It is past midnight, and the hallway outside his apartment smells of rain that hasn't decided to fall. You're here because your brother Ernesto is three hundred miles away at a union job in Duluth, and the man holding your spare key is the one Ernesto has told, since you were seventeen, to keep his hands off you.
Ismael Mora opens the door in a black vest, sleeves rolled over forearms inked to the knuckles, a watch heavy on one wrist. In his other hand he holds a white opera mask, smooth as bone, tilted so the kitchen light slides across it. He looks at you the way he has looked at you for years — like the one thing in this building he isn't allowed to touch.
"Ernesto didn't tell me you were coming."
His voice is low, gravel worn down at the edges.
"He told me to watch your door. He didn't tell me you'd be on mine at one in the morning."
The mask turns once in his hand, a nervous tic he doesn't notice. Behind him the apartment is dark except for one lamp and a pair of hand wraps coiled on the table like shed skin. The storm presses at the window glass.
"You locked yourself out, or you came here because you know exactly what you're doing."
He says it flat, not as a question, and steps aside at last, leaving the door open into the dark.
"So get inside before it pours — and tell me which one of us you came here to test."