realized he was expecting a reply. She wasn’t sure what to say. Was she supposed to care about the bar next door? Were the residents upset? Was there some kind of petition he wanted her to sign? This was New York; if you couldn’t stand the constant interruption of the city around you, the sirens splitting your ears and the bridge-and-tunnel crowd vomiting outside your window at three in the morning, you packed up and left for the suburbs pretty fast. So what was the deal?
She asked, “Is the noise really bad? The super didn’t say anything. I mean, I’m a pretty sound sleeper. More importantly,” she went on, trying for a lighter note, “will they give us a house discount?”
The chuckle he returned seemed a little too nervous. Broke the strange earnestness between them. He turned to the dryer and pressed his thumb on one of the buttons. It was an old model; the buttons were large and stiff and stuck down when you pushed them. There was a click, a faint buzz of electric engagement, and then the drum began to turn, bang bang bang.
“House discount,” Hector said. “That’s a good one. But sorry, no can do.”
“Bummer. What is it, some kind of secret celebrity hangout?”
“Nope. I mean, no one we would know. It’s more of a—”
The door swung open, hitting Ella in the arm, and a small, dainty girl bounded through behind an old-fashioned wicker laundry basket. Her skin was fresh and peachy, and her hair was the color of organic honey.
“Oh my God! I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”
Ella rubbed her arm. “Fine.”
“No, really. I should’ve looked first. I’m such a klutz!”
“I’m okay, really. Just leaving.”
“You’re the new girl, right?” She put her basket on her hip and stuck out her hand. “I’m Jen. Three C.”
“Hi, Jen. I’m Ella.”
Jen turned to Hector in a whip of honey hair. “Hello up there! Up to no good?”
He spread out his hands. “You know me. Sleep well?”
“All right.” She ruffled his forelock. “I heard you playing.”
“Just for you, babe.”
“Me and all the others. Wait, isn’t that machine done yet? Put my stuff on top, like, an hour ago.”
“My bad. Jumped ahead of you.”
“You what?”
“You snooze, you lose, right?”
Jen smacked him with the wicker basket. “You creep! That is like so wrong! We have a thing here in this building! Where’s the trust?”
“Ow!” Hector said, rubbing his shoulder. “All right! Mea culpa. Won’t happen again.”
Ella spoke up. “Actually, he’s covering for me. It was my laundry.”
“Your laundry?”
“But I put her up to it,” Hector said.
Jen shook her head in sorrow. “I just don’t know what to say. This is so disappointing.”
“I was just trying to be nice.”
“Look,” said Ella, “I’m sorry about the laundry. I owe you one, okay?”
“Oh, I’m not mad at you. It’s this one.” Jen jerked her thumb at Hector. “Watch out. He’s notorious. Definitely can’t be trusted with cute new tenants.”
Ella reached for the door handle. Her stomach hurt, like she’d just taken a fist. “Yeah, um. I’ll just be going now. Nice to meet you both.”
“Ella, wait—”
But Ella pretended not to hear him. Let the door close on notorious Hector and dainty Jen and the four busy washing machines and two busy dryers. The table where you folded your neighbors’ clothes and the wall separating you from some kind of weird, exclusive underground bar with no signage outside.
The mirror that said you were nobody’s cute new tenant. Just the kind of woman who couldn’t keep her husband safe in his own bed.
SATURDAY NIGHTS WERE THE WORST. You could keep yourself busy unpacking all day—and Ella did, until the last box was empty and broken down for recycling, until the last book was on the shelf and the last spoon in the drawer, and only the few pictures needed hanging—but once you opened the shrunken fridge and began to contemplate your few alluring options for dinner, you realized how much you took for granted in marriage.
Not that Ella hadn’t before found herself alone on a Saturday night. Sometimes Patrick was overseas—some Europe junket, or else paying calls on Asia—and sometimes he had client dinners. Sometimes out with the boys. (Anyway, that was the story, which she’d never doubted until now.) But these absences were infrequent enough that she actually—if she was honest with herself—relished the freedom. She might have had dinner with Joanie (at least until Joanie left for Paris) or her aunt and uncle (whom she adored) or even gone down to Washington to stay with her parents.
For the most part, though, she hung out with Patrick. Dinner, movie, TV. Sex. Usually sex. She took pride in keeping the electricity in her marriage. Her husband would never have to saw on the old chestnut that he wasn’t getting any at home now that Ella had a ring on her finger. Oh, no. She almost always said yes, even when she was tired or busy with work. Ella’s father looked eternally on her mother like she was Ginger and Mary Ann all rolled in one—Ella had caught them at it more than once, so embarrassing—and that was her model. That was the marriage she wanted to have. The kind everybody envied. She wanted the radiant, satisfied skin her mother had. The adoring gaze that followed her mother around the house.
Tonight, however, and for all the Saturday nights stretching into the imaginable future, there would be no sex. No cabernet and steak frites at the bistro around the corner. No twilight movie theater, laughing together at the same jokes, hands bumping in the popcorn. Just this half-empty fridge, this leftover baked ziti from the pizza place next to the subway stop. This TV set. These books. This studio apartment, the sprawling, affluent contents of her life compacted back into a single room, as if the past six years had never really occurred, as if they were just some play she had watched, some theme park she had visited, and now she was back in her rightful life.
This clock, ticking steadily into bedtime.
She ate the ziti and washed the dishes. She picked up a book she was supposed to read last year, for that book club she went to for a while, and poured herself a glass of wine. And another. Went to bed at eleven and stared at the dark ceiling. Somewhere in the building, somebody was playing a jazz CD, solo trumpet, Wynton Marsalis or something. Long and lonely and melancholy, rolling up and down the scale like it was reaching for something that didn’t exist.
And then she remembered. She’d left her laundry downstairs.
THE BUILDING WAS IRREDEEMABLY OLD-FASHIONED, even though the paint was fresh and the staircase sturdy, maybe because
