The Apartment

She began to wake when the rumble of the engine disappeared, subtracting the white noise that had lulled her. The taxi driver was already pulling her bags from the trunk, causing her to scurry all of a sudden to gather her handbag and wallet. Once the cab pulled away, Jessica was left standing outside a moderately tall building with a crumbling facade that vaguely harkened to the regality of the nation's earliest days.

The trouble, as she stood on the too-quiet street surrounded by her smart set of matching luggage, gathering glances from men who loitered to smoke in doorways before and behind her, was that Jess had absolutely no idea of how to move from that spot. There was too much for her to carry in too unfamiliar a place.

She was on the verge of panicked tears when the building's door opened and two young men walked out into the heavy, damp wind. They stopped in front of her, assessing her and her trousseau.

"You going in there?" the taller one asked.

Muddled with apprehension, she took a moment to scan the pollution-stained building, the dented sign on the corner, the address on the torn awning behind the guy's head. Everything pointed to her being at the right address, but she couldn't convince herself now that she was in right place. Still, she'd come this far, and the wind kept slapping her coat collar into her face, so she nodded.

"Want help?" he asked.

This time she nodded without a pause.

The tall man thrust his right hand at her, "Chris, 3C."

"Oh," her hand in his, her feeling of shame at her helplessness, and her new uncertainty about her plans made her oddly shy. "Oh, um, Jessica, 5J."

He smiled. She hadn't let go of his hand. "Damn," he said cheerfully, "I was hoping to avoid the stairs." He pulled his hand free and, with smile still in place, he hefted the garment bag over his shoulder and grabbed the largest suitcase in his right hand. That left the rolling case, overnight bag, and the small case she already clutched next to her purse. The other man grabbed the overnight bag, settled it atop the roller, and pulled a key from his pocket. He used some complicated maneuver to jar the door open then he held it wide.

Chris, 3C, stood near the door, laden with the bags so heavy that Jess hadn't been able to lift them herself at the airport. She stared at him a moment before realizing he was waiting for her. "Ladies first," was implied in the smirk on his face. At that moment, at that smirk, Jessica suddenly saw how uncommonly handsome he was.

She went in. The smell hit her immediately and she halted, nearly causing the two men to tumble in the foyer. The dazzled smile fell from her face. The odors of a dozen decades of cooking, of wretched humanity, of sex, of questionable plumbing, assaulted her. Chris pushed in behind her so the other guy could follow.

"You get used to it." Chris's chin pointed toward the right, "Stairs over there."

She paused yet again. "But where's the elevator?"

The guy with the rolling bag snorted. Chris shouldered past her and shoved the stairway door open with an elbow.

She scurried behind him, afraid to be left alone in the fetid vestibule.

The staircase was narrow and steep. She watched the men ahead of her take the steps two at a time. Her shorter legs and unfamiliarity with close, stuffy staircases left her lagging behind.

The men waited for Jessica to produce the key. She'd received it in a padded envelope the week before when she was still in her parents' home, enjoying her vision of the wild city full of promise and of her mission to live like "regular people." This fantasy was romanticized, and when she opened the door to the furnished flat she'd rented sight-unseen, she realized just how unromantic the reality might turn out to be.