Chapter 11

Lookmhee did not sleep well.

This was not a surprise. She had known, lying on her bed at half past eleven with the lights off and the city quiet outside, that sleep was going to be the kind of thing that happened eventually rather than immediately. Her brain was doing the thing it did when something significant had occurred and it wanted to go over every detail of it at least four times before it would consider resting.

She went over the lobby. The book in her hand. Sonya stepping out of the elevator. The moment where Meena had looked between them and said what she said.

She went over Sonya’s hand taking hers. The warmth of it. The certainty of it. The way it had been so completely without performance — no audience, no reason, no cover story. Just Sonya deciding, in the quiet of the lobby, that she was going to do that.

She went over not yet. The way Sonya had said it. The fact that it was not yet and not not ever. The specific and deliberate difference between those two things.

She wrote in her notebook for a while. Not poems exactly — more like the notes that happened before poems, the raw material, the thing you put on paper so your brain would stop cycling through it. She filled two pages and then closed the notebook and lay in the dark and listened to the city and the building around her and, very faintly, through the wall, the suggestion of music from 4C.

Sonya was awake too.

She fell asleep sometime around one, thinking about that.

✦ ✦ ✦

The morning came grey and soft, the kind of Friday morning that felt like a held breath before the weekend. Lookmhee woke at seven, which was later than usual, and lay still for a moment taking inventory of how she felt.

The answer was: complicated. Warm. Slightly terrified. Mostly warm.

She got up. She showered. She put the kettle on. She was standing at the counter waiting for it to boil, still in her towel, hair damp, staring at the wall between her apartment and 4C with no particular reason to be staring at it, when there was a knock at the door.

Two knocks. Even, unhurried.

She knew that knock.

She looked down at herself — damp hair, towel, bare feet — and then at the door and then at her bedroom where her clothes were and did a rapid calculation about whether she had time.

She did not have time.

She grabbed the cardigan off the back of her chair — the big oversized one she wore when she was reading, the one that was technically a blanket with ambitions — wrapped it around herself over the towel, and opened the door.

Sonya was standing in the hallway.

She was already dressed — neat, put-together, looking like someone who had slept perfectly well and woken up at a reasonable hour and made considered choices about her appearance. She was holding a small paper bag.

She looked at Lookmhee. At the cardigan. At the damp hair. At the bare feet.

She said nothing about any of it.

“Bakery was open early,” she said, and held out the paper bag.

Lookmhee took it. Inside was a pastry — the almond one from the bakery on the corner, the one they had walked past on their Saturday mornings and Lookmhee had mentioned once, in passing, that it was her favorite.

Once. In passing.

“Thank you,” Lookmhee said.

“The kettle’s boiling,” Sonya said.

Lookmhee looked over her shoulder. It was. She looked back at Sonya. “Do you want to come in?”

A pause. Brief, barely there. “I have work,” Sonya said.

“Right.”

Another pause. Sonya looked at her with the quiet, steady expression. Not the careful neutral — the real one. The one that was harder to look at directly because it had too much in it.

“Last night,” Lookmhee started.

“I know,” Sonya said.

“I wasn’t going to — I just wanted to say that it’s okay. Whatever that was. It doesn’t have to be—”

“Lookmhee,” Sonya said.

She stopped.

“It was not nothing,” Sonya said. Low, certain, the way she said things when she meant them without decoration. “I don’t want you to spend the day deciding it was nothing because I said not yet.”

Lookmhee looked at her. The hallway was quiet around them. From somewhere downstairs came the distant sound of the building waking up.

“Okay,” Lookmhee said carefully. “Then what was it?”

Sonya held her gaze for a moment — that moment she always had where she was deciding how much to say, how close to let something get. Then she said: “It was me not being ready to say something I’m getting ready to say.”

The kettle was definitely boiling now, loudly, from the kitchen. Neither of them moved.

“Okay,” Lookmhee said again. Softer this time.

Sonya nodded. She took one step back. Her work bag on her shoulder, her composed face back in place, except for the small thing around her eyes that was not quite composed and both of them knew it.

“Eat the pastry,” she said. “Before it gets cold.”

She went to the elevator. Lookmhee watched her go. The elevator doors opened and Sonya stepped in and the doors closed and the hallway was quiet again.

Lookmhee stood in her doorway in her cardigan and towel with the paper bag in her hand for a long moment.

Then she went inside, turned off the kettle, made her tea, sat on the floor by her window, and ate the almond pastry slowly, watching the grey morning light on the rooftops, thinking about getting ready to say.

She was, she thought, in a very significant amount of trouble.

She opened her notebook.

She wrote: the almond one. she remembered.

Then she closed it again because some things were too tender to look at for too long first thing in the morning.

✦ ✦ ✦

She told Engfa.

Not the whole thing — not the hand-holding or not yet or the pastry on the doorstep — just enough. She went across the hall at nine, after she was dressed and her hair was dry and she felt more like herself, and knocked on Engfa’s door and when Engfa opened it Lookmhee said: “Something is happening with Sonya.”

Engfa looked at her for exactly one second.

Then she stepped back from the door, silently, in the manner of someone who had been waiting for this conversation for a considerable amount of time and had already prepared for it emotionally.

Lookmhee sat on Engfa’s couch. Engfa made tea. Lookmhee talked. Not in the scattered, too-much way she sometimes talked when things were overwhelming, but carefully, in order, the way the story actually went — because it had become a story, she realized, at some point without her noticing. A proper one with a beginning and a shape and the feeling of moving toward something.

Engfa listened the way she always listened — without interrupting, without projecting, just fully present and attentive, her hands around her cup.

When Lookmhee finished, Engfa was quiet for a moment.

“How long have you known?” she asked. Gently.

Lookmhee thought about it. About the coffee shop on the first Saturday. About you should keep writing them in the hallway and it looks like you in her apartment and the book left on her shelf without ceremony. About lying awake listening to the music through the wall.

“A while,” she admitted.

“And Sonya?”

Lookmhee thought about I wasn’t acting. About I was just there with you. About a hand taken simply in a quiet lobby.

“Also a while,” she said.

Engfa nodded. She looked at her tea for a moment with the expression of someone organizing their thoughts. Then she said, carefully: “Sonya doesn’t do things halfway. When she decides something — really decides — she commits to it completely. That’s just who she is.” A pause. “The fact that she said not yet means she’s taking it seriously. Not avoiding it.”

“I know,” Lookmhee said. “I think I know that.”

“Do you trust her?”

The question sat in the air between them, simple and direct and more important than it looked.

“Yes,” Lookmhee said. Without hesitation. The answer was just there, complete, not requiring thought. “Yeah. I do.”

Engfa smiled. Not the bright, social smile she sometimes wore. The real one — quiet and warm and a little relieved, the smile of someone who had been quietly hoping for something for a long time.

“Good,” she said. “Then wait. Not forever — you don’t have to wait forever. But a little. Give her room to get there.”

Lookmhee nodded. She looked at her tea. “Is it obvious?” she asked. “To everyone? How I feel?”

Engfa considered. “Becky has a spreadsheet.” she said diplomatically.

Lookmhee put her face in her hands.

“It’s not mocking,” Engfa said quickly. “She’s rooting for you. In Becky’s way.”

“Becky’s way involves a whiteboard.”

“And the spreadsheet, yes. But the intention is good.”

Lookmhee looked up at her through her fingers. “And TK?”

“TK said — and I’m quoting — ‘obviously’ when I brought it up last week.”

“You brought it up with TK?”

“She brought it up with me,” Engfa said. “To say she’d noticed. Which from TK means she noticed a while ago.”

Lookmhee lowered her hands. She looked at the ceiling. “The whole building knows.” she said.

“The fourth floor, certainly,” Engfa said. “Possibly the third. The Wangs on the second have opinions.”

“The Wangs.” Lookmhee groaned. “The lunch.”

“They asked me about it after,” Engfa confirmed. “I was noncommittal.”

“At least someone is.”

Engfa patted her hand. “It’s a good thing,” she said. “Being known by people. Having people notice and care about what happens to you.” She looked at Lookmhee steadily. “You came here not knowing anyone. Three months ago. Look where you are now.”

Lookmhee looked around Engfa’s apartment — the familiar warmth of it, the plants and the neat shelves and the smell of the tea. She thought about the group chat that was always running, always alive, always someone saying something that made her laugh. She thought about Freen’s cloud pictures and TK’s four-word responses and Becky’s administrative chaos and Engfa’s quiet, steady presence.

She thought about 4C. About music through the wall. About almond pastry left without a note.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “Look where I am.”

✦ ✦ ✦

The group chat that afternoon was, as always, both completely ordinary and quietly extraordinary.

Freen sent a picture of a dog she had seen on the street. Then a second picture of the same dog from a slightly different angle. Then: I asked if I could pet it and the owner said yes and I pet it for five whole minutes. Today is a good day.

Becky: today IS a good day actually. no notes.

TK: agreed

Engfa: did you get the dog’s name

Freen: his name is MOOPING

Becky: a perfect name

TK: accurate

Lookmhee: Mooping is clearly the best dog.

Freen sent three more pictures of Mooping.

Lookmhee was smiling at her phone, sitting cross-legged on her bed, when the last message in the chat came in. Not Freen. Not Becky. Not TK or Engfa.

From Sonya: Good name.

Two words. That was all. But Sonya almost never commented on the dog pictures or the cloud pictures or most of the lighter things in the chat — she responded when there was something practical to respond to or when something was genuinely funny, and the rest of the time she was present but quiet, the way she was in rooms.

Two words about a dog named Mooping.

Lookmhee read it three times.

Then she put her phone on her chest and looked at the ceiling and smiled at it in a way that was completely unreasonable for two words about a dog.

She thought: getting ready to say.

She thought: okay. I can wait for that.

She opened her notebook. She wrote for a long time. Not notes this time, not the raw material — actual lines, actual poems, the kind that came when something had settled enough to become language. She wrote about hands and lobbies and music through walls and almond pastry and the specific quality of someone who said things like facts when they were actually something else entirely.

She filled three pages.

She closed the notebook.

From the other side of the wall, very faintly, the music started.

Lookmhee leaned back against her pillow and listened to it and thought: not yet. But soon.

✦ ✦ ✦