The Hallway Confession

Thelma Laurence is thirty-four years old, Black, and she has her life exactly the way she wants it.

That's the first thing she tells herself every morning. She stands in front of the cracked mirror in her bathroom, coffee-less, hair doing whatever it wants, and she says it out loud. "You are a grown woman with a good life."

Nobody answers. That's the good part.

She lives in a one-bedroom in Pilsen with a fire escape full of dead herbs. She writes freelance pieces about city politics for a website that pays her late. She has one best friend, Danielle, who calls every Sunday and doesn't push. And she is single, fully and on purpose, going on eight years now.

Eight years. Longer than her old gym membership. Longer than her car.

The brief thing she had at twenty-six with a guy named Noah from the editorial staff lasted six months and ended with them splitting a pizza and saying hey, no hard feelings. It was fine. Everything since has been fine. Fine is underrated.

The building where she rents her writing nook is on Third Street, downtown, above a dry cleaner that always smells like starch. Rockefeller & Glover occupies the fourth floor and most of the third. Thelma got the last little nook at the far end of three, three years ago, cheap, because the firm only wanted it for storage. Her gain.

Third floor has tall windows that look out at the El tracks. The elevator creaks between the second and third floors no matter how many times the landlord says he fixed it. There's a coffee cart in the lobby run by a man named Sal who knows everybody's order and judges nobody.

Except her machine is in her nook, a sad little four-cup drip thing she bought at a yard sale. That one's hers.

She gets to the building at 8:40 on a Tuesday, same as always. The elevator creaks. She takes the stairs.

The hallway on three is worn carpet and tall doors. Conrad Glover's office is at the other end. He's a litigator, thirty-six, white, wears suits that fit him too well, and he is already there, unlocking his door like he does every morning.

"Morning," he says.

"Morning." The nod. They have an arrangement, she and this man. A nod. Sometimes a two-word exchange. It has worked for eight months and she sees no reason to change it.

Except today he holds the door a beat longer. "You hear the heater last night? Sounded like a dying animal."

"Everything in this building sounds like a dying animal."

He laughs. Short, warm. She goes into her nook before it turns into a conversation.

Her nook is one room, a desk, two bookshelves, a radiator with a mind of its own. She hangs her coat on the hook, boots off, slippers on. Ritual. She fires up the laptop and goes to make coffee and the machine makes a sound as if it were a dying animal and then dies.

"No," she tells it.

She unplugs it. Plugs it back in. Nothing. She smacks the side, which her father always did, which never once worked for him either.

She stares at it for a full minute. Then she looks at the clock. 8:55. She has a draft due Thursday. She needs coffee like she needs rent money.

"Lobby cart," she mutters. Fine. Sal's coffee is better anyway. It costs four bucks and she resents that and pays it.

She grabs her coat because the third floor is always cold, and she takes the stairs down, past two, into the lobby.

The cart has a line. And at the front of the line, in his gray coat with his briefcase at his feet, is Conrad Glover.

Of course.

She almost turns around. She could go back up and drink the water from the tap and suffer. But it's cold and she's already down here and turning around would be weird. She gets in line behind him.

He turns. "Oh hey. Third floor!"

"Hey!"

"That your heater I heard clanking?"

"That was my coffee machine. She died this morning."

He puts a hand over his heart. "Sal, we got a casualty."

Sal, a short guy with reading glasses on a chain, doesn't even look up. "Everybody comes to Sal eventually."

That gets a laugh out of her before she can stop it. Conrad smiles like he noticed.

The line moves. Conrad orders his black coffee, then turns to her. "What's yours?"

"I can pay for my own coffee."

"I know you can. I'm asking what it is, not who's buying."

She narrows her eyes at him. He looks completely unbothered. Tall, brown hair going gray early at the temples, those glasses he pushes up with one finger.

"Large. Two sugars. No cream."

"Large, two sugars," he tells Sal, and pays before she can get a word out. "You can get the next one."

"There's not going to be a next one."

"We'll see."

Sal hands over the cups. Conrad steps aside and she has to either take hers or make a scene, so she takes hers. The cup is warm in her cold hands. Traitor hands.

"Your machine," he says, walking with her toward the tall lobby windows, "how old is it?"

"Older than my career. Older than yours probably."

"Lawyer, so, no."

"What are you, thirty-seven?"

"Thirty-six." He looks pleased she guessed close. Or pleased she guessed at all. "And you're thirty-something, I've done the math off your byline."

"My byline doesn't have an age on it."

"It has a face now. They did that profile thing with your headshot."

"You read my stuff?"

"Every Friday." He says it plain, no weight on it, sipping his coffee. "The piece about the bus depot was good."

Nobody reads the bus depot piece. Danielle read it. Her mother read it. That's the list.

"That was six months ago," she says.

"It was a good piece."

They stand at the window. The El roars past above them, rattling the old glass. She watches her reflection and his in it. Two people holding coffee in a lobby on a Tuesday.

"Why do you take the stairs?" he asks.

"Excuse me?"

"Every morning. I hear you. The stairwell door, then your nook. You never take the elevator."

"The elevator creaks."

"The building creaks. You live here."

She almost smiles. "The elevator creaks and then it's a conversation. Two floors of conversation with whoever's in it."

"That bad?"

"Worse. People talk about their kids. Their cases. Somebody told me about their divorce. Full story. Standing room."

Conrad laughs, that warm short laugh again, and leans his shoulder against the window frame. He's angled toward her. Close, but not in her space. She notices that he notices, the way he keeps the gap.

"So you take the stairs to avoid small talk," he says. "And now you're stuck having small talk with me."

"This is different."

"How?"

"I don't know yet."

He grins into his cup. Fifteen minutes goes by like that. She checks. Fifteen minutes, gone. They talk about nothing. The heater. Sal's prices going up fifty cents. Whether a hot dog is a sandwich, which she brings up just to watch him take it seriously, and he does, he actually argues the taxonomy. He says a hot dog is its own category, like a lawyer, and she tells him that's the most lawyer answer in the history of answers.

Somewhere in there she notices the warmth in his voice. Not the fake lobby warmth. Something under it. He leans in a little when she talks. When she stops talking he waits, like he's actually waiting, not just filling the gap before his turn.

When did a man last wait for her to finish a sentence?

Her cup is empty. She looks at it, surprised.

"Listen," Conrad says. "The cart's better than that yard sale machine anyway. You're down here twice a day now. Fair warning."

"I'll buy a new machine."

"You'll say that and keep coming down here."

She wants to argue. She has nothing. He's right, probably, and worse, he knows he's right, and somehow that's not smug on him. It's worse than smug. It's patient.

"Well," she says. "Thanks for the coffee."

"Anytime. I mean it. Next one's yours, though."

She's at the stairs before she calls back, "I said there's no next one."

He doesn't answer. She can hear him grinning. She knows exactly what his face is doing and she climbs the stairs anyway, up past two, up to three, boots on the worn carpet.

Her nook is cold. The dead machine sits on the shelf like a little headstone.

She sits down. She opens the draft due Thursday. She types one sentence and deletes it.

She thinks about leaning. The way he leaned. The warmth under the lobby voice. She thinks, eight years, eight good years, nobody asking her anything about her bus depot piece.

Then she thinks, four dollars. The next one's four dollars.

She could spare four dollars.

She types another sentence. It's not good. She leaves it in anyway and looks out the tall window at the tracks, listening for the stairwell door that isn't coming because he's already gone, and hating that she listened.

* * *

A week later, Tuesday again. Thelma's at her desk at 8:40 sharp, new machine plugged in and gurgling. It's a black plastic thing, forty bucks, and it works, and she's annoyed at how relieved she is about it.

She's mid-paragraph when someone knocks on her nook door.

She freezes. Nobody knocks on her nook door. Danielle calls, doesn't visit. The other third floor tenants are quiet, a tax guy and a woman who sells insurance and never looks up.

She opens the door. Conrad. Standing there with his coat still on, holding a spare key in his hand like evidence.

"Before you say anything," he says, "I thought you were locked out."

"It's 8:40. I'm always here at 8:40. You know that. You hear me take the stairs."

"I heard the stairs. I didn't hear your door." He shrugs. "Figured the lock finally ate you."

"The lock has never eaten anybody."

"There's a first time for everything. Landlord gave me this key two years ago, never used it once." He holds it out. "Want it? Since we're neighbors now."

"We're not neighbors. We share a hallway. Neighbors implies I'd let you borrow a cup of sugar."

"Do you have sugar?"

"Two bags. I don't bake. I just lose bags of sugar." She does not take the key. She regrets it the second the door closes, for reasons she doesn't examine.

He grins and pushes his glasses up with one finger. "Two bags. Noted." He heads back down the hall, and she watches his shoulders under the coat, the way his suits fit him too well, and then she shuts the door hard and goes back to the draft.

She writes four hundred good words before ten. Best morning in weeks. She refuses to connect the two things.

* * *

Sunday. Danielle calls at two, right on schedule. Thelma is on the couch in Pilsen with a bowl of cereal she's using as lunch. The fire escape herbs are dead again, all six pots, and she's looking at them through the glass instead of throwing them out.

"Okay, you sound weird," Danielle says. "Weird good or weird bad?"

"Neither. I sound normal."