Page 6 of The Vacancy In Room 10

Inside the apartment, the stagnant air steals my breath. I try to turn on the air-conditioning unit in the window, but it just makes a rattling noise and putters out. I open the windows and stand a moment, taking in the room. Dust particles dance in the slanted beams of light peeking in from the open curtains.

Many of his easels look like ghosts, covered with drop cloths in the still space. The small kitchen is mostly unused except for a scattering of mugs and a few IPA bottles. The bed is covered in stacks of empty stretched canvases and coffee cans stuffed with used brushes. It looks more like a painter’s studio than an apartment.

I don’t want to move anything. I want to keep it all the way he left it, but I’ll need to at least carefully clear the bed. I move a box of oil paints to the floor and sit, and then the tears come.

I am doubled over in a pain I didn’t know was possible. I sob uncontrollably until my ribs ache. Henry. Why? I curl up in the fetal position, and I replay all the arguments over the last months. All of the bickering that was an obvious facade for the weighted issues behind it.

After years of agreeing we never wanted kids, one day after he’d been laid off, he sprung on me that he changed his mind and he’d been wanting to tell me for a long time. I told him it was a midlife crisis, and it would pass, and he was being ridiculous. We wanted to travel the world and drink great wine and read the New York Times together from our high-rise condo’s balcony in the city on Sunday mornings and follow our big dreams, but we never made enough money to do any of that. Fine. Fair, but we don’t just go back on everything we ever said—ever wanted—all of a sudden.

That was when he started changing: six months back. But I thought he was having a moment—thinking we gave up a life that was still in our grasp because the one we were chasing our whole lives was feeling pretty out of reach now. We officially failed, but kids were still possible. A little cottage outside the city could happen if we wanted it, he said. But I didn’t want it. I still wanted to move to a Costa Rican beach or Ibiza and not be a slave to a 9-to-5 or kids—like we always said we’d do.

God, why didn’t I just say yes? Yes, baby. Whatever you want. Anything you want. I’d give anything to go back and say yes.

I see the sun reflect off a white triangle near the front door, and I sit up and look at it. I didn’t notice it when I came in. It’s an envelope. I could have stepped over it, or maybe someone shoved it under the door since I’ve been inside.

I walk over and pick it up. I turn it over to see my name on the front. Anna Hartley. I think maybe it’s from the rental office. Some general info, a bill, something like that, but when I open it, my hand flies to my mouth, and I drop it.

The scrap of paper feathers gently to the floor, and I look down and see the two-word note looking back up at me:

GET OUT.

4

CASS

I stand in the doorway of 108 while she’s screaming, pointing across the floor at something.

“Sylvie, for real, I don’t know what you’re freaking out over.”

Sylvie stands on a kitchen chair in slippers and a T-shirt, and all three of her kids are huddled on top of the modest kitchen table that looks like it could buckle at any moment.

“Hay monstruos!” she cries.

“Hey what? Monsters?” I was gonna guess cockroaches, but my patience is wearing thin, and the very word will just induce more screeching from the huddle of children.

“Ratas!”

“A raccoon?” I ask, inching into the muggy apartment.

“A rat,” one of the smaller kids says softly, hiding behind his sister. I look over to see not a rat but a tiny mouse eating a crumb near the stove. I try not to laugh, for the kids’ sake. The mouse looks like he should be wearing a little fedora and starring in an animated movie.

“Oh. Gotcha. Well, you gotta shut your door. They can just walk right in. Why doesn’t anyone shut their doors around here? It’s like a dormitory.”

“Gato,” she says, and I look to the kid for a translation.

“Cat,” the kid says shyly. “She wants to know if you have a cat.”

“Not on me,” I say, and pick up a colander from the counter and try to trap the little bugger, but it only makes the entire family scream in terror when I miss and he scurries under the fridge.

“Borrow cat from Mr. David. 106!” she says, and I open my mouth to question this when the mouse makes a run for it and disappears into the back of the house. Sylvie fans herself and looks like she’ll pass out.

“Fine, yeah. Okay,” I say, backing out of the front door and walking to knock on David’s door.

Before I do, I see a woman. She’s sitting on a wrought-iron chair on the strip of shared balcony—that’s really just a walkway to get to the stairs rather than a balcony—and she’s in front of Henry’s door. She doesn’t see me, so I continue on to David’s door, and before knocking, I take a deep breath and shake my head the way I do multiple times a day, still in utter disbelief that this is my life.

David’s substantial weight and breathing problems make him immobile, so he calls for me to come in from his recliner that squeaks and sighs under the girth of him as he shifts his body to greet me. The units are all small, so when I open the door, he’s only feet away from me. I’ve never seen him in any other spot before. Over the last six months or so, I’ve come in for a clogged toilet and a couple HVAC problems, and it’s like he’s actually welded to the chair.

There are nine cats visible when I step inside. David is playing Call of Duty on his Xbox. He pulls his headphones down and looks at me without saying anything.

---