Blackout

You put the envelope back exactly where you found it. Same angle. Same salt shaker.

Then you go to your room, sit on the bed, and do what any reasonable journalist would do. You open your laptop and type T. Wolfe Corvane into every search engine you know.

Nothing.

Theodore Wolfe singer. A dentist in Arizona. A high school track star from 2009. A golden retriever with an Instagram.

Theodore Wolfe Oregon. Theodore Wolfe music. Nothing. Not a profile, not a tagged photo, not a single picture of that face, which is honestly impossible. A face like that should be all over the internet by accident.

Unless someone very carefully made sure it wasn't.

You barely see him for two days.

He leaves before you wake. He comes back after midnight. Once you hear the shower at 4 a.m. Once you find a plate of toast on the counter, burnt, with a sticky note in neat block capitals: RADIATOR OK?

You stare at it for a long time.

"I don't do notes," you say out loud, in his voice.

You write YES. THANK YOU underneath and stick it on his door. In the morning it's gone.

The wall stays silent at night. You lie awake anyway, waiting.

On Thursday, at 9:14 p.m., the whole of Dorran Street goes black.

You're in the kitchen microwaving leftover pad thai when the hum of the laundromat cuts out under your feet, the fridge sighs and dies, and the light over the stove blinks off. Outside, every window on the block goes dark at once. Somewhere down the street a car alarm starts crying.

"Great," you say to the darkness. "Perfect. Love this."

A door opens. A beam of light swings across the kitchen and hits you full in the face.

"Ow. Eyes. Those are my eyes."

The beam lowers. "Sorry, Ethan." Theodore, holding his phone flashlight. Hood up, of course. "Whole block?"

"Whole block. Possibly whole borough. Possibly the world has ended and we're the last two people alive."

"Then I'm taking the good mug."

You laugh before you can stop it. A real one, loud in the dark. The beam wobbles, like his hand shook.

There's a knock at the door. Three sharp raps.

Theodore opens it, and a tiny woman in a quilted coat holds up a lantern like a lighthouse keeper. She's in her late sixties, silver hair in a bun, eyes like two bright black buttons. She shoves a foil-covered dish into Theodore's hands.

"No power until midnight," she says, in a thick Polish accent. "Con Ed is idiots. Here. Pierogi. Potato and cheese. You eat, you don't burn the building down with candles." She looks past him at you. "This is the new one?"

"This is the new one," Theodore says.

"Halina," she tells you. "I own the building. I own the laundry. I own your rent." She squints at you, up and down. "You are skinny. You eat. You look after him. He forgets to eat."

"I don't forget," Theodore says.

"You forget." She pats his cheek, through the hood, like he's six, and leaves with her lantern.

Theodore closes the door. In the glow of his phone, he looks almost embarrassed.

"She likes you," you say.

"She likes feeding people. It's different."

He has candles. A lot of candles. Tall white ones, the cheap church kind, in a shoebox under the sink, like he's done this before. You line them up on the counter and light them one by one, and the kitchen turns gold and soft. Shadows jump on the walls.

You sit on the floor with your backs against the cabinets, the pierogi between you, eating cold with your fingers because neither of you can find forks in the dark.

"Oh my god," you say with your mouth full. "Marry Halina."

"She's married. Her husband's in Kraków. He doesn't like America. They talk every Sunday and yell at each other for an hour. It's the happiest marriage I've ever seen."

It's the most words he's ever said to you in a row. You don't dare comment on it, in case he stops.

"Where are you from?" you ask instead. "And before you say rule two, that's not a night question. That's a geography question."

The hood tilts. You think he might be smiling.

"Oregon. A town on the coast you've never heard of. Fog every morning. My mom runs the church choir. Forty years old ladies and one guy named Elmer who only knows one note."

"Did you sing in it?"

A pause. Just a little too long.

"Everybody sings in it," he says. "You?"

"Ohio. Larkfield. My dad fixes cars, my mom's a nurse. I came out at nineteen and my dad said, 'Okay, but are you still coming to the Browns game,' and that was the whole drama."

He laughs.

It's quiet and low and surprised, like it got out before he could lock it up. It goes straight through your chest and lands somewhere warm.

"Are you?" he asks. "Still going to the Browns game?"

"Every Thanksgiving. We lose. We always lose. It's tradition."

The candles flicker. In the light, under the edge of the hood, you can see the corner of his mouth, the shadow of a cheekbone, the line of his throat when he swallows. You keep thinking about the voice, coming through the wall at 3:07, and the mug in three pieces, and the red stamp. NJ-3.

You're a journalist. Sort of. You fact-check playlists.

You're also a person who has been lied to enough to be tired of it.

"Can I ask you something?" you say.

"You've been asking me things for an hour."

"Something real."

He goes still, the way he did at breakfast. You feel it in the floor.

"Theodore," you say. "Are you Nightjar?"

The candles burn. The car alarm down the street finally gives up. Somewhere in the building, a baby cries and stops.

He stands up. Brushes the crumbs from his jeans. Looks down at you, and in the gold light you can see his eyes under the hood, storm-grey and absolutely unreadable.

"No," he says.

Then he goes into his room. The real lock turns.

You sit alone on the kitchen floor with a dish of cold pierogi and a dozen church candles, and you realize your hands are shaking.

The power comes back at 12:40. The fridge shudders awake. The laundromat hums. Every light you forgot to switch off blazes on at once.

You don't get up to blow out the candles. You lie in bed in the dark with your phone on your chest, staring at the ceiling, listening to the wall.

Nothing. No hum. No breath. No voice.

At 1:16 a.m. your phone buzzes against your sternum.

It's a number you saved four days ago, when you sent your security deposit. The contact just says T (roommate).

You open it.

walls are thin, Ethan.

Then, a second later, as you stare, three little dots appear and disappear and appear again, like someone typing on the other side of the plaster, deleting, typing.

you heard. i heard you hear.

so. what are you going to do with it.