I open the door to the apartment. The stairwell’s pitch-black. I fumble around for the light switch. There’s that whiff of cigarette smoke, but even stronger than usual. It smells almost like someone’s smoking one right now. Something makes me glance up to my left. A sound, perhaps, or just a movement of the air.
And then I catch sight of something out of place: a tiny glowing red dot hovering overhead in the blackness. It takes a moment before I understand what it is. I’m looking at the end of a cigarette butt, held by someone hidden in darkness just above me.
“Who’s there?” I say, or try to say, because it comes out as a strangled bleat. I fumble around for the light switch near the door and finally make contact with it, the lights stuttering on. There’s no one in sight.
My heart’s still beating double time as I walk across the courtyard. Just as I reach the gate to the street, I hear the sound of quick shuffling footsteps behind me. I turn.
It’s the concierge, emerging once more from the shadows. I try to take a step away and when my heel hits metal I realize I’m already backed right up against the gate. She only comes up to my chin—and I’m not exactly big—but there’s something threatening about her nearness.
“Yes?” I ask. “What is it?”
“I have something to say to you,” she hisses. She glances up at the encircling apartment building. She reminds me of a small animal sniffing the air for a predator. I follow her gaze upward. Most of the windows are dark blanks, reflecting the gleam of the streetlamps across the road. There’s only one light on upstairs, in the penthouse apartment. I can’t see anyone watching us—I’m sure this is what she’s checking for—but then I don’t think I’d necessarily be able to spot them if they were.
Suddenly she snatches out a hand toward me. It’s such a swift, violent action that for a moment I really think she’s going to hit me. I don’t have time to step away, it’s too fast. But instead she grabs a hold of my wrist in her claw-like hand. Her grip’s surprisingly strong; it stings.
“What are you doing?” I ask her.
“Just come,” she tells me—and with such authority I don’t dare disobey her. “Come with me, now.”
I’m going to be late for meeting Theo now but he can wait. This feels important. I follow her across the courtyard to her little cabin. She moves quickly, in that slightly stooped way of hers, like someone trying to duck out of a rainstorm. I feel like a child in a storybook being taken to the witch’s hut in the woods. She looks up at the apartment building several more times, as though scanning it for any onlookers. But she seems to decide that it’s worth the risk.
Then she opens the door and ushers me in. It’s even smaller inside than it looks on the outside, if that’s possible. Everything is crammed into one tiny space. There’s a bed attached to the wall by a system of pulleys and currently raised to allow us to stand; a washstand; a minuscule antique cooking stove. Just to my right is a curtain that I suppose must lead through to a bathroom of some sort—simply because there’s nowhere else for it to be.
It’s almost scarily neat, every surface scrubbed to a high shine. It smells of bleach and detergent—not a thing out of place. Somehow I would have expected nothing less from this woman. And yet the cleanness, the neatness, the little vase of flowers, somehow make it all the more depressing. A little mess might be a distraction from how cramped it is, or from the damp stains on the ceiling which I’m fairly sure no amount of cleaning could remove. I’ve lived in some dives in my time, but this takes the biscuit. And what must it feel like to live in this tiny hovel while surrounded by the luxury and space of the rest of the apartment building? What would it be like to live with the reminder of how little you have on your doorstep every day?
No wonder she hated me, swanning in here to take up residence on the third floor. If only she knew how out of place I am here too, how much more like her than them I really am. I know I can’t let her see my pity: that would be the worst insult possible. I get the impression she’s probably a very proud person.
Behind her head and the tiny dining table and chair I see several faded photographs pinned to the wall. A little girl, sitting on a woman’s lap. The sky behind them is bright blue, olive trees in the background. The woman has a glass in front of her of what looks like tea, a silver handle. The next is of a young woman. Slim, dark-haired, dark-eyed. Maybe eighteen or nineteen. Not a new photograph: you can tell from the saturated colors, the fuzziness of it. But at the same time it’s definitely too recent to be of the old woman herself. It must be a loved one. Somehow it’s impossible to imagine this elderly woman having a family or a past away from this place. It’s impossible, even, to imagine her ever having been young. As though she has always been here. As though she is a part of the apartment building itself.