Fifty-Eight and the Photograph

The photograph. I keep circling back to the man on the stoop. Black coat, phone up, no pretense it was anything else. He was not a tourist — I know what tourists look like on Park Slope stoops at ten in the morning, they have coffee cups and they look confused about the lock. This one was waiting. So either it's about Mr. Pereira, which means someone knows and is collecting, or it's about me, which means the app finally sent a body to see what fifty-eight looks like in person.

Fifty-eight. I used to be top twenty. I have the email open on my phone like a wound I keep pressing. Seventy-two hours. Watch investigation. I read it three times on the walk over hoping the number would change on a reread. It didn't.

Gladys. I need to put Gladys somewhere or she will eat the whole day. She stood in her doorway in that housedress with the neighbor right there watering his plants and said I pay in pieces, said I should find a man. The worst part is not the insult. The worst part is she already knew the shape of me before I stepped off the elevator. She has decided. Mr. Pereira took the envelope from my hand without looking at me and walked back into the apartment and she stood there and watched me leave.