“I mean, I’m assuming. The other third-floor resident is a guy called Jonah. Eleanora, she’s probably the one.”
Goddamnthese hiccups. Medicine had really never found a cure for them, not that his were the typical kind.
“Anyway,” Sally said, “Gerald told me—grudgingly, if I’m being honest, but you know how he is—that everyone here thinks you’rerealcharming. You gotta translate some of that famous bedside manner into this job! Some smiles and reassurances while you clean up the place, and you could have this whole thing sewn up quick.”
Will cleared his throat, straightened in his chair. Right. Two weeks, basically. He could do that. And hewascharming! Witness his coffee jokes, or the way he always got called in for crying kids. Or crying adults, frankly. He could do this. Get some goodwill, get the apartment into shape, get money, get Donny out of his head. The woman on the balcony had nothing to do with it.
He just had to stay focused.
Sally snapped the tablet shut, smiled across the table at him as though they’d shaken hands on a deal. “If I were you,” she said cheerfully, “I’d start with Eleanora.”
Chapter 3
“He called youMs. Clarke!”
Nora pursed her lips and prayed for strength as murmurs of disapproval spread through the assembled group. This building meeting was really, really not going well.
That made two in a row, not that Nora was counting, and since the last one had been what basically amounted to a collectively devastated debrief over Donny’s death, that was really saying something. But this morning—called together hastily once again—Nora’s neighbors seemed almost as shocked, almost as shaken as they were during that last meeting. Their regular business—maintenance reports, budget updates, event calendars—all of it shunted to some other day.
All because of the man on the balcony, and his awful letter.
Hisletter!
“Marian,” Nora said, trying to keep the exclamations that were in her head out of her voice. “Why don’t you let me have that back for now?”
“Ms.!” Marian repeated, drawing it out, fully exclamated—Mizzzzzzz!—obviously not ready to let Nora have the letter back. She was staring down at it through the lenses of her glasses like she could make it catch fire with her eyes. “I give him points for making no assumptions about you, Nora, but this whole thing doesn’t seem veryneighborly!”
“Right,” Nora said, reaching a hand out from her spot by the washing machines. “If I could—”
“Strangers,” Emily said quietly, shaking her head. “Stayinghere.”
“Don’t see as how it’ll work,” said Jonah, his arms crossed over his skinny chest. “People coming in and out like that. What is it, like a hotel?”
“Yep,” said Benny, also arms crossed. He and Jonah always sat together, the younger, quieter Benny having long ago developed an abiding admiration for eighty-year-old Jonah’s extremely loud pronouncements.
“A hotel!” Emily gasped, and Marian reached over, gently patting her wife’s hand. At present, however, her attention was divided between comfort and outrage, because she was still looking down at the letter.
“He’s already filed for the registration!” she cried, affronted, and Nora definitely knew the feeling.
The man from the other morning wasn’t loyal, after all.
In the days after she’d first met him, Nora had spent her golden hours back out on her balcony, listening for some sound of him below. At first she’d convinced herself that she’d only been waiting for an opportunity to finish their conversation, to tell him all the reasons he would surely come to love the building as much as she did. But the truth was, in the shadowy quiet of the predawn, she’d been waiting for something else—a chance to see his soft smile, to hear his golden-hour whisper.
She’d thought for sure he’d come back.
But he hadn’t.
He’d sent aletter.
She stepped forward, propelled by a fresh feeling of betrayal, pulling the letter from Marian’s fingers and hoping that it’d lost some of its power since she’d first opened it last night. She’d stood at the kitchen counter, a red-alarm fire in her brain, realizing that while she’d been lapsing into some kind of balcony-induced, clearly-not-meeting-enough-men-her-age hypnosis, the guy who had charmed her so completely had been making plans: the registration with the city, sure, but also a set of what he’d described in his letter as “modest upgrades” that would be “minimally disruptive” to other “tenants” (tenants! Nora’s head had almost blown off). Heplannedto start on Monday. Heplannedto take no longer than two weeks. Heplannedto have his “unit” (unit!Enraging) ready for short-term renters by the beginning of June.
So far, all she’d planned was this emergency meeting.
She cleared her throat. “I’ve printed out some fact sheets from the website he’s planning to use,” she announced, reaching for the small stack of papers on top of the washing machine. It was not the most edifying thing, using a washing machine as a podium, but needs must, for this emergency. “As you’ll see, their minimum rental term is three days; the maximum is six weeks.”
At that, Nora caught sight of Emily’s small face paling as she clutched her newly acquired fact sheet. Emily had always been sensitive, prone to worrying, but a mild heart attack a couple of years ago—one that had prompted an earlier-than-planned retirement—had dialed it all up, and that was even before Nonna and Donny. Nora left her desk two days a week at lunch to go down and eat with Emily, folding into a rotation she shared with Mr. and Mrs. Salas. She was pretty sure Emily ought to be talking to a therapist, but so far, Nora’s gentle suggestions had been met with sharp resistance.
“Three days is bad news,” said Mr. Salas. “That’s weekenders. People who’ll come in and make a mess and leave, and I doubt this guy is going to run his place like anicehotel.”
