scale the sofa and make it to her door, the man in front of her shook his head. “Sorry, darlin’. We were short staffed. I had my cousins in here helping me but then my aunt called and needed them, and those little assholes left all the damn boxes blocked right in the hallway.” Behind the man, Gia spotted two solid rows of plastic bins and a few metal containers; all looked heavy, all stacked against the wall, one in front of the other. Several smaller pieces of furniture were in front of the containers and on the other side of those, were even more boxes. There wasn’t a single available space apart from the right of Gia and the space between the elevator and the five feet she’d walked from to get to where she stood now.
“Unbelievable…” she muttered, her body already starting to ache from tiredness.
The mover waved his phone, head shaking when no one seemed to pick up on the other line. He looked at the screen again, his thumb moving through the contacts as he continued to speak to Gia. “I swear I’m trying.”
“Does the super know you’re moving this guy out?” she asked, nodding toward the open door.
“Out?” he said, looking away from his phone to stare down at her, his head shaking again. “No, ma’am. We’re moving his stuff in. It was furnished, but he wanted this thing gone.” He nodded at the large sofa.
That seemed unusual to Gia. Apart from the small laughter she’d heard in February during Mardi Gras, and the two women who’d smiled at her as she drunkenly moved inside her apartment at four a.m. the night she and Cat had ventured to Summerland’s, she’d never heard or seen anyone in that apartment. Manny, her neighbor from directly across the hall, told her he’d only seen whoever lived there once, and that was two years before when he, Manny, had been stone drunk. All he could remember of that guy was that he had to be part giant. He’d learned later that the man only used the apartment for friends visiting the city and during carnival.
So why would he be moving all his stuff in now?
“You’re supposed to wait for the weekend to move…” Gia started, but the man, Nick by what she could make out from the embroidered name stitched over his front pocket, was already talking on the phone, his thick Cajun accent working so fast Gia couldn’t make out a single word he said. “There are rules…”
Nick held up a finger, silencing her and Gia glared at him, deciding to take matters into her own hand. “Hey! Hold up, boo,” the man yelled as Gia leaned one hand on the sofa and one on the wall and vaulted over the wedged cushions, moving through the open door, nodding to the skinny mover Nick called Kenny.
“More room in here,” she told the men. “And if this guy is big like you say, maybe I can get him to help you.”
The apartment was a mirror to her own. Where her entry opened in on the left, this one came into the right. The living room was on the west side of the building and opened into the large dining and kitchen. At the back of the dining, stretching to the entire length of the apartment, were floor-to-ceiling glass doors, similar to Gia’s, but hers faced the bridge over the Mississippi River. This one was directly overlooking the river and Riverwalk itself with no obstructions.
Like Gia’s apartment, every wall was white, every fixture black, and brass accents adorned the light chandeliers and cabinet pulls and accented the metal surfaces. But where Gia had tossed down warm, welcoming area rugs with vivid purples and pinks and had covered the cool walls with a gallery of black and white photos of her family and colorful paintings from her favorite artists, this man had kept his apartment ultra-modern and minimal. There was no artwork on the walls, nothing at all that gave any indication that this was nothing more than a model home apartment, staged to illustrate what living in this luxury building could offer. It felt cold and unwelcoming.
Until Gia glanced out onto the balcony and caught the form leaning against the railing, his elbows on the metal, one hand holding a phone as the other adjusted the earbud connected to the cell. There was nothing remotely cold or unfeeling about the body in front of her. Gia stepped farther into the