“I’m going to ask you something,” I said. “And you don’t have to say yes.”
He looked at me.
“The packages. From last winter. I signed for most of them.”
“I know. I meant to say thank you properly and didn’t.”
“There’s a box of them downstairs that arrived in the last few weeks. I didn’t know if you were collecting.” I paused. “I could bring them up, if that’s easier.”
He stared at me.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I’ve lived here eleven years,” I said. “Because that’s what living in a building actually is. Not just the complaints.” I paused. “And because your mother is in a facility and you’re going there every day and you look like a man who doesn’t need to add package retrieval to the list.”
Pregnancy & Maternity
He looked at me for another moment.
Then something in his face changed. Not dramatically. Just a small movement, a door opening slightly that had been very shut.
“I’d appreciate that,” he said quietly. “Thank you.”
“I’ll bring them up this afternoon,” I said.
I turned to go.
“Mrs. Collier.”
I turned back.
“I’m sorry about the towel,” he said. “And the cushion. I should have replaced them.”
“Yes,” I said. “You should have.”
“How much were they?”
I told him.
He nodded.
He went inside and came back with cash, the exact amount, which meant he had either an impressive mental currency conversion or had done some research.
Ezoic
“I looked it up,” he said, reading my expression. “After the management letter. I looked up what the approximate cost would be.” He handed it over. “I should have done it without being prompted.”
“Yes,” I said. “But doing it at all matters.”
I brought him the packages that afternoon.
Four of them. I carried them in two trips and stacked them inside his hallway while he held the door. The flat was clean but had the particular underfurnished look of a space someone has moved into with the intent of eventually making it a home and not yet gotten around to it — a single bookshelf with boxes still beside it, pictures not yet hung, the specific geography of impermanence.
“You haven’t been here long enough to settle,” I said.
“I kept thinking I’d wait until things were more —” He didn’t finish the sentence.
