We did our loop. Beau did his business. We headed back, taking the long route.
The antique store sat on the corner four blocks from my building. I’d walked past it multiple times and never gone inside.The sign in the window said it opened at seven, which meant it had been open for fifteen minutes.
I stopped.
Beau looked up at me, confused by the break in routine.
Haley made art. She’d probably drawn more than Beau, which meant she had other sketches. Things she might want to frame. She’d said she enjoyed antiques.
This was practical. A thank you for the tape session. Nothing more complicated than that.
The bell above the door rang when I pushed it open. Inside, the space had been crammed with furniture, boxes, and shelves holding things that didn’t seem to follow any organizational system. A human man stood behind the counter, reading a newspaper.
He looked up, taking me in. “Help you find something?”
“Picture frames.”
“What size?”
I hadn’t thought about that. “Different sizes. A variety.”
He gestured toward the right side of the shop. “Got a bunch back there. Select what you want and bring them up here.”
The frames had been stacked in boxes and leaned against the wall in no order I could determine. I sorted through them, pulling out the ones that looked like something she’d use. Nothing ornate. I selected ten frames, ranging from small to medium, and I carried them to the counter.
The man rang them up and I paid. He wrapped them in old newspaper and put them in a bag.
“Gift?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He nodded like that explained everything.
Outside, Beau strained forward as we walked to my building, the bag of frames in my other hand. By the time we reachedmy apartment, I’d decided I wouldn’t wrap them. I’d leave them outside her apartment door with a note.
Wrapping them felt like making a statement I wasn’t ready to make. Not wrapping them felt like I was treating this casually when it wasn’t.
This was the shape of my morning.
Building operations occupied a windowless office in the basement, tucked between the equipment storage room and the loading dock. I’d never been inside. The door was open when I walked past at seven forty-five, and I stopped.
A man in coveralls sat at a desk covered in papers and coffee mugs, his heels braced on the corner.
He looked up when I filled the doorway. “Can I help you?”
“It’s about an office on the second floor.” I named the number I’d already noted on a tiny placard above her door.
He waited.
“It’s cold,” I said. “The heating doesn’t work properly. This affects staff performance and needs to be corrected.”
He picked up a clipboard and flipped through pages. “We’ve had that request logged multiple times. We adjust it, it drifts back.”
“Then fix it so it doesn’t drift.”
He looked at me again, processing what I wasn’t saying.
“It’ll get handled,” he said, his feet thudding on the floor.
