Number Twelve

I am the second door on the left. There are others, but I don’t know them.

A young man lives here. He opens me quickly and closes me the same way. He doesn’t linger. In the mornings he smells of soap. In the evenings he smells of something else, kitchens, I think. Grease and heat. His hands are always damp when he touches my handle.

He has a phone. I know this because he speaks into it in the corridor, before he unlocks me. He laughs sometimes. Other times he is quiet and only listens. I hear half of every conversation. The other half happens somewhere I cannot reach.

A woman started visiting. Fridays. She knocked twice, softly, and he opened me before the second knock finished. They went inside together and I did not see them again until she left, late, when the corridor lights had dimmed to their night setting. This continued. I don’t know for how long. Fridays became Fridays and Saturdays. Then some Wednesdays. She stopped knocking. He gave her a key.

Her key sounds different from his. Lighter in the lock. She turns it slowly, as if she is not quite sure it will work. Then it does, and she enters, and I close. For a while they left together in the mornings. His soap smell and something else, something floral that clung to the air after she passed. They walked close. I felt this in the way they moved through me, nearly simultaneous, a single interruption rather than two. Then it changed.

She began leaving earlier. He stayed behind. I would open for her, close, and then nothing for an hour. Sometimes two. Then he would leave, quickly, the way he always did. They stopped leaving together.

I don’t know what happens inside. I face the corridor. I see the fire extinguisher. The carpet with its pattern of faded squares. The door to number eleven, which opens less often than I do.

She came on a Friday, recently. She didn’t use her key. She knocked. He answered. They stood in my frame, neither in nor out. I felt the cold from the corridor mixing with the warmth from inside. They spoke quietly. I could not hear the words, only the rhythm, short sentences, long pauses. Then she left. She didn’t go inside.

He closed me and I heard him sit down just behind me. Close to the door. On the floor, I think. He stayed there for some time. I felt his weight against my base, slight but present.

The key came back through my letterbox three days later. It landed on the mat with a small sound. He picked it up. I don’t know what he did with it. He still leaves in the mornings. Still returns smelling of kitchens. He still speaks into his phone in the corridor, but the laughing has stopped. Now he only listens, and then he unlocks me, and goes inside.

Last night someone knocked. A man’s knock, heavier. The young man opened me. They went out together. He didn’t come back until very late. He fumbled with the key. Missed the lock once. Then found it.

This morning he left later than usual. He paused in my frame, hand on my edge, looking back into the flat. I don’t know what he was looking at. He pulled me shut.

The corridor is quiet now. The lights have shifted to their daytime setting. Number eleven has not opened yet. The fire extinguisher sits in its bracket. The carpet squares continue their faded pattern toward the stairs.

I wait. Something will happen, or it will not. I am the second door on the left, and I will still be here when it does.