Sadie
The patrol officer drops me at the curb at just after six in the evening.
He offers to walk me in but I wave him off with a smile and tell him I'm fine. He looks at me for a while and then he tips his cap and tells me to call the number on his card if anything else happens tonight. I take the card. It saysOfficer Delgadoacross the top with his rank and department. I shove it in my coat pocket with the tow yard's card and the insurance claim number scrawled on the back of a receipt, and watch as his taillights disappear down the street.
Then I am standing alone on a sidewalk in a city I have been in for one day with a foil blanket folded under one arm and a purse over the other shoulder.
That's it. That's everything I'm wearing. The Corolla is at a yard thirty miles out. The boxes that were in the car are there with it, or they are in some impound between here and the tow lot, I genuinely don't know. The officer said someone would call me tomorrow about claiming my belongings.
I look up at the building.
Number eight forty-seven. Four stories, brick, the kind of building that was somebody's grand idea in 1952 and has been slowly forgotten ever since. Fire escape on the front. A door that has been painted green over a previous color that is showingthrough at the edges. The buzzer panel has a piece of electrical tape across half of it.
Terry said he'd meet me in the lobby, but I can’t see anyone through the windows.
I stand on the sidewalk for a second and I consider the possibility of crying. I've been considering it for four hours. Every time I think I'm about to, something practical happens and the crying gets pushed back on the list. By now the crying has been demoted so many times that I don't think it's going to happen tonight. Which is fine. Which is maybe better than fine.
I push the buzzer for the super. Nothing happens.
I push it again.
A voice I don't recognize crackles through the speaker. "Who?"
"Sadie Jenkins. New tenant. I was supposed to meet Terry."
"Oh. Oh, yeah. Hold on."
The buzzer goes. I push the door. I step into a lobby that smells like old carpet and cooking oil and a faint ammonia undertone that tells me someone has mopped recently and not very well. There's a man in sweatpants and slippers by the mailboxes, but it’s not Terry. Terry is apparently somebody who does not show up for appointments.
"You're Sadie?"
"Yes."
"Terry said to give you these." He holds out a key ring with two keys on it. "Said he'd stop by tomorrow to do the walk-through. Said sorry, something came up. The movers dropped your stuff off around three."
"They did?"
"Yeah, big guy with a clipboard. I let him in with my key. He said you wouldn't mind, said he couldn't wait. I figured you'd rather have your stuff than not."
Relief washes over me. "Yes, absolutely. That's fine. Thank you."
"You okay?” The super runs his eyes over me with a look somewhere between curiosity and confusion. “You look beat up."
"I was in an accident," I offer. “But I’m okay, thanks.”
He nods and decides to drop it.
"Elevator's out. Been out a while." He shrugs and shuffles back down the hall toward one of the ground-floor apartments.
I take the stairs.
My left knee is the one that got banged up in the crash, but it holds. It’s stiff, but the pain is manageable, even while climbing stairs.
Second floor. Third. Fourth.
My door is at the end of the hall. 4C. The paint around the number plate is chipped. I put the key in the lock and turn it. The door swings open.
My boxes are everywhere.
