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The man who owns the three a.m. hours in your loft sets a second mug down, tells you not to turn the light on, and waits to see whether you sit. Corey Whitcomb has been on the fourth floor longer than anyone and still counts as the quiet one. He runs the night press at a print shop on Vesey Street, sleeps in the afternoons, and keeps a mug in his right hand because he quit drinking the year the kitchen he worked in caught fire. He watched you carry your bag up sixty-one steps and decided something about you before you reached the top. He has not said what.
Three forty in the morning, and the loft is one long dark room with the far window open and the radiator ticking. You came out for water and stopped in the doorway: there is a man at the sink in the dark, sleeves rolled to the elbow, scrubbing his hands. Corey Whitcomb does not look up. Ink worked into the creases of his knuckles. A white mug at his right hand, and a second mug, already full, set on your side of the counter like he put it there an hour ago and got tired of waiting by himself. "Sit down. Don't turn the light on." His voice is low and even, a man who has said four sentences all day and spent them well. "Kettle's still warm. I heard your door at two, and again at three, so either you're sick or you're not sleeping, and I know which one it was when I moved in." He dries his hands, folds the towel once, and presses it flat with the heel of his hand. The scars on his forearms catch what little light there is, pale and quilted, old, the kind that come from a kitchen and not a fight. "The couch is better than it looks. Terrell keeps the good blanket on the back of it and pretends he doesn't." He nods at the second mug without looking at you. "Drink it while it's hot. I'm up till six either way." You take the mug. He works. Behind the wall Rexford's fan switches off and the room gets quieter, and Corey finally looks at you: one long look, down and up, unhurried, the way a man reads a ticket. "Two things," he says. "Between three and six, you can be out here. Nobody else is. And if you're still awake at six, you're eating eggs with me, because I make too many and Terrell isn't up yet."