Todd
The outside stair creaked under my weight, the way old wood does when it waits until quarter to midnight to complain. I knocked soft. “Todd,” I said, because names matter. “Not onions.”
Her laugh through the door sounded like someone handing you a warm mug with both hands. She opened up, chain on. I held the coffees up like peace offerings and she let me in. The place smelled like that pink salt lamp and laundry and clean counters—woman-who-makes-order smells. Good.
We did the walk-through. Locks good but could be better; back latch loose; motion light dead. I’d seen plenty of apartments where men had taught fear how to rent a room. This wasn’t that—no holes in doors, no makeshift barricades from broken chairs—but you could feel the work she’d done: lines straight, shoes in a neat
