The Lease Clause

Jenni Walters was thirty-three years old, and she was awake at four thirty in the morning because of a plant.

Not even her plant. Tom's plant. Tom, who had moved out six months ago with the good whisk and the decent towels, leaving behind a ficus the size of a fire hydrant and a note that said "water it? sorry." Two question marks. Like he wasn't even sure he was sorry.

So Jenni, who lived two floors up, dragged herself down the stairwell of the old Prague walk-up every few days with a watering can and a grudge.

The tram outside the window clanged past at exactly this hour. It always clanged at 4:30. The whole building rattled like a tin can full of bolts. Below, in the square, the farmers market vendors were already banging crates around. Jenni leaned out the landing window beside Tom's old apartment, now somebody else's apartment, and watched a man stack oranges in the dark like it was a normal thing a person did before sunrise.

"I hate this city," she told the oranges. "I hate this tram. I hate you, Austin."

Austin was the ficus. She'd named it after Tom's boss, for reasons that had felt very funny at the time.

She watered it. She watered the sad little basil on the sill too, which was mostly sticks. Then she crept back down the hallway toward the stairs, watering can swinging, and nearly walked into a wall with a face on it.

A tall guy, maybe thirty-four, in boxer shorts and a t-shirt, standing in his doorway holding a piece of paper like a shield. Hair sticking up everywhere. Eyes half closed.

"You," he said.

"Me," Jenni agreed. "Sorry. Did I wake you?"

"Every time." He looked at the paper. "Every single time, the door opens and there's a person in my hallway watering things at four thirty in the morning. I thought you were robbing me, the first time."

"With a watering can?"

"People are weird." He held up the paper. "Here. Read clause nine."

She read clause nine. She read it twice.

"'The tenant shall maintain in living condition all plants situated within the premises, including those not belonging to the tenant,'" she read out loud. "That's insane. Who writes that?"

"Someone who didn't trust the last tenant," Luca said. His name was Luca, she'd learned from the mailbox, three months of him living in Tom's old place. "The landlord. Old guy. Very intense about his ficus, apparently. Forfeits the deposit if it dies. Supposedly."

"So it's Tom's problem."

"It's Tom's problem that I inherit." He yawned so wide his jaw cracked. "And then Tom's problem shows up in my hallway at four thirty with a watering can, and I inherit that too. Do you know how disorienting it is to be half asleep and see a strange woman hugging a tree in your hallway?"

"I was not hugging it."

"You had your arm around it."

"That's how you reach the back of the pot, genius."

"Sure it is." He leaned on the doorframe. "Look, I'm not mad. I'm just saying. Next time, maybe, a note. Or a normal hour. Or just tell me where you're at and I'll water the stupid thing myself."

"You'd do that?"

"It's my deposit on the line too, if the landlord's feeling creative." He shrugged. "Besides, I'm up anyway. Tram. Crates. You've heard it."

"Every morning," Jenni said, with feeling.

"Right. So. Luca." He stuck out his hand. She shook it. His hand was warm and he still hadn't put on pants.

"Jenni. And I'm not a burglar."

"Noted."

* * *

The second evening, Jenni came back at a civilized hour, six in the evening, and found Luca's door standing wide open. She stood in the hallway like an idiot for a second, then leaned in.

"Hello? Your door's open."

"Then come close it," came his voice from somewhere inside. "That's how doors work."

She stepped in. The apartment was Tom's furniture, basically all of it, arranged completely differently. The couch was against the wrong wall. The bookshelf was full of grant applications and novels she'd never heard of. It looked like a person lived there. It hadn't looked like a person lived there for the last year of Tom's tenancy.

"This clause is insane, by the way," Jenni said, dropping into a kitchen chair without asking. "I looked it up. Nobody in this country enforces plant clauses."

"I know. I read the whole lease the day I moved in. I'm not watering anything either. I'm letting you do all the work and take the moral high ground about it."

"That's the smartest thing anyone's ever said to me."

"Wine?" He was already pouring two glasses. "You look like you've had a day."

"I've had a year," she said, and then drank half the glass. "Sorry. You didn't sign up for that."

"Try me. I moved from Chicago to Prague to write grant proposals for a renewable energy nonprofit. My whole life is other people's problems, formatted correctly."

So she told him. Tom, four years, from twenty-nine to thirty-three. The good whisk. The way he'd moved out on a Tuesday while she was at work and texted her a photo of the empty closet like that was communication. The plant note with two question marks.

"And the worst part," she said, "is I'm still here watering his stupid ficus. Like I'm keeping the door open. For what? He's in Lisbon now."

Luca nodded along and refilled her glass.

"Mine was five years," he said. "Ended because she said I was 'emotionally unavailable,' which, fair, I write grant proposals for fun. Then she took the dog. The dog hated her. The dog chose wrong."

"Traitors everywhere."

"Everywhere." He raised his glass. "To Austin the ficus. The only commitment either of us has left."

They clinked. Jenni laughed, actually laughed, first time in weeks, and hated how good it felt.

* * *

The third evening, he let her in before she even knocked, like he'd been listening for the watering can. Wine again. The good kind, not the kind Jenni bought in boxes.

She got about one glass in before she said it.

"I hate that you live here."

Luca blinked. "Okay. Rude."

"No, wait. Not you. Just..." She waved at the couch, the wrong wall, the whole room. "This was his apartment. His life. And you