She sees that she has drawn a distinct line in the dirt, and without thinking, she picks it up again, running her finger all along the back, then slowly walking around to the side, dragging her finger just above the wheel wells, across the hood and back around, so a thin, shaky white line seems to divide the van into two horizontal pieces held together by a row of sharp teeth. She stands back and looks at it, surprised at her impulse, but it can’t be undone now. She wipes her finger off on the inner hem of her skirt and backs away a few paces before retrieving the box from the convertible’s open backseat, just sitting there, warm from the sun. She doesn’t even need the key. The box is so light it could be empty, and she carries it under one arm back to the building.
Back in the office, she knocks on her boss’s closed door. He doesn’t answer.
She knocks again, and waits. When he doesn’t answer the third knock, she opens the door to find nobody. He or they have slipped off somehow, in the two minutes she was outside. Was it longer than that? He must have gone the instant she disappeared down the stairs.
She feels momentarily compelled to open the box and empty its mystery contents onto the lavender carpet, but thinks better of it. Instead she sets it on his desk, with a brief note on top: Here, the keychain splayed out beside it.
The rest of the day passes slowly. There are no more phone calls. As the clock edges past three, she realizes just how long she has been here and feels like her mouth is drying out. She decides that if her boss comes back she will shoot him some kind of look. The office feels emptier than ever. Her knees bounce under the desk as she coils the phone cord around her index and middle fingers, uncoils it, coils it again. She listens in vain for the man next door, pictures him in homey scenarios: folding laundry, cooking dinner, falling asleep like a kitten, trying not to, his eyelids slipping, his head jerking up, resistant. It occurs to her that he could be asleep right now. She could open his door and find him curled up in the green chair, a line of drool glistening on his jaw. If she were to open the door.
She scoots her chair back against the wall, stands up, and heads to the conference room. She pulls a fresh sheet of paper out of the fax machine and sits down at the big oak table, marker in hand.
Dear Neighbor, she begins.
Where are you, what do you, who, she writes quickly and instantly crosses it out.
I’m sorry, she begins, on a fresh sheet, but can’t think of a way to finish the sentence, or why she has started it this way. I’m sorry I’m sorry I she writes before pushing it aside.
She lays out another, and stares at it for a long time. What am I after, she whispers out loud.
Dear you, she writes, slowly, deliberately, holding the paper tightly against the table.
What are you doing in there? All I want is to know.
— Next door
She folds the note into an envelope and writes 2B on the back. She clutches the envelope in her hands until it is past five, then wonders if it’s okay for her to go. There’s been no sign of her boss, and his keys are still here. Finally, she decides that he must know what he’s doing, and he can’t expect her to do anything she wouldn’t normally do. She turns everything off, all the lights, all electronics. She sets the alarm and locks up. In front of 2B, she gets down on her knees and slides the envelope underneath the door, listening to the paper as it crinkles against the soft, nubby carpet. She walks slowly toward the stairwell, still hoping that she will hear something, anything out of the ordinary, anything opening, closing, unlocking, beginning. She pauses at the top of the stairs before continuing down and out into the parking lot, where her boss’s car still sits, a few spaces down from her own.
CONVENTION
Neil leans his chest against the hotel’s front desk while the woman behind the counter fills a folder with pamphlets and maps and room service menus. He thinks of stopping her, of telling her he’s only going to be here for twenty-four hours and is unlikely to stray beyond the convention halls and ballrooms on the lobby level— if he even makes it that far— but she’s moving so quickly, her hands zipping and shuffling through the standard procedure that he can’t bring himself to jump in. He see-saws back and forth on his heels, bouncing his chest lightly on the marble desk and back again, the height of it making him feel small, and a little ridiculous. The woman towers over him, brandishing her stapler, her keys on an elastic band around her wrist. He looks up at her like a bored child.
“Finch!” a voice calls out behind him, and a moment later, there’s Mason slapping his back.
“Mason, how are you?”
“Good good, glad you decided to show this year.”
“Yeah well, it’s compulsory, isn’t it?”
“Right, right.”
The two look past each other, smiling their studied, mellow smiles, nodding at nothing, their tongues probing their back teeth.
“You check out the event schedule yet? I’m leading the ‘Knowing the Consumer’ talk this year. You should check it out— 4:30 in the main ballroom— there’ll be hors d’oeuvres, shrimp I think, maybe some little sandwiches.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Seriously though, it’s something you should check out.”
“Right,” Neil says, still smiling, his eyes darting up to the woman behind the counter, still fussing papers about, “I will be there.”
“Cool— hey and the mixer’s at 8:30, in the lounge. You’ll be there, right? They were asking about you last time. I told ’em you were sick.” Mason laughs and Neil thinks he can see a cavity on one of his molars. He’s reminded again, looking at Mason’s weak chin and shaving nicks, though he’s technically Neil’s boss, that he’s a few years younger. He tries to think of something jocular to say.
“Say, you think Beaudry’ll be there?” Neil says, taking the folder and key card from the woman and picking up his bag, already edging his way to the elevators, though rooted enough, his toes just rising ever so slightly inside his shoes. “That guy owes me a drink.”
“Ken Beaudry?” Mason squints back at Neil as he steps forward and hands the woman his credit card. “You didn’t hear?”
“No, what?” He hears the elevator ding and has to mentally restrain himself from backing away and crossing the whole lobby to meet it before it’s summoned away again.
“About the car accident?”
“No…”
“About three months ago? T-boned in a goddamn intersection. He walked away from it, but he refused to go to the hospital, said he was fine— dropped dead a few hours later. Internal bleeding.” He annunciates bleeding, like it’s a medical term Neil might not be familiar with.
Neil hears an elevator again, and he wonders how many there are, how fast they can move. He wonders what floor he’s on, but doesn’t want to open up his folder and look just now.
“Why… why didn’t I know that?” he asks.
Mason shrugs, “I don’t know. I thought everybody knew.”
“Oh, I’m, uh… I’m really sorry to hear that.”
“Terrible.”
Mason gets his folder, and Neil hears the elevators dinging again, several at a time it sounds like now. It’s like they never stop picking people up, dropping them off, up and down and up, plodding along.