Chapter 5
672 Words
The next morning, Mia hired a local moving service. The driver slid open the back of the van to find a single half-empty twenty-four-inch suitcase and two supermarket bags stuffed with odds and ends.
The new place was on the fifth floor of a building in the old neighborhood. No elevator.
She carried the suitcase in her right hand and the two bags in her left, and started climbing. By the time she reached the landing between the third and fourth floors, the bag handles had cut her fingers purple. She stopped to switch hands. That was when the seam on the bottom of the right bag gave way.
A large bottle of dish soap and a bottle of body wash tumbled out, hit the concrete steps, and went rolling down with a hollow clatter. She watched them come to rest on the third-floor landing, and was just about to head back down when the security door beside her swung open — apartment 502.
A man stepped out in black shorts and plastic sandals, holding a bowl of freshly made instant ramen. He glanced up at her, said nothing, and set the bowl down on an old shoe rack outside his door. Then he walked down half a flight of stairs, bent down, picked up the dish soap and the body wash, came back up, and shoved them into the bag that hadn't broken. He picked up his noodles, turned around, and went back inside.
The whole thing took less than ten seconds.
She carried everything up to the fifth floor and let herself in. The room was narrow: a single bed, a desk, a basic wardrobe. Pull out the chair and there was barely room to turn around.
She opened the suitcase and took out her clothes one by one, folded them, and put them away. When everything was inside, it only filled the bottom shelf. Three shelves above it sat empty. She closed the wardrobe door and stood in the middle of the room.
It was quiet.
No one here would forget her birthday. No one here would need her to wait up until midnight.
That afternoon, the kitchen faucet started dripping. She tightened it with a wrench three times. The thread had stripped. Her phone lit up on the desk — a text from an unknown number.
Unknown number: Running a little late, I'll call when I'm there.
She stared at it for a moment, then replied.
Mia: Wrong number.
The reply came back immediately.
Unknown number: Sorry.
She set the phone down, found an old towel, and wrapped it tight around the leaking faucet until the sound stopped.
Toward evening, the sound of oil hitting a hot wok came through the wall from apartment 502. The smell of garlic drifted in through the gaps, and her stomach clenched. She'd forgotten to buy groceries.
She went downstairs and found a hole-in-the-wall place on the corner with no sign out front, and sat down at a greasy table. "What'll you have?" the owner asked, wiping the surface with a rag. "Anything," Mia said. "As long as it fills me up." A plate of egg fried rice arrived — the grains slightly hard, the salt uneven. She ate every bite with a spoon.
On the walk back, she stopped under a streetlamp and looked down at the ground. The amber light stretched her shadow out long and thin. Just one.
Eight years. This was the first time she'd bought herself a meal. Every meal she'd ever cooked had been made for two.
At the landing between the third and fourth floors, the security door to 502 was half open. The man from earlier was sitting on a stool in the doorway, head down, eating a bowl of noodles.
He heard her footsteps and looked up, lifting his chin in her direction. "Your faucet," he said, pointing his fork toward her floor. "I've been listening to it drip all afternoon. Want me to come take a look?"
She stopped. "I'd appreciate that."
- Writer
