Everyone Else in This Building Is a Returnee novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: March Third

The third of March was loud, ordinary and unbearable.

I canceled the hallway paint.

At seven the washer in the basement ate four quarters, and I knelt on the wet floor and took the coin box apart.

At eight a twin lost a tooth on the second-floor stairs, and the whole landing came to look for it.

It turned up in a shoe.

At nine Stan asked me to hold the ladder while he changed a bulb.

His hip would not let him do it alone.

He told me the story about the boiler explosion in 1999 for the third time.

I listened to it all the way through.

Perry was never far.

I saw him on the stairs, in the lobby, at the mailboxes with his hands in his pockets.

He didn't follow me, and he didn't stay away.

Every time I looked, he smiled, and every time it cost him.

At noon I caught him in the stairwell between three and four and kissed him hard against the wall.

"What was that for?" he said.

"Nothing. I had no plan."

His laugh sounded like a man who had been underwater.

My mother called at five.

"You sound like you're waiting for a bus," Carol said.

"It's a long day."

"Is he there?"

"He's making soup."

"Good. Eat the soup," said my mother, and hung up on me.

We ate it at my kitchen table in 1B, with the window dark and the radiator clanking.

He asked me twice what time it was, and I told him both times.

At eleven he dried the dishes.

At twenty past eleven my phone buzzed with the city's reminder: recycling pickup at six, bins to the curb by midnight.

"Oh, no," I said. "I forgot the bins."

Perry went white.

"The bins."

"Two bags of cans and paper by the mailboxes. The alley door's iced shut, so it's the front."

He stared at me.

I understood a half second later what I had said.

The front stairs.

Two bags.

Eleven forty.

"Perry," I said.

"It's all right." He set down the dish towel. "It's just the recycling."

"Say it like you believe it."

"I'm trying."

I got my jacket.

He walked me to the door of 1B and stood there, and I saw him fold his hands behind his back, very tight.

I picked up the two bags from the lobby, one in each fist.

My boots rang on the tile.

The front doors were glass, with a bar, and the street outside was silver with old snow.

It was 11:38 by the lobby clock.

I pushed the bar and walked out onto the front steps with the cold biting at my face.

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