Bumpings

Robyn traced the fluttering pattern of dried coffee stains with her finger. The lights in this room were muted, a soft yellow. The interrogation room had been a searing purple-white.

"In order," the detective said, "tell us about them in order. If you can."

Robyn shifted her gaze from the coffee stains to detective one. Detective two stood in the corner. He had freed her from the light of the interrogation room. Robyn didn't know their names, and wasn't sure she should ask. She had barely allowed herself to study their features. She was so grateful, jinxing it seemed like a bad idea. You didn't question luck.

"The first one was about my height," Robyn started, focusing on detective one's shirt front, "black, wearing a light grey track suit. He sort of went across me."

"Between five foot four and five foot six? We need heights Robyn," detective two instructed, "And he bumped into you? Hard?"

"Not hard," she frowned, "he mostly hit my right shoulder, and sort of tapped me in a few places. It was weird. He didn't say anything, just kept going. I stopped, and turned around. I can't put my finger on it, it was just so weird."

"What was weird about it?" Detective one asked, "him not speaking?"

"Him not apologizing," Robyn suddenly smirked, "I said sorry of course."

"And no response from him," detective one sniffed, placing both hands on the table about the distance of a placemat and dinner setting between them.

"No," Robyn blinked, remembering the scene. It had been the first time anyone had run into her and not apologized. The auto-sorry wasn't as prominent as it used to be, but it was still Canada. He hadn't even acknowledged her existence, until she had turned around. "He was standing under the walkway, just starring at me."

"So he bumped into you, kept going, you turned around and he was watching."

"Yes," Robyn said, he shoulders started to ache. She wondered how long they had been hurting, "So I kept walking."

"You told the sergeant that you laughed," detective two reminded her from the corner.

"I laughed," Robyn said, scratching the inside of her thumb with one finger. She had been worrying the same spot for days, "I didn't find it funny, but it was so obviously not an accident. The mall is huge. There weren't that many people in it, classes let out at twenty minutes past the hour, and it was like ten o'clock."

Detective one and two exchanged a glance.

"Who was the next one?"

"I don't remember if this is in order, it started happening almost every time I was on campus," Robyn said, impatient with her own memory, "But I did write it down."

"Tell us about the woman outside of student housing," detective one said slowly, his voice strangely low and deliberate as Robyn shuffled through her mental images. They had all been so different. Way too random, was what she had written down at home. That many people doing exactly the same thing. No matter how varied they were, it was a pattern.

"I walk to school, it's about ten minutes from the house," Robyn said, allowing herself a peak at detective two. All she had registered was that he was taller than the closet she had assembled last week in the entry hall. And broader. He had dark hair, short cropped, and bright hazel eyes. Robyn focused back on the coffee stains. "She was outside the student housing building. There is this facade thing, like a freestanding wall, and she was standing halfway behind it. She kept looking up at me, and then when I got closer, she turned slowly and went back inside."

"Slowly," detective one asked, making spider puppets out of his hands and circling them on the table top before dropping them, palms down, "noticeably slowly? Did you get the feeling that she wanted you to notice her?"

"I'm not sure," Robyn thought, worrying her thumb, "It was either that or she thought it was less obvious if she didn't move quickly. You know how when you see people in movies, extras, walking around in the background, and it looks like they forgot how to walk? She looked like that. Awkward."

Detective one and two both broke out laughing. It was a strangely harmonious sound that was immediately absorbed into the cork walls. Then they stopped.

"Sounds like she knew you were watching. It was like that every time?" Detective questioned, spidering his hands and lowering his face to meet her lowered eyes.

"The first time she tried to smile at me, but it was really weird, like the same as how she was slow," Robyn remembered, pulling a hair off of her t-shirt to avoid meeting his eyes. Not wanting to drop the hair, she rolled it into her hand until it was a tight ball.

"Did you smile back?"

"No, I starred back," Robyn shook her head, "It wasn't comfortable. She didn't have anything in her hands, like a bag of food or something. People wait for food deliveries. No one else was around."

"Lucky for you, they aren't very good at this, or you'd still be in interrogation," detective two sniffed.

"Good at what?" Robyn asked. She was still unsure what it was that had gotten her out of the room where she had been for almost two days. She only knew that at one point, everyone had left. And detective two, the armoire sized cop, had pulled her out into an empty hallway.

"Who was next?" detective one said quickly, his voice rising.

"There was a square blonde guy who bumped into me in the quad," Robyn rushed to add the details, "Maybe five foot ten, white, he knocked into my school bag really hard, and did the same thing. I stopped, turned around, and he was starring at me. He wasn't the second one though. I've got it all at home."

"Doesn't matter," detective one said, "Let's just get a list, you can order them later." Robyn nodded tightly.

"There was a blonde woman, about my height, wearing a greyish Christmas sweater," Robyn continued, "an Asian man in a group of people, same thing, expect he kept walking, didn't turn around. One of the others, in the group, she said sorry, and then the one next to her grabbed her arm and said something to her, and she stopped apologizing. He was tall, thin, almost six feet I think."

The detectives were silent.

"There was this mark on my bag," Robyn stopped scratching her thumb, as the memory abruptly interrupted her train of thought, "after the blond one bumped into me."

"Christmas sweater or the square?" detective one asked urgently.

"The square," she said, remembering finding the mark, "He mostly hit my bag, and it swung around my shoulder and hit me in the back. I found this long, whiteish grey streak on the outside. I cleaned it off. It was so weird that I saved it."

"Saved what?" detective two said, coming forward to sit down at the table next to detective one of the spider hands, who had stopped circling. Squish, Robyn thought morbidly, she was definitely losing it.

It was embarrassing, even though the bumpings were so deliberate and strange, that she had kept the cloth. They were starring at her, and neither the coffee stains or detective two's extra wide brogues would save her.

"The cloth," Delilah said, shutting her eyes. They would definitely put her back in the bright white interrogation room now, but she had already said it, "I cleaned off the mark and put it in a ziploc bag."

Robyn had scrubbed all unwanted smells from her skin and hair, paying extra attention to the flesh at her ankles that had been exposed to the greasy puffs of air wafting from the low interrogation room vents. The first room had been the kind of filthy that crept up the sides of your shoes onto exposed, vulnerable skin. Robyn hosed down the tub with a spray can of disinfectant, then gave it a scrub and rinse before following it by another hosing. Through the chemical mist, she could smell her casserole.

She had chopped up the vegetables so roughly they still weren’t done. Flashing in and out of memories over the last maybe two days, it was amazing at least one of her severed fingers wasn’t baking at a toasty 400◦F. Sitting at the small wooden kitchen table with her laptop open to a blank page, strong odors circling around her towel wrapped head, she tried to write the list she had promised to one and two. Robyn tilted back in her chair, starring at the single, elegantly fine crack in her ceiling. It wove its way between the brittle blobs of ecru popcorn texturing, never through them. Bringing herself upright, she began to write.