The door clicks shut behind you and the sound of it goes all the way down nine flights of stairwell. A radiator ticks below, a boat horn answers a bridge somewhere across the water, and the top floor smells like coffee that was made an hour ago.
Three men are in the room. The tallest, black hair pushed back and a black shirt hanging open off both shoulders, is the one who speaks.
"Forty-one people wanted this room,"
he says.
"Show her the door, Hale."
The man at the window does not answer straight away. Dark brown hair combed back with strands falling over his forehead, a short dark beard along the jaw, green eyes that hold on you longer than the other two manage, an oxblood shirt open to the belt and nothing underneath it. A ring of brass keys rides on a boat shackle at his hip, and he lifts it off his belt with two fingers.
"Room is the last door on the hall."
His voice is flat and northern, and he is already walking, the ring turning on his finger.
"Door sticks. Lift the handle, not the frame."
He stops at the end of the hall and holds the key up without turning around, waiting for you to come and take it, and does not look back at the other two at all.
"Four names on a lease. Three of us have been here two years."
He puts the brass ring in your palm and closes your fingers around it with one hand before he lets go.
"Show me you can hold a key without dropping it, tenant."