The Wrong Apartment, Right Mistake

You'd think a guy my age would have figured out by now that delivering groceries to strangers is basically paid loneliness. Forty-two years old, driving a company van around Manhattan at night, carrying reusable bags full of organic kale up four flights of stairs because some rich person on East 14th didn't feel like walking to the store. That's the job I picked. I picked it on purpose, you know.

People ask me why, and I always say the same thing. "I like the quiet, man. Nobody talks to you. You ring a bell, you hand over a bag, you go." That's the pitch. And for the first couple years it was true. I loved it. No cubicle chatter, no boss hovering, no office birthday parties where you stand there holding a paper plate and wondering how soon is too soon to leave.

But here's what nobody warns you about. Every doorbell you ring, some part of your brain goes, hey, remember doors? Remember all the ones you never knocked on? Because I was that kid in high school. The one who liked a girl for an entire semester and never said a word. Three of them, actually, that I can count without digging too deep, and probably more that I've buried on purpose. I moved to the city at twenty-two with two suitcases and this big plan about reinventing myself, and instead I just... found a job where I never have to talk to anyone.

Real inspiring stuff, right?

Anyway. Tuesday night. Last stop of my shift, and it's already 9:40 and my feet are screaming. The ticket says East 14th, some apartment in this prewar walk-up, and the unit number on the form is smudged to hell. It looks like 3B. Could be 3B. Could be 8B if you squint, which makes no sense in a five-story building, but the handwriting was that bad.

I grabbed the bags, six of them, heavy ones, and hauled myself up the stairs. No elevator, of course. Prewar buildings laugh at your hamstrings. By the third floor I was sweating through my jacket, and I stood in front of a door whose brass number had lost half its paint and thought, close enough, okay, Jake, drop the goods, get the signature, go home, microwave something, sleep.

I rang the bell.

And waited.

And then the door opened, and I want to tell you I handled what happened next like a grown man. I did not.

Because standing there in the doorway, wearing paint-splattered sweatpants and an old flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, holding a charcoal-stained brush in one hand, was Kyra. Kyra from my graduating class. Kyra who sat two rows behind me in eleventh grade and laughed so loud the teacher once stopped mid-sentence. Forty-one years old now, same dark curly hair, shorter than I remembered, paint on her cheek, and her mouth falling open in this perfect little O.

"Jake?" she said. "Jake Morandi? No. No way."

"Kyra," I said, and my voice cracked like I was fourteen again. "Oh my god."

We just stood there. Sirens going by down on the avenue, some neighbor's TV bleeding through the wall, and the two of us frozen in a doorway like a couple of statues somebody abandoned mid-conversation.

"You're my delivery guy?" she said, and then she laughed, that same big laugh, and smacked my shoulder with the hand holding the brush, which left a little gray smudge on my jacket. "You're literally delivering me groceries. Jake Morandi is handing me a bag of, what is this, heirloom tomatoes?"

"Someone's order," I managed. "Actually, hold on, I think I've got the wrong apartment. Is this 3B?"

"Nope, this is 4A," she said cheerfully. "Whoever 3B is, he's one floor down and I hear him complain about deliveries all the time through the floor, so honestly, you dodged a bullet."

She looked at the six bags, then back at me, and this grin spread across her face that I remembered way too well.

"Well," she said, stepping back from the doorway, "you can't just stand in the hall dripping sweat on my welcome mat. Bring them in."

"Bring them in? Kyra, they're not yours. They're for Nate in 3B. I literally have to redeliver them, there's a whole process, I have to scan the..."

"Jake." She said my name like she was disappointed in me, and somehow that was worse than any yelling. "You are not going to walk back down those stairs, knock on grumpy Nate's door, and then drive your little van home to whatever sad bachelor fridge you've got. I know you've got a sad bachelor fridge. You've always had a sad bachelor fridge. Come inside and let me feed you something before you redeliver whatever this is."

I hesitated. I actually hesitated, standing there in the hallway of a building where I did not work, holding groceries that did not belong to anyone in that apartment, and I almost said no. Old habit. The old Jake would have said no. The old Jake would have mumbled something about policy and been back in his van in ninety seconds, adding another door to the never-knocked pile.

"Kyra, I really can't just..."

"You can and you will," she said, and she reached out and took two of the bags right out of my arms, just took them, turned around, and walked into her apartment like it was already decided. "Come on. I've been painting alone all day and talking to a man who delivers groceries is more social interaction than I've had since the mailman came on Thursday. Don't make me beg."

She didn't have to beg. I stood there maybe three more seconds, looking at her open doorway, hearing her clank the bags down on a kitchen counter somewhere inside, and then I sighed and carried the other four bags in.

Her apartment was small and crammed. One bedroom, kitchen doubling as the living room, and every available surface covered in drawings. Charcoal sketches pinned to the walls, stacked on the radiator, leaning against the couch. And okay, I'll admit it, a few of the sketches were the kind of thing you don't exactly expect to see pinned above someone's kitchen counter. Very detailed. Very not-grocery-related.

"Close the door," she called from the kitchen. "And don't touch the stuff on the table, some of it's inventory."

"Inventory," I repeated, setting the bags down and trying very hard to look at a still life of pears instead. "This is inventory?"

"Mm-hmm," she said, coming back out, wiping her hands on a dish towel. "I run an online shop. Erotic art. Originals and prints. It pays better than you'd think." She looked at me sideways, clearly enjoying whatever my face was doing. "What, Jake? You've seen the internet. It's full of naked people. Some of us just charge for it."

"It's good work," I said, which came out sounding like I was reviewing her portfolio at a job interview.

She laughed again. "God, you haven't changed at all. Still the same polite little soldier. Sit down. I'm making you tea and you're going to tell me what the hell you've been doing for the last twenty-five years, because the last time I saw you, you were signing a yearbook and hiding behind Danny Ibarra at graduation."

She put the kettle on, and I sat down on her couch between two stacks of drawings, still in my delivery jacket, feeling like I'd wandered into the wrong building entirely.

Except maybe, for once, it was the right one.

I tried to keep my eyes on the pears. I really did. But her kitchen wall had this one drawing pinned right over the stove, a woman from behind, charcoal, all hip and shoulder blade, and the shading on it was so good I forgot the pears existed. Then next to that one, a couple lying down, drawn with a detail that made my ears go hot. And I just stood there staring like an idiot at my old classmate's wall of porn.

"See something you like?" Kyra asked from the doorway of the kitchen, and I nearly knocked over a stack of drawings.

"No. I mean, yes, I mean, they're technically excellent," I said, which is what my brain produced under pressure. "The cross-hatching alone is..."

"Jake." She was grinning so wide I could see the teeth. "You're allowed to say tits. You're forty-two years old."

"I wasn't going to say tits."

"You were absolutely going to say tits." She came over and tugged one of the drawings off the wall, the woman from behind, and held it up. "This one sells the best, actually. Guys buy prints of it and never admit what they hung it over. I get these little emails like, 'regrettably my wife saw it.' Regrettably."

"That's a good business model," I said weakly.

"Right? Nobody's regretting buying groceries." She pinned the drawing back up and I pretended the pears were fascinating again. "Sit. Beer or tea? I've got both and you look like you need the beer after those stairs."

It was a beer. Obviously it was a beer. She pulled two bottles out of her fridge, which I noticed was a lot less sad than mine, and we ended up sitting on her floor, backs against the couch, because her one chair had drawings on it and neither of us suggested moving them.

"So," she said, twisting the cap off hers. "Twenty-five years. Go."

"That's not a question."

"Fine. What have you been doing for twenty-five years, Jake Morandi?"

"Delivering things, mostly," I said, and she kicked my ankle.

"Try again."

"Okay, okay." I took a swallow. "Moved here at 22, two suitcases, thought I'd be a photographer. Was not a photographer. Drove a cab for a while, then this grocery thing. It's steady. I like steady."

"You liked steady in high school too. You were the steadiest person I knew."

"Is that a compliment?"

"It's a compliment. It's also why you never asked out the three girls you liked, but we'll circle back to that."

I almost choked on my beer. "Who told you about that?"

"Nobody had to tell me. Jake, I sat two rows behind you in eleventh grade. You'd get this look when certain people walked past, and then you'd stare at your desk like it owed you money. I kept a mental tally. Three. It was three, right?"

I stared at her. "How did you know it was three?"

She just shrugged, delighted with herself, and took a drink. "I'm observant. Occupational hazard. I look at people for a living."

"Then how come you never..." I stopped myself, and she raised her eyebrows, waiting, enjoying it. "Never mind."

"Never mind what?"

"Nothing. Senior year was a long time ago."

"Senior year," she said, leaning her head back against the couch, "God. Remember when Mr. Cortez caught us passing notes in third period and read one out loud? Out loud, in front of everyone?"

"That was you passing notes. I was receiving."

"You were receiving very enthusiastically. You laughed. You snorted, even."

"I did not snort."

"You snorted, Jake. There are witnesses. Most of them are on Facebook now, if you ever went to a reunion."

"I don't do reunions."

"I know," she said, and she said it softly, not teasing for once. "You never came to a single one. I checked."

I looked down at my bottle. "Reunions are just hallways with worse lighting. You walk in and everyone's measuring. Who's balder, who's richer