lenses of her glasses like she could make it catch fire with her eyes. “I give him points for making no assumptions about you, Nora, but this whole thing doesn’t seem very neighborly!”
“Right,” Nora said, reaching a hand out from her spot by the washing machines. “If I could—”
“Strangers,” Emily said quietly, shaking her head. “Staying here.”
“Don’t see as how it’ll work,” said Jonah, his arms crossed over his skinny chest. “People coming in and out like that. What is it, like a hotel?”
“Yep,” said Benny, also arms crossed. He and Jonah always sat together, the younger, quieter Benny having long ago developed an abiding admiration for eighty-year-old Jonah’s extremely loud pronouncements.
“A hotel!” Emily gasped, and Marian reached over, gently patting her wife’s hand. At present, however, her attention was divided between comfort and outrage, because she was still looking down at the letter.
“He’s already filed for the registration!” she cried, affronted, and Nora definitely knew the feeling.
The man from the other morning wasn’t loyal, after all.
In the days after she’d first met him, Nora had spent her golden hours back out on her balcony, listening for some sound of him below. At first she’d convinced herself that she’d only been waiting for an opportunity to finish their conversation, to tell him all the reasons he would surely come to love the building as much as she did. But the truth was, in the shadowy quiet of the predawn, she’d been waiting for something else—a chance to see his soft smile, to hear his golden-hour whisper.
She’d thought for sure he’d come back.
But he hadn’t.
He’d sent a letter.
She stepped forward, propelled by a fresh feeling of betrayal, pulling the letter from Marian’s fingers and hoping that it’d lost some of its power since she’d first opened it last night. She’d stood at the kitchen counter, a red-alarm fire in her brain, realizing that while she’d been lapsing into some kind of balcony-induced, clearly-not-meeting-enough-men-her-age hypnosis, the guy who had charmed her so completely had been making plans: the registration with the city, sure, but also a set of what he’d described in his letter as “modest upgrades” that would be “minimally disruptive” to other “tenants” (tenants! Nora’s head had almost blown off). He planned to start on Monday. He planned to take no longer than two weeks. He planned to have his “unit” (unit! Enraging) ready for short-term renters by the beginning of June.
So far, all she’d planned was this emergency meeting.
She cleared her throat. “I’ve printed out some fact sheets from the website he’s planning to use,” she announced, reaching for the small stack of papers on top of the washing machine. It was not the most edifying thing, using a washing machine as a podium, but needs must, for this emergency. “As you’ll see, their minimum rental term is three days; the maximum is six weeks.”
At that, Nora caught sight of Emily’s small face paling as she clutched her newly acquired fact sheet. Emily had always been sensitive, prone to worrying, but a mild heart attack a couple of years ago—one that had prompted an earlier-than-planned retirement—had dialed it all up, and that was even before Nonna and Donny. Nora left her desk two days a week at lunch to go down and eat with Emily, folding into a rotation she shared with Mr. and Mrs. Salas. She was pretty sure Emily ought to be talking to a therapist, but so far, Nora’s gentle suggestions had been met with sharp resistance.
“Three days is bad news,” said Mr. Salas. “That’s weekenders. People who’ll come in and make a mess and leave, and I doubt this guy is going to run his place like a nice hotel.”
Emily shuddered, and Nora cringed inwardly at Mr. Salas making things worse, but he wasn’t wrong. Nora had seen the return address on that envelope. Will Sterling (another betrayal: his last name wasn’t even Pasternak! Instead, he had a name like a doctor on General Hospital, which Nora found extremely insulting) lived far south enough that coming up to this part of the city regularly would be a massive hassle, particularly given what he’d said about the way he worked. So he’d either neglect it or hire people to maintain it, which would mean more traffic in and out, more disruption.
Disruption was not the business of this building. Or at least it hadn’t been, not until lately.
“Can we stop this, Nora?” asked Mrs. Salas. “Do something about the bylaws?”
Nora swallowed, feeling shamed. If she’d been better