The apartment was at the end of the hall on the fifth floor and was tucked into an old and inefficient brick structure that made it look outwardly far larger than it was. Outside, the two sat in white deckchairs on the black grated surface of a small deck. Because that apartment was the last on the floor it was attached to the fire escape ladder, making its deck slightly larger than its neighbor’s.
Shelly had already lit her cigarette, and her brother frowned as he noticed that when she turned her head to exhale her smoke, she blew it into the apartment.
“Don’t do that,” he said.
“So what are you going to do now, without Mara-“
“Mora.”
“Without Mara? I’m gonna miss her. Us two were pretty close.”
“You’re the one she told when she was going to end it.”
“That’s right.”
“And you didn’t mean to tell me.”
“It’s a girl thing,” she said, smiling and looking away. Shelly had a small mouth like her brother, and her grin always looked forced, like she was trying to impersonate somebody else.
“It sure is,” he replied.
“You’ve got a right to be mad, but.” She had taken Mora’s habit of losing steam halfway through a sentence.
“Yes, I saw it coming.”
The cat meandered onto the grate, sniffing the air and watching the middle distance warily. Shelly’s brother imagined with sudden conviction that the cat had been driven out by Shelly’s smoke. It glanced around, its white ears perked.
“What the hell does it do that for?”
“What?”
“Perk its ears. It’s deaf.”
“I don’t know. Guess it has something to do with vibrations.”
The white cat slunk towards the fire escape and hopped its way down to ground level. Shelly watched the white dot disappear into the dim light of dusk with mild disdain.
“Remind me to start leaving more food out for him,” her brother said.
Elizabeth held the small video camera with sweaty palms. Her mind reeled to understand her latest assignment. Interview a stranger on camera – Mr. Monaghan might as well have handed her a paper with a big red F on it and saved her the trouble!
“What would Brigham Young do?” her roommate mumbled, smiling at her own cleverness.
“I don’t know.” She flicked on the video camera, peering through it. “Can I just interview you and you’ll pretend you’re a stranger?”
“There’s a commandment against that,” she continued. “Don’t you have to follow the Ten Commandments?”
“Sorry,” Elizabeth said, and left her room. She was tempted to slam the door, but she knew how that would reverberate up and down the walls and just irritate everyone on her floor.
Outside, she briefly telephoned her sister to explain her frustration, then slid on a pair of gloves and tucked the camera into her blue sweatshirt. It was raining. Before long, she walked into one of her friends, and they had lunch. Elizabeth asked if she could pretend to be a stranger for her, and she said yes.
After they finished, Elizabeth rewound the tape, ejected it, and scrawled the assignment number on its label. She wondered if Mr. Monaghan would be able to tell she had forged her account, and imagined that he would with relative ease. Strangers probably don’t get an acute case of the giggles when the camera’s rolling.
“Fuck off,” Jaresh thought as he heard the phone ring. The water bottle on the counter was empty, and all the sounds around Jaresh were at least slightly dulled.
“Hello?” he said slowly after he picked up the phone.
“Hi, Jarhead.”
“Hi, Shelly.”
“It’s Mora. You’re drunk.”
“You don’t call me Jarhead. “
“I’m not allowed to anymore?”
“You never did.”
There was a digitized cracking of Mora’s voice. Immediately, Jaresh felt his jaw lock up. Oh, fuck this, he thought. He had reached a respectable age without suffering a single “drunk dialing.” He turned his head and belched softly, resting a hand on his belly.