From inside the apartment, I hear Bagel meow. Once. Short. Not distressed — questioning. The sound of a small animal who doesn't understand why someone just left.
The door clicks shut behind me.
I stand on the landing. One second. Two. The light above the door is the kind that buzzes and flickers and makes everything look like a memory of itself. Through the door I can hear — nothing. No footsteps. No crutches. No voice calling me back.
Then, very faintly: a sound I almost miss. A single thud — dull, heavy — like a crutch being set down hard. Or dropped. Or thrown at something soft.
I wait.
Nothing else comes.
I put my hands in my pockets. I walk down the fourteen stairs. I step onto the sidewalk.
The snow is still falling. The straight-down kind.
I start walking toward the bus stop, and the distance between me and his door gets wider with every step, and his bones are healing, and the good news is the worst kind of bad news — the kind you can't argue with.
13
SOMETHING BREAKS
I.
The garbage is in the kitchen.
I've been thinking about it from the couch for twenty minutes. A plastic bag, half full, tied loosely at the top. Nora tied it before she left yesterday. She also wiped down the counter, refilled my water, plugged in my phone, and set the painkillers within reach — a sequence so practiced I stopped noticing it until she stopped coming every day, and now I notice it like a tooth the moment it starts to ache.
She's not here today. She texted this morning:Hope you slept ok. I'll come by tomorrow. Let me know if you need anything.
I didn't need anything. I said so. I saidall goodwith an emoji that I picked carefully — not the thumbs up, which is dismissive; not the smiling face, which is a lie; the simple check mark, which is nothing. The nothing emoji. The emoji of a man who is doing fine.
The garbage bag is right there.
Camille called twenty minutes ago. Voicemail. She's at the pâtisserie — Wednesday is her day for custom orders, and sheonce told me that leaving ganache mid-temper is a crime worse than arson. Marc texted yesterday asking if I wanted company. I saidmaybe this weekendbecausemaybe this weekendis the polite Canadian version ofplease don't come watch me be this.
The bag is three feet from the counter and the bin is by the door and the door is ten feet away.
Thirteen feet, total. I've walked further than that. I walked to the bathroom this morning. I walked to the kitchen. I made instant coffee, which was terrible — terrible enough to clarify how good Nora's coffee is and how I will not, under any circumstances, think about that.
Thirteen feet.
I grab my crutches. I stand — the usual process, edge, plant, push, the stiffness through my left side that has graduated from sharp to deep to this: a dull, heavy thing that catches when I move wrong, like hardware settling into bone that hasn't decided whether to accept it. I'm standing. My phone is in the pocket of my sweats. She told me to keep it there. Weeks ago — it feels like months — she saidkeep your phone on you, in case something happens.At the time it was just her being practical. The way she's practical about everything — the pills sorted, the crutches positioned, the phone charged.
In case something happens.
I take a step. Good. Another. The crutches hit the floor with the dull thud that has become the background music of my life. Thud thud step. Thud thud step. I make it around the corner. I reach for the bag.
It happens on the reach.
Not dramatically. Not the way it happens in movies, where the music swells and the camera goes slow-motion and the audience holds its breath. It happens like this: I shift my weight to my right side and bend slightly forward and my left crutch slips — the edge of the rug, a sock, nothing, it doesn't matter —and my balance goes, and I grab for the counter but the counter is three inches further than I thought, and my hip seizes, and I'm on the floor.
I'm on the floor.
The garbage bag is next to me, still tied. The crutches are — one is under the kitchen table, the other is by my side. The floor is cold. The floor is the same floor where Nora sat and cried and tried to tell my cat things she couldn't tell me, and now I'm on it, and the irony is not lost, and the irony doesn't help.
I try to get up.
I can't.
