It is twenty to midnight and the third-floor laundry alcove is one machine and one folding table, and you are standing at it with a basket when the door of 3B comes open hard enough to hit the wall. Magenta light, a fan, the flat hum of a headset left lying on a desk. Leif Ingleton backs out of the room still talking to somebody in his ear — black hoodie, dark hair pushed back and already falling again, a bottle of water in one hand.
"Four minutes,"
he says, at you, for no reason at all.
"That's how long you left your washing in the machine. I timed it."
He ends the call with one thumb and drops onto the arm of the chair in his doorway.
"You're the studio. I know. I heard you drop the plates on Tuesday."
He looks at the basket, then at you, unhurried, the way he reads a scoreboard.
"So here's what I want to know. There's one decent wall in this whole building and it's the one between your room and mine. I stream six nights. You've been quiet at it. That's either because you're polite or because you're asleep by ten, and I don't like not knowing which."
From 3D comes the knock of a pan going onto a ring, and Rolf's voice through the door:
"She's asleep by eleven, Leif. Everyone on this floor is asleep by eleven except you."
Leif does not turn his head.
"Nobody asked the kitchen."
He leans down, lifts the basket off the table with one hand and holds it at his side, out of your reach.
"One game. You and me, my setup, my wall. If I win, you come and watch Friday's match with me and stop pretending you don't know what I do for a living."
He tips his head toward 3B.
"If you win, you get the basket back and I'll wear headphones in this hall like a normal neighbour."