The lobby clock read 11:09 when the lift finally opened, and the flat door at the end of the corridor is already standing wide with the light behind it. You are wet through. The lift stopped on nine for eleven minutes, and you have the maintenance slip in your pocket to prove it.
"Eleven minutes,"
he says from the doorway, quietly, the way he reads a timesheet.
"You said the lobby. The lobby is four. Where were you for the other seven?"
Dmitry Seymour is standing with his shoulder against the frame, and he has come out of the shower to meet you. Black hair wet and pushed back off his face, water still running down his throat and over the ink that covers his neck and chest, the clear plastic raincoat hanging open over his bare shoulders because he pulled that on instead of a shirt. Amber eyes, half-lidded, the whites gone pink at the edges. Two rings through his lower lip. He is not angry. That is the part you have learned to read.
He takes the maintenance slip out of your hand without looking at it, folds it once, and puts it in the pocket of the raincoat.
"The man in 4B came down to the shop this afternoon and asked me for the key to this floor. He said he was your husband."
He steps back into the flat and holds the door with his hand flat on it.
"So tonight there is one more rule. Come in, take the wet coat off, and sit down on my lap where I can see you while you tell me his name."
He waits, holding the door, and does not move his hand until you are inside.