The Super Fixed My Sink, Then Everything I Hadn't Said Was Broken novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Blackout

Magda's POV

The power went out at ten past seven, in the worst snow Chicago had seen in eleven years.

It took the whole block with it.

By nine, 3R was thirty-eight degrees by the thermometer on my window.

I sat on my couch in two sweaters and my winter coat with a flashlight in my lap, and the radiators ticked once and stopped.

The boiler needs a fan to run, and the fan needs electricity, and there is no way around that in a hundred-year-old building.

I knew this because Rafa had told me so on the stairs at eight, with his hat covered in snow, on his way to knock on every door in the building with a canvas bag of blankets.

He had not stopped to say anything else.

At ten, I put on the collar.

I buttoned my coat over it, and took my flashlight and a quilt off my bed, and went down the back stairs in the dark with one hand on the wall.

Dolores's door was open an inch on the first floor, and I could hear voices and a clatter of dishes, and a smell of kielbasa.

"Magda, honey," Dolores called. "We're all at 1F. The oven's gas. Come in."

"I'm going to check on Rafa."

"Of course you are." A pause. "He's in his apartment. He finally came off the boiler."

"Thank you."

"Say it again, it's good for you."

I laughed.

I knocked on the door of 1G, twice, and the door opened before the second rap finished.

He stood there in a wool hat and his canvas coat, with a camp lantern hung on his wrist and snow melting in his beard, and his face was gray with tiredness.

"Everyone's fine," he said, before I could ask. "Dolores took the 3F couple and 2F, and 2R went to her sister's in Milwaukee on Friday. I've nothing to do till the power comes back. The burner can't light."

"Rafa."

"I'm sorry. I know you're cold," he said.

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