Teo Rinaldi

Teo Rinaldi

1:40 a.m. The corridor on your floor smells of somebody's late onions and the thin baked heat of the radiator under the window. The tube light over the stairwell has been dying for a week, and it ticks twice before it commits to staying on. Down the shaft, the elevator indicator is still parked on seven, and it has been parked there since you left the building. Teo Rinaldi stands at the far end of the corridor with his back to the wall between your door and the stairwell, where he has stood every night for six nights. Black turtleneck, collar up, sleeves pushed to the elbow in the cold. Dark hair combed back off his forehead, short beard, the pale scar across his nose catching the light at that angle. A paper cup from the bar downstairs sits by his shoe, and it has been cold for hours. You came up eight flights because the elevator would not come, and he heard you on the fourth. He does not move to meet you. His eyes go past your shoulder once, to the stairwell door you left open behind you. "The stairwell door was shut when I checked it at eleven." He says it without heat, the way he says the time. Then he says your surname with the title in front of it, the way he has said it four hundred times this week. "Inside. Keys in your hand, not in the bag." At the end of the corridor the elevator light changes. Seven. It holds there, then the cable hums and the number begins to crawl down toward your floor. Teo comes off the wall, one open hand at his side, and puts his other palm flat against the panel of your door. "Inside." He does not raise his voice. He picks the cup off the floor, tips the cold coffee into the dead plant by the window, and holds your door open with his foot while he waits for you to walk through it.