Nora had never been naive about how outsiders judged the old, brick, blocky six-flat that was, for the first time in her adult life, her full-time home, though the precise nature of the judgments had changed over the years. When she’d first come to visit, her parents had spent the whole drive from the airport speaking quietly—well, notthatquietly—to each other about Nonna wasting years of money and effort on this “little building” when she could’ve stayed in her perfectly nice, paid-off house in the suburbs after her husband, Nora’s grandfather, passed. Two decades later and the judgments were different: Wasn’t it the most dated-looking building on the block? Shouldn’t it try to do a little better to keep up? Hadn’t anyone considered making it brighter, more modern? Was that striped wallpaper in the hallways made of . . .velvet?
The problem was, people didn’t appreciate a classic. People had no loyalty!
Nonna had always been saying that.
Nora closed her eyes, thinking of what Nonna might say now. She probably would say that Donny wasn’tpeople. She would say that she trusted Donny—that Donny, like everyone else in the building who had been her neighbor, herfamily(no almost about it!), for years and years, would’ve made sure the apartment would be left in good hands, left to someone who understood what it was all about here. In fact, that’s what everyone else in the building seemed to think, too. Nonna, after all, had left her apartment to Nora, because she’d known that Nora would take extra care. She’d known that Nora loved the building as much as she did.
“Maybe he’ll have left it to one of us,” Jonah had said only the week before, during their first building meeting since Donny’s passing. Nora had stood at the front of the room, the concrete floor of the basement laundry room a hard press of reality against the soles of her sneakers. She watched the faces of her neighbors light in hope, and she’d thought of the three unreturned phone calls she’d made to Donny’s attorney.
I think we would’ve already heard, she’d thought.I think we would’ve heard if it was one of us.
But she hadn’t said that. She’d pasted on a smile and said, “I guess we’ll have to wait and see,” clutching the building bylaws in her hand with a sense of impending doom. If it wasn’t one of them, she didn’t know who it could be, because in addition to being quiet and kind, Donny was also, for as long as she’d known him, alone. No girlfriend, no boyfriend, no friends or family outside these walls.
Was 4:00 a.m. too early to try calling that attorney again?
She let out a gusty sigh, rippling the surface of her still mostly undrunk dark roast. The fact of the matter was, it was long past time to stop her 4:00 a.m. fretting. Maybe she needed to go back to list-making for a while, because those unreturned phone calls almost certainly meant something bad was in the offing: some faceless property investment firm was probably combing through Cook County death records even as she ruminated, looking for opportunities to do one of those quick turnaround “flips.” They’d show up and park a dumpster out front and toss all of quiet, kind Donny Pasternak’s things, and they would absolutely complain about the hallway wallpaper (Noloyalty!Nonna sniffed, from somewhere). A month later there’d be a “For Sale” sign for Donny’s apartment in the front courtyard with a sticker price that’d start spelling the end for this building that Nonna had made a second life in, this building that had—with a bit of fate and a lot of effort—become a family all its own.
She sighed again—it was a realwoe is mesituation during this particular golden hour—untucked her feet, and stood from her chair, stretching into a posture that was stiff, upright, preparatory. There had to be something she could do other than simply . . .waitinglike this.
But right then, she heard a door slide open somewhere below her.
Nora knew 4:00 a.m.
Nora knew 4:00 a.m.in this building.
And she knew no one—besides her—ever came out onto their balcony at this hour.
No one except.
No one except . . . someone new.
Nora realized that it would be, by all accounts, extremely inappropriate to rush to her balcony railing, hang her head over the side, and ask whomever was down there how they felt about vintage wallpaper. First of all, the sun wasn’t even up yet. Second of all, she was not wearing a bra beneath her pajamas. Third of all, if wallpaper was the only conversation opener she could think of at that moment, it was truly time to make good on her intentions to start getting out more.
Maybe it was the attorney with questionable phone etiquette? Or worse! The actual face of the faceless property investment firm? Sure it was early, but maybe these people needed the whole twenty-four hours in any given day to carry out their terrible, wallpaper-hating plans? She was absolutely not prepared to have this confrontation, not without a bra and a PowerPoint presentation about the mercenary nature of real estate trends.
Bra first, she told herself, reaching a hand toward the door handle before pausing again.
What if it’s not one of those two people?
She couldn’t really explain it, the feeling she had—the feeling that she shouldn’t go inside quite yet, the feeling that the person who’d slid open that door was someone she should meet.
Of course, there remained the problem of the early hour, and her lack of supporting undergarments, and also her apparently limited ideas for what she might actuallysay, so she decided that, at least for the time being, she’d try to make this meeting one-sided. Carefully, she set down her coffee on the small patio table beside her chair, and—grateful for the quiet of her bare feet against the wood and her long-honed awareness of which boards were likeliest to creak—silently stepped toward the railing, tucking herself into one of the empty spaces between her many potted plants.
And then she peeked over the edge, down and across to Donny’s balcony.
She saw him first as a dark outline, limned by the lights left on in the apartment, her perspective from above him giving her only an impression of his body—hands gripping the railing that jutted out slightly farther than her own; long arms spread wide, triangles of empty space between them and the lean waist that fanned out into a broad, curving back; head bowed low between the tense set of his shoulders.
It was like looking at a sculpture, a piece of art, something that took all of your attention. Something that insisted you stay right in the moment you were in, something that told you to memorize what you were seeing. She could’ve looked and looked. Until the sun came up. Until the golden hour was over for real.
But then, it hit her.
This was not the posture of a property man who needed a PowerPoint presentation.
This curved-back, bowed-head balcony lean was the posture of a man who was . . . grieving?
She sucked in a surprised breath and, too quickly, stepped away from her railing.
And knocked over one of her plants.
