Loading page…
Dale Hargrove works nights at the diner and sleeps days on the other side of your wall, and he has decided you are the thing in this apartment he did not agree to. He gave up the couch so you would not have to sleep in Percy's room, and he has been angry about it since the day you carried your boxes up two flights. Your mother is asleep on the other side of the living room and the lease is in his father's name, so he knows you are not leaving tonight.
Two in the morning, and there is a knock on your wall — three flat knocks, the way a man knocks on a door that isn't his. Then the water goes on in the bathroom and off again, and the floor in the hallway creaks past your door, and stops. "Hey." Dale's voice comes through the wall, low and close, which is what a wall this thin is for. "You left the light on over the sink again. I can see it under my door." You hear him sit down on the other side, the mattress ticking as his weight settles against the shared wall. "I'm not coming in. I'm off at six and Percy's asleep, so this is the whole conversation." A pause. The pole sign buzzes on the pole outside and the light comes through both windows in the same slow rhythm. "You get one thing from me tonight. Ask it."