Her building was only a few blocks from the Metro stop. The lobby doors beeped when her LFD came in range but didn’t unlock. Con cupped her hands to the glass and looked optimistically into the deserted lobby. It had been more than ten years since the building had employed a concierge. Built back in the teens during a spasm of overconstruction that had created a glut of rental units, it had fallen victim to the changing trends that had hit the DC region. The economic downturn hadn’t helped matters either. Occupancy plummeted, prices followed, and now buildings like hers were run by cut-rate management companies eking out a profit from run-down money pits. Con couldn’t complain, though. If they ever did fix up the place, she wouldn’t be able to afford the rent.
Eventually an older Latino man who looked only half awake came out to walk his dog. She didn’t know the man’s name, but his dog was Jocko. Holding the door open for them, she knelt to greet the dog cheerfully so the old man would know she belonged. He looked her up and down suspiciously but said nothing when she slipped inside, unwilling to cause a scene in the middle of the night.
Con rode the one working elevator up to her floor. Most of the lights in the hallway were broken, and the remainders cast long shadows down the hall. It wreaked havoc on her nascent depth perception, and she needed to trail a hand along the graffiti-stained wall as a guide. The apartment doors had never been upgraded and still took a physical fob. Thankfully, hers still worked. Safely inside, she leaned against the door in the dark, savoring the air-conditioning. It was a relief to be home, and she debated what to do next. Bed. Sleep. No, she needed to eat. But first a shower—time to scrub off that new-clone smell. She wanted to hold her clean hair to her nose and smell artificial coconut.
She dropped her key ring on the hall table and heard it clatter straight to the floor. Flipping on the lights, she saw the problem. There was no hall table. She caught her reflection in a full-length mirror that hung in its place and froze as if she’d surprised an intruder. Who was that? She had put on weight since the accident, but it was all gone now. Her face was as thin as it had been in college. Stepping in close to the mirror, she touched her fingers to her cheek. The skin smooth and baby soft, undamaged by the sun or by life. No wrinkles or laugh lines. As if someone had sketched her outline but omitted any distinguishing features. It was horrible. Her hair hung halfway down her back in a rat’s nest of tangles and knots. Behind her, a framed painting of Jesus gazed down with an expression that suggested he couldn’t quite place her either.
Before she could contemplate when her original had found religion, a young Black boy, perhaps ten, padded out of the living room in a T-shirt and underwear. He yawned and gazed up at her through sleepy, hooded eyes. “Who are you?”
“Who are you?” Con replied.
“Where’s my mom?”
Con looked past the boy and into the living room. None of the furniture looked familiar. And since when did she hang pictures of Jesus? Her spirits fell as she realized what had happened. She had moved out sometime in the past eighteen months. It hadn’t even crossed her mind as a possibility.
The boy began to look worried. “How’d you get in?”
“I used to live here. Still have a fob. It’s alright.” A former tenant breaking in with a fob—Con didn’t see how that made any of it alright. Why was she not surprised that the management company hadn’t bothered to reprogram the locks?
“You should probably go. My mom will be back from her shift soon.”
Con ignored his advice for a moment. “How long have you lived here?”
The boy shrugged, unsure. “Since last summer?”
A year. She hadn’t lived here for at least a year. Moving hadn’t even been on her radar eighteen months ago. This was the only apartment she’d ever had in DC, and she’d only just negotiated a rent reduction in November. So why the sudden move?
“Do you know what happened to the woman who lived here before?” she asked.
“Aren’t you her?” the boy answered.
“Yeah,” she said, although that feeling of being an imposter had returned.
“Then what’re you asking me for?”
That was a really good question. One that Con didn’t even know how to begin to explain.
“Are you okay?” the boy asked. “You look sick. Do you need to see my mom? She works at the hospital.”
The question made her strangely emotional, and she had the urge to laugh and cry simultaneously. She did neither. What she had, his mother couldn’t begin to fix. “I’m not sick. I’m just . . .” New. “Tired. Thanks, though. What’s your name?”