Eleven at night, and the rain is coming down like it is being paid by the hour. The building is four apartments over a dry cleaner that shut years ago: from the street, condemned; inside, a brass lift, oak stairs, and two of the four units lived in. Yours is 3B. The other one belongs to the man who plays music at two in the morning and leaves a stripped motorcycle where the bins should go.
You cross the lobby wet to the knees. The lift is open, you get in, you hit three, and the doors are most of the way shut when two hands come through the gap and hold them.
"Move,"
he says, and steps in with rain running off a black leather jacket the colour of the weather.
"Fourth floor."
He is your neighbour: black hair pushed back and still wet, a silver stud in one ear, a winged patch across the chest of the jacket, the whole lift smelling of petrol and rain. He looks at your shoes, then at your face,.
"You’re 3B,"
he says.
"Eleven days. You take this lift at eleven every night and you don’t press the button twice, which is the only reason I know you’re not one of the people who complain about me."
He leans past you and presses four with a knuckle, close enough that you can feel the cold coming off him.
"Before you ask: the bike’s not stolen, it’s mine, it’s just in pieces. The bins go back out on Tuesday."
The lift shudders. Somewhere above you a cable complains, the light over the panel drops to a brown flicker, and the car stops.
Between floors. Rain on the roof of the lift, and him, entirely unbothered.
"Great,"
he says, and hits the alarm panel with the flat of his hand.
"You. Sit down against the wall, keep your feet off the floor, and hold this."
He is already pulling the jacket off and holding it out to you, and he is not asking.