I'm on 4, waiting for the elevator. And I can hear her swearing and cussing up a storm, she's pissed off, somebody's catching hell and the elevator's rising and she's getting louder and louder, then the door opens and she's alone...
She sees me, looks down, ashamed, scuttles past...
***
I'm pretty much out of groceries, there's nothing in the fridge I can find to eat. And it's a few days to payday. I grab a rock and head over to the neighbours, rattling it in the pot, I'm going to make Stone Soup and I'm hoping maybe she has some things I can add to it, only she isn't home and the broth, well, it's pretty much water and I'm pretty sure this is not how the story's supposed to go...
***
She comes over to raid the fridge, lets herself in, ignores me in the chair while she helps herself to blueberries and ice cream, grabs a Pellegrino, goes back to the fridge for more berries and ice cream, she can't help herself...
***
Making dinner, pasta, I've been paid and the stone's gone back into the stone pile. Run into neighbour, dinner's a Ground Elk bolognese, invite her over. After dinner she sits, she's obliged, she feels she needs to keep me company, manners and all can't eat and run only she doesn’t; she sits and gambles on her phone, then breaks to rifle the bookshelf, grabs a stack to “borrow”; she begins reading Pablo Neruda’s “100 Love Sonnets”; her face is a mirror to her internal emotions, she's smiling, lips pursing, tight, then the edges lift, then she's sad, disturbed, she's furrowing her brow; she’s filled with all manner of twitches and tics.
I scroll my phone a bit, then excuse myself to go for a cigarette and she gets the hint, checks herself out…