Chapter 24: The Door Code

The locksmith left at noon, and the door of my apartment had a keypad.

I had not asked for one.

He had asked what I wanted.

I had stood in the hall holding a key I'd found in a drawer.

I had heard myself say: that kind.

"Pick a code, miss," he said, and handed me a card with the instructions. "Six digits. Don't use a birthday."

"I won't."

"People always do."

"I know," I said.

He packed his tools and went down the stairs.

The apartment was on the fourth floor of an old brick building in Fremont, three blocks from the studio.

It still smelled of fresh paint and old radiators.

There were boxes in the hall and boxes in the bedroom.

The kitchen had a window onto a maple tree that had dropped all its leaves.

Calvin came up the stairs at one with a lamp under each arm and a bag of groceries hooked on his wrist.

He stopped when he saw me standing at the door with the card in my hand.

"Locked out?"

"Not yet."

I pressed the green button, and the keypad lit up.

It was waiting for six numbers, and I knew them.

Joan's extension at the old station, which she had made me memorize my first week because the phone system never forwarded.

Four digits, and then the two she had used to sign her notes to me.

She had been bad at goodbyes, and she signed every note the same way.

I typed it carefully.

The lock turned over with a quiet mechanical sound.

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