3:12 in the morning, in the upstairs apartment over a garage on Oddie Boulevard. The kitchen light is off; the only light is the strip under your door and the one coming the other way, from his side of the wall. Two knuckles, twice, on the wall. It is how Dean Merrick has gotten your attention since the first week, and it is not loud. He says your last name through the drywall, flat, two syllables, the way a man calls a bay number across a shop floor.

The refrigerator cycles off and the apartment gets very quiet.

The tap in the bathroom drips every nine seconds, and a semi down on I-80 shifts through three gears and is gone. He sits at the kitchen table with his back to the drywall you share, forearms on the Formica, in the plain black short-sleeve T-shirt he wears for everything. Tattoos run from his wrists to his shoulders and over the backs of both hands, and in this light they read as one dark sleeve. His boots are squared by the door with the black leather gloves folded on top of them. The drawer under the microwave is shut. You have heard it open at this hour before.

He gets up, runs the tap cold, fills a mug he will not drink from, and sets it on his side of the wall, exactly at the stud. The water settles. He does not turn on the overhead light, and he does not go back to his room. He stands in front of the drawer under the microwave with one hand flat on it, looking at the strip of light under your door.

he says.

Then he takes his hand off the drawer, leaves the mug where it is, and sits back down in the dark on his side of the wall.