My Guest in Apartment 10B

The Nutcracker

If you ever need a time capsule idea, shoving a wooden box of memories into a wall will do it.

James's box had a surprising photograph of two men who had their arms around each other and were smiling widely as they looked to a blurred object on the left.

One of them had very bushy brows, and looked like a happy fellow, especially as his mouth was wide open in laughter. This was a classic example of a picture you can hear.

The other man was taller, but had a timid stance. The crinkles in his eyes expressed mirth, but it wasn't as unabashed as the man with the bushy brows.

Arabella was mesmerized. James was finally going to have a face, which was why she was startled when the photo started to get pulled from her hands.

"Wait!"

The photo flipped over, and it read:

To slick James and making peart men with pizza! Signed, G. Lombardi.

"Lombardi?" She stared at the severely browned photo card and put her finger over the blotched ink. Its oils and color had already seeped through the paper. It was a good thing that the text was still readable. "Is this Pizza Lombardi?"

If it was indeed Lombardi's pizza chain, this piece of history might well be worth a couple of bucks!

Arabella shuffled through the box and found American banknotes amounting to a little less than twenty dollars. There was also a cheque written out to James, for a meager sum of forty-three dollars. There were more photographs, but the pictures were too dark, so she could barely make out people's faces.

James's voice came from the computer. "I noticed the wall compartment when the apartment was empty. I don't even remember putting that there."

The last bit prompted her to glance back into the empty space in front of her. There were so many things that James couldn't recall. Maybe the box could help them a bit?

There was a letter inside the box, with an elegant, but broken, reddish wax seal. Feminine script in expensive ink adorned its heavy paper. If this were a modern letter, Arabella would have guessed that it was a wedding invitation.

She set the box aside and allowed curiosity to guide her. Opening the letter, she found the words: My dearest Mr. Spencer, written at the very top.

"Oh! It's a love letter!" Her fingers tensed, but she ignored the foreign feeling spreading in her chest and continued to open the folds of paper.

Clumped strands of bright blonde hair escaped and floated onto her lap.

Arabella stood, shrieked and frantically swept both letter and hair away in disgust. "What the fuck is that?!"

The hair collected itself on the floor momentarily and then floated into a neat pile on the coffee table nearby.

"It's hair," James said robotically, which earned a snort from Arabella.

"You people from the past approach dating so weirdly." She shivered as she continued to dust herself off. Just thinking about the hair strands gave her goosebumps.

Arabella took the blanket from the couch and wrapped it around herself. "That's nasty. That's the hair of a dead woman."

She stared at the clump of hair and shook her head. "I can't believe you kept that!"

There was a distant typing noise, and the computer spoke up once again. "I think it's supposed to be romantic."

Arabella made a face and approached the sink to wash her hands. She moved the box onto a part of the counter that was in her line of sight, then proceeded to continue preparing dinner. As she worked on the food, James busily inspected the contents. He read the letter without comment then disposed of the hair.