Sherlocked

Rose

I got to the front door of 221B Baker Street, my arms straining from the weight of all the grocery bags. I put one armful down on the floor so I could freely withdraw my keys from my pocket. My palm raked the corner of what felt like a thick piece of paper, and I withdrew it from my pocket, unsure of how it got there. It was an envelope, and on the front of it was scrawled a name. Sherlock.

I quickly unlocked the front door, retrieving the grocery bags and setting them on the counter.

“Sherlock? Sherlock! I have a bit of a mystery for you,” I said, and I stood in the center of the kitchen, turning the envelope about in my hands. The paper was high quality. It looked expensive. Other than that, there was really nothing I could glean from the envelope besides Sherlock’s name looking as if it had been written down by a man’s handwriting.

“What is all the noise about?” he shouted as he threw open his bedroom door and burst through in striped blue pajamas and a darker blue silk dressing robe. I simply thrust the envelope out to him, and he snatched it from my hands, quickly looking it over.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Well, find out yourself, genius. I sure as hell have no idea. I found that in my coat pocket when I came home. Only it wasn’t there when I left to get the groceries, and I certainly have no recollection of anyone giving it to me.”

Sherlock stared at the writing on the front of the envelope, and something that looked like recognition passed over his face. He turned it over and over with long graceful fingers, studying.

“Quickly, did you speak to anyone while you were out? Did you bump into anyone or brush up against them?”

“Yeah, I turned a corner in the supermarket and ran into someone. He seemed nice enough. He helped me up and we chatted a bit.”

“Did he tell you his name?” He said, grabbing me my the arms and staring intently at me.

“He said his name was Jim.”

Sherlock suddenly went grim, not only as if the name were meaningful to him, but as though it were the last name he wanted to hear.

“Who is Jim to you? Should I be worried?” Something told me I should be very worried. My mother had always warned me; never trust a man by his appearance. As an artist, I had always searched for things inside and tried to bring them to the surface in my paintings. This “Jim” seemed just as he appeared. Straight-laced, professional, kind. So why was it that Sherlock seemed so put off?

“I doubt worrying would do you any good, so don’t bother. However, it would be in your best interests to keep your distance from this man, if at all possible. Which for you, is probably not. He has a tendency to get in wherever he most wants to be. Most likely he will not contact you again. He has no interest in you. As you can see, the letter is addressed to me. He was already quite certain that it would have its effect before I opened it. It’s all scare tactics, which means that he hopes to invoke a response of some sort in me. He’ll not have the satisfaction.”

I took in all of his quickly spoken words, my head spinning. I wasn’t sure what to make of any of it. It was clear he wasn’t gong to share any details with me, so I set to putting away the groceries. I had cleaned out the fridge earlier that day, discarding all of the moldy bits of expired food and wiping down the interior with a bleach solution. The mini fridge hummed next to the larger one, body parts safely stored away inside, blessedly far away from my food. Once I had put away everything, I took some of the ground beef and set it in a large saucepan to cook while I retrieved the pasta and marinara sauce.

“I’m making spaghetti if you’d like any,” I said, looking over my shoulder from where I stood in front of the stove. Sherlock was still turning the envelope over and over in his hands. He had not yet opened it.

There was no response from the detective, and I had begun to think he hadn’t heard me before his low voice droned in the sort of absent way some people spoke when they were consumed by their own thoughts. “No. Energy spent on digestion takes away from thinking,” he said as he retrieved a letter opener from the mess of clutter that was the kitchen table. He smelled the edges of the envelope before nodding to himself and deftly, running the small blade under the fold of paper, retrieving the letter from the envelope with a flourish, holding it up under the light and smelling it again before even beginning to read. He stood after a few minutes, walking over to the large armchair next to the fireplace, plopping down with his knees pulled up under his chin as he held the letter out and read it over and over again, sitting in silence.

I finished cooking the meal, not wanting to pry but desperately wanting to know the contents of the letter. I fished around in the cupboards before finding Tupperware, using it to store away the leftovers after setting out my own plate. I ate in silence for a few moments before deciding that it was just too much to bear. I walked to my room, retrieving my iPod before returning to my meal, plugging in the ear buds and pressing play. Ed Sheeran played in my ears as I twirled my fork in my pasta. Sherlock remained silent. He eventually rose from his seat as I finished cleaning up the dishes, having finished with dinner. He withdrew something from a box on the mantle, and rolled up his sleeves before applying something to the inner part of his left forearm. Feeling nosy, I looked closer, and realized he was applying nicotine patches to his arms in rapid succession.

“You’re going to get yourself sick if you put too many on,” I told him, feeling immediately worried for him. I couldn’t help it. I had taken care of people my entire life; my depressed mother, my wild musician father, my boyfriend. Sometimes I thought that if I didn’t have someone to worry about, I would become so bored that I would lose my mind.

“No need to worry,” he said as if he could read my mind. “It helps me concentrate.”

I knew there was no sense in trying to tell him to ease off, so I just let him be at he moved to the couch, lying straight as a board across its length as he pressed down on the patches as if the pressure would intensify their effects.

After I had finished tidying up the kitchen, I made some tea, setting it on the coffee table next to the couch for Sherlock after fixing myself a cup. He looked up briefly from his inner musings, but said nothing to me before I made my way to my room.

I sat down on my freshly made bed. There were still more thing in boxes then out, but I was comfortable enough for the time being, and feeling surprisingly drained. Just the same, I knew that after the day’s strange events, coupled with trying to get used to my equally strange flat mate, I probably wouldn’t be going to sleep until early morning.

This was a habit of mine. I worried myself until I couldn’t sleep, and there was the strange sensation as if a part of me were missing. It was something that had always terrified me, because I knew that part of me was my mother’s daughter. The daughter of a woman so wrapped in her own pain that she would kill herself, leaving her body to be found in the home that she shared with said daughter.

I was no fool. I had been told time and time again that with brilliance and creativity often came depression and sometimes madness. My mother was no exception, and sometimes I was afraid that I was just like her. It also made me worry about Sherlock.

It didn’t take a genius to realize that John Watson had been his anchor into reality. He had kept him grounded. I had read Watson’s blog after visiting Sherlock’s website, and I knew that John was the closest relationship that Sherlock had ever had with another human being. There had never been a mention of a girlfriend, and something told me that John and Sherlock hadn’t been a couple.

If there was one thing I was good at, it was people. It was the reason I painted them instead of landscapes. People had always fascinated me. I had also always understood them. I understood what it was like to be alone, to feel like you were never on the same plane with anyone. I had always been smarter than most of my peers, or otherwise engaged, whether it be in my own head or on a canvas. My mother was always distant emotionally, while my father remained distant geographically with his musical career. Sherlock was so distant that he carried disdain for every other person he came across. No one could match his intellect and no one could ever get him to engage emotionally, except perhaps John.

I lost myself in this train of thought as a soft strain of melody drifted in from the other room. Sherlock was playing the violin, and nothing that I recognized. He probably composed his own works. It sounded melancholy, lost. And for the first time, I started to wonder if I was once again living with a doomed, distant person. That thought alone kept me up until light filtered through my curtains and another London morning began.