ACT I

The vomit was on the third-floor landing, near the stairwell that smelled permanently of boiled cabbage and damp plaster. Sarah stood over it for a moment, calculating the angle she would need to walk at to avoid stepping in it. The calculation was unnecessary. There was not enough space to avoid it. She stepped in anyway.

The man sleeping next to it stirred. He was maybe twenty-six, wearing a construction vest that had been brown once and was now the colour of old dishwater. He opened one eye, closed it, opened it again.

You can't sleep here, Sarah said.

Sorry, he said. And rolled onto his other side.

She went to her apartment, 3A, and closed the door. She stood on the other side of the door for a minute, listening to his breathing through the wall. Then she took off her shoes, took off everything else, and went to bed fully clothed because taking off clothes felt like too many steps.

ACT II

The pipe under Sarah's kitchen sink started leaking on a Thursday. By Saturday, there was a puddle on the linoleum and a dark stain spreading across the ceiling in Mike's apartment below.

He knocked at half past seven on Saturday morning. Sarah opened the door wearing yesterday's clothes and a face she hadn't washed.

Your ceiling is falling apart, he said.

That's my ceiling too, she said.

He looked at her. She looked at him. Behind him, down the hall, the light from the single working bulb in the stairwell made a yellow rectangle on the floor. The rectangle touched the toe of her shoe.

I can fix it, he said. Not a question. Not an offer. A statement of fact, like saying the sky is grey.

Okay, she said.

He came in with a bucket and a wrench and a roll of tape that had lost its stickiness three years ago. He got under the sink. Sarah stood in the kitchen and watched the top of his head. He had dark hair that was too long and a scar on his left eyebrow that she couldn't place—old injury, probably. Construction work. Scaffolding.

You live in 3B? she asked.

Yeah.

I didn't know you worked.

I don't anymore. He was under the sink, so his voice had a tinny quality, like it was coming through a pipe. Back went bad. Six months ago. Disability check doesn't cover much.

The pipe was worse than she'd thought. The metal was corroded, the connections brittle. Mike worked slowly, carefully, his good knee pressed into the linoleum. Water dripped from somewhere deeper in the wall.

How long? Sarah asked.

Long enough, he said. Then: Maybe an hour. Maybe two. I haven't done this in a while.

She went to the store on the corner and bought a new section of pipe and some proper tape and a box of aspirin because he looked like he had a headache. She put them on his kitchen table when he came up for air.

He looked at the box of aspirin. Thanks.

Don't mention it, she said. And meant it the way you mean something when you've forgotten how to not mean things.

ACT III

They started talking in the hallway. Not much. Just enough to establish the geography of each other's days.

Night shift at Walmart, she said. Midnight to eight.

I fill out forms during the day, he said. Disability forms. Appeal forms. The kind of forms that ask you to describe your pain in a language that bureaucracy understands.

Does it? she asked.

No. He was looking at the floor. The words they want don't match the words I have.

She wanted to say something but couldn't find the right shape for it. So she said: I'm going to a meeting tonight. AA. Four months. Last week I drank.

I know, he said. And she looked at him, surprised. He met her eyes. Mrs. Gable from 2A told me. She watches the building. She watches everything.

Sarah felt heat rise to her face. Not shame exactly. Something adjacent to shame. The feeling of being seen when you'd rather not be.

I'll be at the meeting, he said. Not to be with you. Just—because.

She nodded. He nodded. The hallway was narrow and the light was dim and neither of them moved to close the distance.

The meeting was at a church basement three blocks away. Sarah went at 6:45 and sat in the back row. Mike came at 7:10 and sat in the front row. They did not look at each other. This was its own kind of kindness.

ACT IV

She got drunk on a Tuesday in November. Not a lot—just enough to make the edges of the world soft and then hard again in alternating waves. She was standing in the hallway outside her door, fumbling with her keys, when Mike opened his door.

He looked at her. She looked at him. The hallway tilted.

I can't, she said. It means nothing. I can't open the door and it means nothing and I can't—

She was crying. Not dramatically. Just quietly, the kind of crying that happens when you've been holding it in for months and a single key in a dark hallway is one thing too many.

Mike stepped out of his apartment. He didn't touch her. He stood two feet away, close enough to be useful, far enough to be safe.

Come in, he said.

She went in. His apartment was sparse—a bed, a chair, a table, a kitchen that smelled of burnt toast. He helped her onto the bed. She grabbed his hand and said, Don't go.

He sat on the edge of the chair for ten minutes. Then he stood up. Then he left.

Morning came with a headache that felt like a vise. Sarah opened her eyes. The ceiling was the colour of weak tea. On the table beside the bed: a glass of water, two aspirin, and a coupon for the Walmart on East Market.

She drank the water. She took the aspirin. She read the coupon until the headache stopped being the most important thing in the room.

She went to work. Mike was not in the hallway when she came home. He had found work—a small construction job, no insurance, cash in an envelope. She knew this because Mrs. Gable told her. Mrs. Gable tells her everything.

They passed each other in the hallway the next day. Nodded. That was it.

The faucet in Sarah's kitchen was still dripping. She had stopped fixing things that drip. It's a rhythm, she told herself. Not a problem. Just a rhythm.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Like a clock. Like a heartbeat. Like something counting down to nothing in particular.

--- OTMES Objective Codes (v2.0) TI=55.4 | Grade: T3-Martyrdom M=[5.5,4.5,3.0,2.0,3.0,1.0,1.0,0.0,4.0,1.5] N=[0.35,0.65] | K=[0.90,0.10] theta=180.3 deg | Style: Zero-Degree V=0.40 I=0.50 C=0.60 S=0.30 R=0.40 Core: (M1_Tragedy, K1_Sensibility, N2_Passive, K1_Sensibility) Secondary: (M2_Comedy, N2_Passive, K1_Sensibility) E_total=10.89