Page 7 of Poster Girl

Graham answers the door. He is an unremarkable-looking man: only a little taller than Sonya, short gray hair that wraps around the crown of his head like a shawl, hooded eyes. The skin under his jaw has gone soft and fleshy with age.

“Ms. Kantor!” he says. “It’s been a while. Hello, Charlotte. Come in, come in.”

The apartment feels like a junkyard. Lining the walls are crates full of small things: one has doorknobs and handles; another, small cardboard boxes; a third, empty glass bottles. He sets up a blanket at the market every week with a selection of discarded objects, she recalls. The residents of Building 2 must find him useful enough, with their endless need for empty containers. For moonshine, naturally.

“I see introductions aren’t necessary,” Charlotte says.

“I knew Sonya’s father,” Graham says. “Don’t you remember August? He was in my year at school. We were on the swim team together.”

“My memory is not quite that long, I’m afraid,” Charlotte says.

“He used to come have lunch with me sometimes, in the morgue. Well, notinthe morgue. Always had a weak stomach, your father. Used to plug his nose when we walked past the dumpsters behind the market—all the boys made fun of him for it, August Kantor, sodainty—” He lifts his nose, pinches it with his thumb and index fingers, to show her.

She smiles.

“He would have described himself asfastidious,” she says. “But that sounds like him.”

“How did he pass away? Was he executed?” Graham asks, and Sonya’s smile fades.

“Graham!” Charlotte smacks him on the arm. “Don’t ask her that.”

“I didn’t mean any harm by it, I just—”

“No, he wasn’t,” Sonya says. “Charlotte says you have a broken stove?”

Graham leads her into the kitchen, and Charlotte follows, her cheeks red. He shows her the faulty burners, one after another, their coils staying dark and cool despite any jiggling of the knobs. Sonya sets her bag down at her feet and walks to the far wall, where the circuit breaker is hidden behind a gray door. She finds the switch for the kitchen and turns it off.

“How did you learn how to do all this?” Graham says. “A good Delegation girl like you, I know you didn’t get it in school.”

“You’d be surprised what you can learn from a manual and some trial and error,” Sonya says.

“She’s young,” Charlotte says. “Young people are always good at figuring these things out. Especially in a building full of old people where no one knows how to do anything.”

“You are not an old person,” Sonya says.

“I told her that when she decided to go to Building 4,” Graham says. “But she insisted.”

“I may not be old, but I am a widow,” Charlotte says. “I feel at home there. The same as Sonya, after...”

She clears her throat.

“Well,” she says. “We are all familiar with loss, in Building 4.”

Sonya is only halfway listening. Replacing a coil is not difficult—the old one is unplugged, and the new one goes in its place. She’s doneit a dozen times, but she still likes the feeling of it, knowing where something goes, being the one to get it there.

She wasn’t good at much, growing up, at least not compared to Susanna. Susanna was funny; she knew how to dance; she had an ear for music; she got good grades without apparent effort. Sonya was prettier, and there had been a time when that felt like everything that mattered. But beauty wasn’t useful in the Aperture, and so she had found another use for herself. She wasn’t gifted with wiring or technology or tools or anything that the residents of Building 4 routinely called upon her to do—but she was willing, and sometimes that was enough.

She did like to be useful.

“Who did you lose, Sonya?” Graham asks her, when Charlotte disappears into the bathroom. He’s a lonely man. And he always has been, so loss fascinates him. After all, you need to have had something in order to truly know how it feels to lose it.

She turns on the power, and then tries the stove knob. She holds her hand over it to feel it heating.

She doesn’t know why she answers him. She wasn’t planning to, until she did.

“Everyone,” she says to him.

She turns the burner off.

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