HIS TWISTED OBSESSION

The alarm went off at 5:47am. Lena had set it for six. She'd been awake since 5:34. She was looking at the ceiling until it ring for exactly three seconds before she silenced the alarm, because the building walls were so thin enough to be embarrassing and Mr. Callahan next door was seventy one years old and had already knocked once this month about the alarm noise. She sat up. Rolled her neck. Winced at the crack. "Wow! It's another beautiful morning," she said to herself. The water stain on the ceiling it looks like a hand reaching for something that's out of reach, stared back and offered nothing. She had no choice, stood up and forced herself to the kitchen in her socks and filled the kettle then she rest her back to the counter waiting for it to boil, and that was when she made the mistake she always made every single morning she has never learn from it. She looked at her notepad. It's on the small table like it always did. Neat. Patient. Quietly heartbreaking. She took it up from the table Rent: $1,200 Utilities: $180 Groceries: $90 Ethan's college payment: $400 Total out: $1,870 Waitressing: $640 Accounting job: $820 Total in: $1,460 After checking it she put the notepad down back on the table. "Four hundred and ten dollars," she murmured quietly in the kitchen, to the calmness of the early morning that didn't judge. "Every single month." The kettle clicked. She made her usual black coffee, that's always without milk,milk is bought only when the month is good, she then stood by the window and looked out at the brick wall of the building opposite and drank it slowly. She had just $340 in savings. Rent was due in eleven days. And two nights ago Ethan had messaged her asking if she could send his next college installment a week early because he'd miscalculated something, and she'd typed back of course, I'll get it sorted out, and then sat in this exact spot at midnight doing the math until her eyes hurt. She still hadn't figured it out. She would though. She always did. You'll surely figure it out, Lena. That was what she told herself every time. Not as a comfort exactly, more as an instruction. The kind of thing you said to yourself when there was no one else around to say it for you. She rinsed her cup, got dressed, and pulled her blonde hair back in the fast easy braid she wore every day because it took forty seconds and she didn't have forty one. The train has always been packed the same way since the past few years, nothing changed, just the same way. Lena couldn't stand well in the train, she had her bag right bewteen her laps and she held the rail steel for her nt to fall. It not easy but she had no choice, it's just for the moment that's has always been her word. Even though she somehow loved the subway. She liked the fact that nobody knows her on the train. Nobody on the 6 train cared who you were or what you were worried about. You were just another body going somewhere, and she could feel the feedom of that particular moment, it feels so awesome to her, in being completely invisible for twenty three minutes before the day got its hands on you. She got off at 51st and walked the four blocks to the accounting firm with her collar turned up against the October wind that came off the avenues like it had a personal grudge. New York in October. Cold before it had any right to be. The accounting firm was quiet when she arrived. She liked those ten minutes before anyone else showed up, just her and the low hum of the computers warming up and Lexington Avenue already moving loud and fast down below. She was working on a pile of receipts when Sara dropped into the chair in front of her with a coffee and the relaxed sigh of someone who had not rushed to get to work. "You look so tired Lena," Sara said. "I always look like this." "Exactly." Lena smiled without looking up from the screen. "Thank you, Sara. Really helpful." "I'm just being honest." Sara pulled her keyboard toward her. "You need actual sleep. It's not that kind of sleep you'll pass out at two in the morning and wake up at five thinking about some invoices." "But i never told you i was thinking about invoices, how dd you know?" "I know you, you're always thinking about invoices." "I was actually thinking about rent." "Somehow that's worse." Sara sipped her coffee. "It would be better if you speak to your landlord about an extension, or can't you?" "I could." Lena finally looked up. "And then he could say no and make it weird for the remaining eleven months of my lease. So." "What about picking up extra shifts?" "Already working tonight." Sara gave her a look. The kind that meant she had more to say but was deciding whether to spend it. "Lena. You worked Monday and Tuesday." "I know." "That's every day this week." "Sara." She said it gently. Not defensively. Just the quiet honest I know and I'm doing it anyway because I don't have another option so please don't make me explain that out loud because it costs something every time. "I'm fine." Sara held her gaze for a beat. Then she picked up her coffee. "Okay." "Okay," Lena agreed. They worked in comfortable silence. Outside, Lexington Avenue got louder. Lunch was a bench in Bryant Park, that's her favorite forty minutes of any workday. She'd found it her first week at the firm. In New York that's all it takes, show up to the same spot every day and after a while it's yours. Weekday afternoons the park thinned out fast. The lunch crowd rushed in and out and by half past twelve it was just pigeons and a few tourists and Lena with her forty minutes where nobody needed anything from her. She was about finishing her sad cheese sandwich when her phone rang. Ethan.