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once.”
    “Really?”
    “No, of course not. That’d be weird.”
    He sat down on one of the other chairs. She knocked her sunglasses back down over her eyes as he set the empty bottle down on the deck. “So what do you do, Xela? Aside from making the new guy uncomfortable?”
    “Guess.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I like to see what people say.”
    He looked at her hair and the tattoos peeking out of her shirt around her neck. The collar was short with little points, and he realized it was an old, plain-front tuxedo shirt. She’d only done two buttons because that’s all there were. The rest of them were button holes for studs. And the shirt was dotted with pinpricks of color.
    “I’m going to go with artist,” he said.
    “Very good. What gave me away?”
    “You’ve got paint on your shirt. A lot on the sleeves.”
    “You’re amazing, my dear Sherlock,” she said. “Most guys just see the hair and the tits and go for stripper, although I think you would’ve been one of the classy ones who said ‘exotic dancer’.”
    “Glad to know I measure up. So you’re a painter?”
    “Paint, sculpture, whatever the creative urge drives me to.” She picked up a cell phone from the pile of clothes and glanced at the time. “Anyway, it’s been nice meeting you, Nate from twenty-eight, but if you don’t mind I want to get some more sun before I go to work.”
    “You on a deadline?”
    “Sweet, but no. I’ve got a shift waiting tables.”
    “I thought you were an artist?”
    “Art is what I do,” she said, “but it’s not my job.” She unfastened one of the buttons and shooed him away. “Next time bring enough beer for the whole class.”
    He picked up his bottle and walked back to the fire door. The structure next to it loomed over him and he stopped at the padlocked door. “Hey,” he called back.
    “They’re already out.” She waved the shirt over her head like a flag. “I’m not covering up again.”
    “What is this thing, anyway?”
    “What?” She sat up on the chair and gave him a flash of bare shoulder.
    “This.” Nate pointed at the block of bricks.
    “It’s the whatsit for the elevator,” she said. “That’s what Oskar told me.”
    “The elevator?”
    “Yeah, all the motors and cables and stuff.”
    He took a few steps around the corner of the structure. It was larger than his apartment. “Kind of big, isn’t it?”
    Xela shrugged and vanished behind her chair again. “It’s an old building,” she said. “They had to make stuff bigger back then, y’know?”
     

Seven
     
    Nate walked in the front door Tuesday after work and realized it had been ten days (not that he was counting) and he hadn’t gotten his mail yet. He’d changed addresses and had things forwarded, but it had slipped his mind to actually check the mailbox. He went to the mailboxes under the stairs and located the one with 28 on it. The numbers were on red label tape, the kind where someone spun a dial and pressed the characters into the hard material until they turned white. The box was packed with junk mail with his name and bills with someone else’s. As Eddie was so fond of saying at the office, he put it all in the circular file. Circulars in the circular file , Nate thought to himself.
    The piles of phone books beneath the mailboxes had capsized. There were three different versions, most of them in bags that would’ve been orange or white if they weren’t covered with dust. They were dated spring 2012, but he remembered them from his old place. They’d come out six months ago. There were at least two dozen of each type, so nobody had taken them. There was some brasswork behind them, hidden by a pile of alphabetical listings.
    Nate tried to shove the books back into a stack, but time and gravity had rolled their spines. They’d never stand again. In a sudden burst of community spirit, he decided they all needed to go in the circular file.
    No, he thought. Recycling by the dumpster. Even better.
    He