare. Nell hesitantly closed the few steps between her and the table and approached the child. 

The guy Terri was closing out said, “the fuck?” and shoved his receipt in his pocket as he walked to the table, Terri close behind. Other servers joined, and Tall Paul from the bar loomed at the back of the small crowd.

“Nell,” said Terri. “This was your section. Do you remember the table?” 

She thought she did. An impression of a dark-haired woman, a large watch that glittered with fake diamonds hugging a slender wrist so tightly as to look as though it might choke out the blood in her bony hand. The jewels had to be fake, Nell was sure, gaudy and plentiful as they were. But what if they weren’t was another thrilling thought. 

But just as soon Nell brought the picture of the woman to her mind, fidgeting and nervous in her memory, tapping an elegant manicure on the table over and over while the baby fussed haughtily, Nell doubted. Maybe the dark-haired woman, resplendent and possibly bejeweled as a priestess, had been there earlier in the night, eating with a pale person with large eyes. Nell remembered them, their loud laugh. But no, that was wrong. That person had been in yesterday, with a group of friends. Thinking about the dark-haired woman made Nell’s head hurt. 

“No,” Nell managed to sputter. Her hair felt too tightly pulled back now, and she tugged at her ponytail. “Paul, did you make any drinks for this table?” 

Tall Paul, giant and blond and bearded as a Norse deity, shrugged, letting hair fall into his face before running his fingers through it. The side of his right hand carried a small tattoo, faded, a few words in cursive. Nell knew they were lyrics to his favorite song.

“Maybe,” said Paul. “Was that the bearded guy who drank all the martinis?” 

“No, I had that guy,” said Terri. “Right when I came in. He stayed two hours and tipped like shit.” 

Paul nodded and scrunched his brow. 

“Yeah, I guess so. You’re right, now that I think of it.”

None of them had made a move to pick up the baby, and the baby continued to stare back at them in a taunting way. The baby’s ears were pierced. A girl maybe, thought Nell, a sour little girl with balled up fists. Why, the anger threatening to burst from this tiny child was almost comical! Nell found herself smiling, charmed. The baby was dressed in a tiny gray sweatshirt and brown corduroy pants, a serious outfit. Her soft feet were bare and dangling and she kicked at the highchair.  A pink birthmark prettily stained her neck.

Nell dared to reach out and touch her head and reveled in the luxuriant feeling of her peach fuzz growth of hair. The baby turned her eyes up to Nell imperiously. 

“We should call the cops,” said one of the servers. “Someone left their baby or is missing their baby. This is weird. I don’t like this.”

Terri started to speak with her typical authority and the servers muttered agreement as she took the temperature of the crowd. No one felt good, it was determined. No one fucking liked this. The baby repelled them. 

But Nell picked up the baby and her world was now the blue green of her eyes. The baby opened her mouth and showed two bottom teeth, not a smile, but like an animal asserting dominance. The napkin with the note was balled into Nell’s hand without her remembering picking it up, and she shoved it into her pants pocket.

“Nell?” 

That was Paul speaking, she was sure. Paul had always been nice to her. Whatever fog she’d been in a few minutes ago seemed to be reasserting itself. But there was Paul, so tall, his gravity in competition, pulling her away from the tug of the baby’s. 

The heat of a large hand on her shoulder. When Nell turned her head, she saw his familiar tattoo blurred in her periphery. Paul’s hands smelled of lemon, and his name rose up to her lips but evaporated as her mouth hung open. A noise like an angry swarm buzzed in her ears, and the buzzing almost formed words. 

Once through the doors of the restaurant, the noises were familiar ones, the clatter of cars, of conversation on the street. The shock of the early winter night hit her skin and knocked her into pools of disorienting clarity. Nell knew people called after her. A fire truck passed on the street with a horrible ruckus and blinding lights. A gust of wind washed the not unpleasant scent of dead leaves and gasoline over her.

And all the lights of the city lit up to guide her. She was a sailor following a constellation. The baby bared her two teeth again and Nell hugged her to her chest, her walk speeding up, and weaved through the people still on the street, untying her apron as she did and letting it drop on the ground. 

Someone called out to her. 

“Miss! Miss!” 

They were now at the bus stop on the bridge, which was a mile from the restaurant. Nell had always hated this stop and how the bridge rumbled beneath her. Beneath them. She didn’t remember walking a mile, and she’d left her coat at work. Strangely, only her nose was really cold, and the tips of her ears. 

The baby lifted a fat finger and pointed down at the choppy river smacking the pebbled shore and the mist rising from it. Nell understood her gesture to be admiring and nodded in agreement.

When the bus came, Nell rushed past the driver with her head bowed and let him reprimand her several times for not paying. The bus left anyway, the driver directing a split-second scowl at her over his shoulder, and Nell leaned back in her seat, exhausted. She blinked at her image in the security monitor at the front of the bus, squeezing tightly at a vague form in her arms. A white corner of a napkin dangled from Nell’s pocket and she took it out and began to read the message. As she started, she realized it had always been meant for her.

Now, a neighbor coming in from a last walk with her dog greeted Nell at her apartment door with a smile that nearly jumped from her face as she took in Nell and the baby. The neighbor skittered away in fear as the dog whined and yipped and the cowardly whites of his eyes rolled into focus, his tail between his legs. 

The lights in the hall became brighter, much more luminous than should have been possible. For one long, rapturous second, the lights blazed, then dimmed and kept dimming until Nell and the baby stood in a dark hallway with only a spray of moonlight and neon spilling in from a painted-shut window at the end of the hall. 

The baby lifted her tiny hand again and again. Nell understood. They walked together to the patch of moonlight and stood basking in it. The dog continued to whine behind her neighbor’s door, and Nell heard bolts slamming into place as doors were locked. 

The handsome man across the hall opened his door a sliver and peeked out. Nell and the baby smiled at him. He’d always been nice to her, this handsome man, and Nell didn’t want anything to happen to him, so she stroked the baby’s head to placate her. Permission granted, Nell warned the handsome man, but she didn’t have authority to offer reprieve.

Nell rummaged for her keys in her pocket, squinting at the lock when she had them in her hand as if fitting the two together was some impossible puzzle. The baby furrowed her delicate brows to chastise her. All the cold she hadn’t felt earlier now prickled at her skin, and Nell began to shiver. A few moments of time slipped into a comfortable black void and when Nell blinked awake, her keys were in the door. 

Her phone rang in her back pocket and she fumbled with it, seeing Paul’s name on the screen as she dropped it onto the dingy hallway carpet. Paul had a special ringtone, his favorite song from the tattoo on his hand, and it bounced from wall to wall.

Nell bent to pick up the phone, and the baby snarled at her in warning. The screen went black for only a second before Paul’s name appeared again. The chorus to his favorite song started over and Nell hummed a bar as she stepped inside.

*

Inside her apartment, Nell stood at the window in the living room. Her door was open behind her, and the phone, still on the floor in the hallway, rang and rang. Paul’s favorite song chimed and chimed until it was a hymn Nell sang. 

The red numbers on the clock on the oven showed a time that confused her, but only for a moment. The copper scent of her own blood on her wrist was similarly discarded without much thought. Down the hall, the handsome man begged and called her name. A cat that had been released to find safety wandered in and sat at Nell’s feet. The baby’s plump pointer finger passed judgment that the cat was welcome, that the cat, chirping at Nell’s feet and rubbing against her calf, was a blessing to them both. 

Nell sipped a cup of tea and watched the remaining lights in the building across the street flicker off like fire being swallowed. A black and white movie played on her television, and she watched it succumb to an overgrowth of static, the music distorting and notes elongating obscenely as though melting, until the screen went black. 

A scream rose from the street. The smell of smoke tickled her nose. From the distance, a loud crash. The ground rattled the building almost gently. Nell sighed with happiness.

The baby, on the couch, reared her head, and her eyes shone. 

Heather Whited graduated from Western Kentucky University in 2006 with a BA in creative writing. She lived in Japan and Ireland before returning to her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee to obtain her graduate degree. She now lives in Portland, Oregon. She has been published in the literary magazines Straylight, Lingerpost, The Timberline Review, A Door is Ajar, Allegro, Foliate Oak, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Windmill; The Hofstra Journal of Art and Literature, Chantwood Literary Magazine, Cricket, Storm Cellar,  Forge, Gravel, The Hungry Chimera, The Broke Bohemian, The Arlington Literary Journal, Wax Paper, Projected Letters, Borrowed Solace, Edify Poetry, Evocations, Fleas on the Dog, Change Seven, Splash!, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, The Hamilton Stone Review, The Dillydoun Review, Gold Man Review, Delay Fiction, The Bangalore Review, Syncopation Literary Journal, Half and One, Litro Literary Magazine,  The New Plains Review, and soon Barzakh, In 2015 she was an honorable mention in Gemini Magazine’s annual short story contest and in 2018 and 2020 she was a finalist in the Adelaide Literary Award contest. In 2021 she was a finalist in The Tatterhood Review‘s Novel Excerpt contest (now Landing Zone). In 2022 she was a semifinalist in Driftwood Press’s annual short story contest, and in 2022 she was a finalist in Quarterly West‘s short story contest. She is a contributor to The Drunken Odyssey podcast and Secondhand Stories Podcast.