The sounds had been going on for the better part of an hour, the particular thudding and scraping of furniture being moved into a space that had been empty long enough to have its own echo.
I was already on the terrace with my ice cream when I saw the man from the moving company carry a small table out through the sliding doors of the unit beside mine and set it against the railing. Then a chair. He stepped back, assessed the arrangement, adjusted the chair by two inches, and went back inside.
I looked at the terrace.
I had walked past that space for a week without really registering it as a space, just the edge of the building, a railing, air. But looking at it now, I noticed how close it actually was to mine. Not far at all. Close enough that if someone wanted to step across they prob
