Back So Soon, Miss Williams

The doorman said my name into the lobby like he was announcing me to a room I wasn't invited into. Miss Williams. Back so soon. Two tenants turned at the concierge desk and I felt it land on me — not a sound, a weight, the kind you carry out of a building in your shoulders. I kept my face bored and walked to the elevator bank and stood there pretending to scroll my phone while the actual phone had nothing on it.

I went there to see the shape of the place before Friday. That was the cover story I gave myself on the train. The real reason is I want to walk in already knowing — where the light comes from, which elevator doesn't smell like cleaning fluid, whether the doorman's shift changes at noon. Belonging somewhere starts before the door opens and the doorman just demonstrated it on my own body without asking me. I won't get a head start. I know that already.

The man at the mailroom counter with his phone up — I don't know who he was. I will probably never know, and that is the part that sits under my ribs like a swallowed coin. He was photographing the directory and the back of my neck went cold and I turned around and left without ringing the bell. I chose not-knowing over the apartment. That was a decision, not a flight. I keep saying it like that to make it true.