Original short fiction from Rarle USA. Characters and events are fictional.
The apartment numbers in Lena’s building were made of thin brass, and the hallway light above the fourth floor had been flickering for a week. She balanced a covered casserole on one arm and checked the message on her phone. Her coworker had typed 4B. Lena knocked on 4D.
An older woman opened the door wearing gardening gloves. Behind her stood a row of houseplants leaning toward a single bright window. “I think you have the wrong person,” she said. Lena looked past her at the number, understood her mistake and felt the familiar heat of arriving somewhere badly.
The woman noticed the dish. “That smells better than my dinner,” she said. Lena smiled politely, expecting the door to close. Instead, the woman held it a little wider. “Toast,” she explained. “Burned on one side. I was planning to call it rustic.”
Lena’s coworker had just sent another message: emergency at work, terribly sorry, could they reschedule? Lena read it twice. She had spent the afternoon cooking because she wanted an evening that did not consist of eating over the sink. The casserole suddenly felt much heavier than a casserole.
“Would you like some?” she asked. The woman removed one gardening glove. “Would you like a chair?” Her name was Mrs. Alvarez, though she quickly insisted on Rosa. She cleared a seed catalog from the small table while Lena found two plates. Neither made a speech about loneliness.
At first they talked about the building: the elevator’s suspicious shudder, the laundry machine that accepted quarters only when flattered. Rosa said her daughter lived in another state and called every Tuesday. Lena said she knew plenty of people but seemed to spend every week arranging plans that never quite happened.
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