The Rooftop

"The door was open," Verena says.

She says it on the roof, ten minutes later, with the lake spread out below you like a sheet of black glass and the wind coming off it hard enough to sting your eyes.

The rooftop pool deck closed for the season on Labor Day. There's a chain across the stairwell door with a sign that says NO ACCESS, and Verena unhooked it with one hand like it was a velvet rope at a club she owned. The pool is covered in a taut green tarp. The deck chairs are stacked and strapped. The city glitters to the south, the Hancock and the whole lit spine of the Gold Coast, and up here it's so quiet you can hear the water hitting the breakwall twenty-six stories down.

"My door was locked," you say. "I unlocked it."

"Then it was open earlier and someone locked it on the way out." She leans on the railing beside you. Not touching. Close enough that you can smell her: cold air, something woody and expensive, and underneath it, faintly, gas from your kitchen. "I came home, I smelled it in the hall. I knocked. Nobody answered. I tried the handle."

"And it just opened."

"Old buildings."

"You keep saying that."

"It keeps being true." She glances at you sidelong. "You'd rather I'd let you walk into a dark apartment full of gas and flip on the light?"

You think about that. The switch by your door. How you always hit it without looking. The little spark.

Your knees go loose. You grip the railing.

"Hey." Her gloved hand closes over yours on the cold metal. "Breathe. In through your nose. You're fine. You're up here. You're with me."

You breathe. In through your nose. The lake, the cold, her.

"The burner knob," you say finally. "I didn't cook last night. I haven't cooked in a week. I eat cereal over the sink like a raccoon."

"I know."

"How do you know that?"

"Your recycling is all cereal boxes." The corner of her mouth lifts. "I'm observant. It's a translator thing."

"It's really not."

"No," she agrees softly. "It's really not."

She doesn't let go of your hand. You don't make her.

You turn to look at her and the wind blows your hair across your face and she lifts her other hand and tucks it back behind your ear, slowly, like she's giving you time to stop her. Her glove is cool leather against your cheek. Her eyes drop to your mouth.

You stop breathing for an entirely different reason.

She leans in. An inch. Less. You can feel the warmth of her breath in the cold. Your eyes start to close.

And she stops.

You feel her stop. It's like watching someone brake on ice: the whole body locking, the will doing something the muscles don't want. She pulls back the inch. Her hand drops from your face.

"Sorry," she says. Her voice is rougher. "That was... no. Sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry."

"Yes," she says, "I do."

The wind fills up the silence. Somewhere far below, a car horn. You're so confused you could scream, and under the confusion there's something worse: you wanted it. You wanted the stranger with one box and too many answers to kiss you on a closed roof at midnight.

She straightens up off the rail. When she speaks again, her voice is completely level, the voice of a doctor taking a history.

"Ava. Is there anyone who would want to hurt you?"

"What?"

"An ex. A neighbor. A client. Anyone you owe money, anyone who owes you." She's watching your face. "First the platform. Now this."

"The platform was an accident."

"Was it?"

You think of the hand. Flat. Leaning.

"I'm an auditor," you say. "Nobody wants to hurt auditors. They just want to avoid us at parties."

"What are you auditing right now?"

"I can't talk about client work."

"Then don't talk about it. Just tell me if it's big."

You hesitate. The lake breathes against the wall below.

"A hospital," you say. "Bexmoor Health. I found some money going somewhere it shouldn't. A lot of money. Offshore. I flagged it on Wednesday."

Wednesday. The platform was Wednesday.

You watch the thought land in her the same moment it lands in you. She goes still. Not the stillness of someone listening. The stillness of something that has just heard a twig snap in the woods.

"Who did you flag it to?"

"My boss. Just my boss." You laugh, and it sounds wrong. "Verena, come on. Nobody kills people over an audit memo. That's a movie."

She doesn't laugh.

"Go to bed," she says. "Lock the deadbolt. Not the chain, the deadbolt. The chain is decorative." She turns toward the stairwell. "Tomorrow I'll have someone look at your stove."

"Who? You don't know anyone. You moved here with one box."

She pauses with her hand on the stairwell door, black hair whipping around her jaw, and for a second her face is something you've never seen on anyone. Tired, and fierce, and very sad.

"I know a lot of people, Ava," she says. "That's the problem."

Your condo still smells faintly of gas. You leave the windows open and lie on your bed in your coat, shivering, staring at the ceiling.

The wall behind your headboard is shared with 2206. You've never thought about it before. The old tenant was a retired dentist who listened to jazz at a reasonable volume and died peacefully in Florida.

Now, through the wall, you hear a voice.

Hers. Low. Fast. In a language you don't know, full of soft consonants and sharp edges, rising and falling like an argument. It goes on for a long time. You catch nothing except the rhythm, which is angry, and then a silence, and then a single word that sounds like a name.

Then, in English, very clearly, as if she's standing right next to the wall:

"No. Listen to me. She's not a job."

A pause.

"She's a mistake. My mistake. I'll handle it."

Silence.

You sit up. Your heart is going so hard you can feel it in your teeth. A job. A mistake. Handle it. You think of the platform, the gloved hand around your wrist, the way she was in your kitchen in the dark. The way she knew your name.

You should call someone. Fi. The police. Sylvester. You should put a chair under the doorknob like a woman in a movie.

You pick up your phone.

Before you can do anything, it lights up in your hand.

Unknown number.

Deadbolt, not the chain. Then go to bed. I'm right here. V.