Alan went to his phone to text her before realizing that he didn’t have her number. He got out of bed, pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, then walked through the quiet apartment building to her side and knocked on her door. She was there, he knew it, on the other side. He couldn’t hear her, but he sensed her. The dark peephole stared at him, and he was suddenly angry at himself for chasing her down. He returned to his apartment, shucked off his shoes, and tried to decide what to do next. He was up hours earlier than he usually was, but he was far too wired to consider going back to bed. His stomach had a queasy hollowness, and there was a dull thudding somewhere in his head. He drank two glasses of water and swallowed some aspirin.
If he was slightly hungover, Kate was probably hungover as well, maybe worse than he was. Maybe she’d woken up, felt sick, and returned to her own place. Or maybe she’d woken up and felt ashamed of what they’d done. She’d told him that she had baggage, and that she hadn’t been with anyone for a long time. He’d been sensitive to that fact, going slow, even though he’d been overcome with not just intense physical longing, but something emotional as well. Afterward, with their chests pressed together, their breathing synced, he felt healed of an injury he hadn’t known he had.
And now she’d run away.
For something to do, he made a pot of coffee, then nuked some instant oatmeal even though he wasn’t hungry. He went to his computer, opened his work e-mail account, and sent a message to his boss that he’d woken up with some sort of stomach ailment and planned on staying home. He drank a cup of coffee, sitting by the window, with its view of the courtyard. It was strange to sit there and not be fixated by Audrey Marshall’s window. She’d been dead less than a week, and her importance in Alan’s life was already diminishing.
The day was bright but windy. A plastic bag spun in circles around the apartment building’s courtyard. At just after seven the lobby’s doors swung open and a man in a business suit emerged, a newspaper tucked under one of his arms. Alan recognized him but couldn’t remember his name. A financial analyst, he thought, who lived on the first floor with a wife who never appeared. The plastic bag snagged on the man’s right shoe as he traversed the courtyard. He bent and pulled it off, holding it at a distance as though it were toxic. He hesitated in that pose for a moment, and Alan knew he was weighing his options. Should I drop it back into the courtyard for someone else to deal with, or should I throw it out myself? He dropped it, wiped his fingers on his suit pants, and continued on his way.
Alan kept watching. If Kate emerged from the apartment that day—and it was definitely an if, not a when—then Alan could race down and confront her. She’d have to talk with him. She’d have to tell him what had happened to make her run from his apartment. He knew how it would look, him tracking her down, but he didn’t care. Besides, it would be better than returning to knock at her apartment and knowing that she was on the other side, not answering the door. Was it just shame on her part? Or had he done something wrong? He scoured his memories from the night before, looking for clues, but finding nothing.
He only left the window once during the morning, to quickly race to the bathroom, wash up a little, brush his teeth, and pull on clean clothes. On his way back he stopped in the kitchen, peered at the uneaten oatmeal congealing in a bowl, then rolled a piece of turkey up with a piece of Swiss cheese and brought it back to his post by the window. He watched the mailman arrive, trudging across the courtyard while pulling out a large parcel of mail from his saddlebag. Several other inhabitants from the building passed by, all on their way out into the brightness of Tuesday morning. He watched as Mrs. Anderby stepped into the courtyard with her pug, letting him off his leash to go sniff around the shrubbery for a place to urinate. There was a large burst of wind, and Mrs. Anderby