He looked over.
“Do you want me to?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll stay a little longer.”
I studied him.
There were so many things I did not know.
He was maybe thirty-eight. Ten years older than me. He lived alone in 14B. He was quiet. He fixed the building’s broken lobby door once when the superintendent ignored it for three days. He had carried Mrs. Alvarez’s groceries during a power outage. He watered a small basil plant on his windowsill. That was nearly everything I knew.
“Why did you answer so fast?” I asked.
He looked down at his hands.
“I was awake.”
“At one forty-three in the morning?”
“I don’t sleep well.”
The answer closed a door.
I did not push.
But he opened another one himself.
“My wife died six years ago.”
I went still.
“I’m sorry.”
He nodded, accepting the words without making me responsible for them.
