"What?"
"You gave a stranger a key to your condo."
"I gave myneighbora key. Categorically different. Let's not forget the community-building aspect of this event."
She tilted her head. "What's he like?"
I thought about the question. The honest answer had more rooms in it than I was prepared to open at eleven-forty on a weeknight, so I stepped into the alcove. "Quiet," I said. "Not the shut-down kind. Like it's quiet but doing something."
Nora looked at me for a long moment.
"What?"
"I've worked with you for two years," she said. "I've watched you talk to every kind of person who walks through the door. You have never once said anything like that about quiet."
I moved down the bar and wiped the section near the taps.
The TV cut to a post-game interview. Pratt was there in the frame. He still wore his gear with a towel over his shoulder. A journalist off-camera asked him about a defensive gap in the third.
He answered it directly. He named the issue, described the adjustment, and stopped when he was done. The journalist moved on to the next question.
I knew what Pratt looked like at seven in the evening in his own condo, holding a wine bottle he'd accepted without drama. I knew the sound of his voice.
And I also knew what he looked like on a screen in a building that held nineteen thousand people who'd paid to watch him work. I listened to his voice with a journalist pointing a microphone at him.
The guy in the condo and the guy on the screen were the same person. My body decided he was trustworthy, and my body had a better record on those calls than my brain did.
The interview ended, and the broadcast moved on to something else.
Nora was still at the service end, sipping coffee and watching me over the rim.
She lowered the mug. "How many nights a week do you work here?"
"Four."
"And the TV's been on—"
"The well needs restocking before closing."
My deflection worked. She smiled and went back to wiping tables.
I got home at twenty past two. The hallway was quiet; no elevator hum and no sound through any of the doors. I was halfway to my keys when I saw it.
A folded piece of paper on the floor, pushed partway under my door. I picked it up.
The handwriting was even. No corrections or second pass. I couldn't address a greeting card without cross-outs.
Heard you come in around 1:30 most nights. I'm up then. If the lock gives you trouble. — Pratt. 8B.
I stood in the hallway and read it twice.
He'd signed it with his condo number. Like I might forget which door was his.
I folded it back on its crease and looked at his door. I thought about knocking and took a step.
