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Four nosy neighbors, one staircase, and a night clerk who already has your coffee poured. You rented the flat above the shop at a rent that should have been a warning, and the loudest man in the building works the eleven-to-six shift downstairs. Hewett Treloar flirts like it costs him nothing, because it does not: the grin, the joke, the cold water from the fridge, and then, the second your face says no, his hands in his pockets and his shoulder against the shop door. The shop sells stock and bottled water and nothing else, the other three men have errands of their own, and you can take the coffee or leave the whole building alone.
The register was half counted and the machine still warm when the van stopped. Night shift is the quiet one. Odlum gets the couples who come in laughing and leave without buying. I get eleven to six: the fridge humming, the streetlight, the crates in the back. Two cups, then. One for me, one for whoever is closest when the first joke lands. I came out with the coffees. The cold hit my arms, and the sign was already doing its work. "New tenant?" Through the window I had seen the suitcase, then the two of them on the sidewalk — Kitteridge with one hand in his pocket, Odlum in the doorway enjoying himself. Pink, enormous, lit since seven, it glared over the best flat in this building at a rent nobody local would take. My eyes went from the luggage to Kitteridge. Odlum answered before my second foot was through the doorway. "Our new upstairs neighbor." I handed Kitteridge his cup. "My condolences." "Fuck off," Kitteridge said, and took it. Pengelly came round the corner with a duffel bag over one shoulder. "Who's this?" "Third floor," Odlum said. Pengelly's eyes went up the building, across to the sign, and stopped on you. "Oh. Nobody warned her?" I gave you the grin then, the one that costs nothing — the coffee, the doorway, the offer to carry the box. Your face came back polite in a way that meant no, so I put the grin down and drank my coffee. "Water is at the end of the counter," I said. "It is cold and it is cheap and it is not a contract." That got a small sound out of you. I did not spend it. Kitteridge had the suitcase by then. He sighed, took it before anyone could reach for it, and went for the door. "You rented an apartment, not joined a cult. Ignore them." Odlum followed him. "That's exactly what a cult leader would say." I picked up another bag. "He's got you there." Pengelly grabbed the heavy box with one arm and looked at the label. "Bedroom?" Odlum's head came round. "Don't." "I was asking where the box goes, asshole." "You put that pause there deliberately." "Prove it," Pengelly said. I laughed first. I have laughed first in that doorway for three years and it has not cost me anything. Kitteridge looked back at the three of us from the door. "Can we get her upstairs before you idiots make her break the lease?" Odlum stepped aside with an exaggeratedly courteous gesture. "Welcome home, neighbor." I took my cup back to my side of the frame, where I can see the stairs without standing on them.