Chapter 6

The elevator got fixed on a Thursday.

Lookmhee found out because she heard Freen cheering from the second floor at seven in the morning — a full, unrestrained cheer, the kind that a person lets out when something they have been waiting for finally happens. A few seconds later her phone buzzed with a message in the group chat.

From Freen: THE ELEVATOR IS FIXED!!!

Then a string of exclamation marks that went on for an unreasonable length.

From Becky: finally. my calves were getting too strong. it was becoming a problem.

From Engfa: good morning everyone

From TK: noted

From Sonya, two minutes later: about time.

Lookmhee smiled at her phone. She had been awake for twenty minutes, sitting on her mattress with her notebook open on her lap and a cup of tea going cold on the floor beside her. She had been trying to write since six but mostly she had just been sitting, looking at the window, watching the early light shift from grey to gold over the rooftops.

She had been in the city for three weeks now.

Three weeks felt both very short and, somehow, like much longer. She had learned the walk to work — fifteen minutes, cut through the small park on the corner, past the bakery that put its trays out at eight and smelled incredible, past the flower stall that the same woman ran every morning with the same quiet efficiency. She had learned the bookstore — its rhythms, its regulars, the particular creak of the third shelf from the left in the poetry section. She had learned the building — which stairs to avoid because they were noisy, which neighbors left their shoes outside, how to tell by the sounds through the walls roughly what time everyone came home.

She had learned her friends.

She thought that word carefully, turned it over. Friends. It still felt slightly new in her mouth, applied to these specific people. But it was accurate. Somehow, in three weeks, it had become accurate.

Her phone buzzed again.

From Freen: Lookmhee!!!! did you see!!!! the elevator!!!

She typed back: I saw. No more four flights with groceries.

From Freen: exactly!!!! also are you free tonight??? Engfa is making her good soup (not my soup, her soup, her soup is better) and we’re watching a movie at hers

Lookmhee looked at her notebook. At the half-written page. At the cold tea.

She typed: I’ll be there.

She picked up the tea. Drank it cold. Didn’t mind.

✦ ✦ ✦

She had been at The Last Page for two hours when her manager Dao appeared beside her with the specific expression she wore when she was about to say something that mattered.

Dao was a small, unhurried woman who had been running the bookstore for eleven years and had opinions about everything — the placement of books, the temperature of the store, the correct way to wrap a purchase — but expressed those opinions quietly, without drama, the way someone did when they had long since stopped needing anyone else to agree with them.

Lookmhee had grown to like her enormously.

“The window display,” Dao said.

Lookmhee braced herself. She had changed it yesterday — rearranged it around a theme she had been thinking about for a week, grouping books not by genre but by feeling, by the specific kind of company they offered. Books for when you were lonely. Books for when you were starting over. Books for when you needed someone to tell you the world was still worth it.

“Yes?” Lookmhee said.

Dao looked at it for a moment. “A customer came in this morning because of it,” she said. “She stood outside for five minutes before she came in. She bought three books.” A pause. “She cried a little at the register.”

“Oh,” Lookmhee said. “Is that — good?”

Dao made the approving sound. She walked back to the other room.

Lookmhee looked at the display. Books for when you are starting over. She had not intended it to be personal. She had told herself it was just a theme, just an idea, just a good way to organize a window that people would notice.

She picked up her pen and wrote a new recommendation card. She did not think about the fact that she was, in fact, starting over. She did not think about the city outside the window that was still partly unfamiliar, the apartment that was slowly becoming hers, the notebook filling up with things she hadn’t expected to feel.

She just wrote the card.

For when you need permission to begin again. This is it. You have it.

She put it in the display, between two books she loved, and went back to shelving.

✦ ✦ ✦

She got home at six.

The elevator worked. She stood inside it for a moment, just to appreciate the fact of it — the hum, the slow rise, the doors opening on the fourth floor — and then walked down the hall to her apartment feeling, for reasons she couldn’t entirely explain, extremely fond of the building and everyone in it.

She dropped her bag, changed her shirt, looked at her apartment.

In three weeks it had started to look lived-in. There was a small shelf she had assembled herself, slightly uneven, holding the books she had brought and a few she had acquired since. There were two plants on the windowsill — one that Freen had given her because plants make a place feel like home, and one she had bought herself from the market last weekend on an impulse. There was a string of lights along the wall above the mattress — her mattress now had a proper bed frame, which had been a whole other adventure — and the notebook on the small table beside it and the cold tea she always forgot to finish.

It was small. It was hers.

She was still looking at it when there was a knock at the door.

She opened it. Sonya was standing in the hallway holding a book.

Not a gift-wrapped book, not a book offered with any ceremony or explanation. Just a book, held out slightly, like it was something to be transferred from one person to another, a transaction, nothing more.

“I finished it,” Sonya said. “You mentioned it at Becky’s. That you’d been meaning to read it.”

Lookmhee looked at the book. It was a collection of essays — one she had put on the bookstore’s recommendation list, actually, something she had read years ago and loved.

“You read it because I mentioned it?” she said.

“I had it already.” A pause that was almost imperceptible. “I just hadn’t gotten to it yet.”

Lookmhee took the book. Their fingers didn’t touch. She looked at the cover. “What did you think?”

“The third essay is the best one,” Sonya said. “The rest are good. The third one is something else.” She looked at the book in Lookmhee’s hand. “You’ll know it when you get to it.”

“Thank you,” Lookmhee said. “For — bringing it over.”

“You have a small shelf,” Sonya said, looking past her at the apartment with that quick assessing look she had. “It needs more on it.”

“I’m working on it.”

Sonya’s gaze moved around the apartment — the plants, the lights, the slightly uneven shelf — and something in her expression settled in a way that Lookmhee had no word for. Not approval exactly. Something quieter.

“It looks like you,” Sonya said. She said it simply, the way she always said things, without decoration. Then she stepped back. “Engfa’s at seven. Don’t be late, she timed the soup.”

She went back to 4C.

Lookmhee stood at her door holding the book.

She looked at the cover. Then at the closed door of 4C. Then back at the cover.

She went inside and put the book on her shelf, first thing, before she did anything else.

✦ ✦ ✦

Engfa’s apartment at seven was warm and smelled like the soup Freen had mentioned, which turned out to be a different soup entirely — a clear broth with noodles and soft vegetables and something in it that Lookmhee couldn’t identify but that tasted like being taken care of.

Everyone was there. Freen had brought cushions from her own apartment — three of them, large and slightly mismatched — and arranged them on the floor in front of Engfa’s small television with the seriousness of someone completing an important task. TK had brought drinks. Becky had brought chips and also, for reasons she did not explain, a small whiteboard which she set up against the wall and then covered with her jacket when Engfa looked at it.

“What’s on the whiteboard?” Engfa asked.

“Nothing,” said Becky.

“Becky.”

“A chart.”

“Of what?”

Becky adjusted her jacket over the whiteboard. “Statistics,” she said.

TK looked at the ceiling.

Sonya arrived exactly on time — not early, not late, exactly when she said she would be — with a container of something that turned out to be a dessert, which she handed to Engfa without fanfare and then sat in the corner of the couch closest to the window.

They ate on the floor and the couch, bowls balanced on knees, the way people did when the food was good enough that the informality didn’t matter. Freen talked about her week with the easy, unedited quality she brought to everything, jumping between topics without warning or apology. Becky argued with her about two of them. TK said four things total, all of which were either useful or funny. Engfa kept everyone’s bowls full and occasionally steered the conversation with the gentle efficiency of someone who had been doing it for years.

And Sonya sat in her corner of the couch and said less than most of them but was present in that particular way she had — attentive without being obvious about it, contributing when she had something to say, watching the room in between.

Lookmhee ended up beside her on the couch. Not by design — Freen had claimed one end with her cushion collection, Becky was on the floor closest to the television with the whiteboard she kept glancing at, Engfa went back and forth to the kitchen, and TK was in the armchair in the corner. The couch, by process of elimination, was Lookmhee and Sonya.

“How was work?” Sonya asked her, low enough that it was just for her.

Lookmhee thought about the woman who had cried at the register. About the display that had apparently worked the way she had hoped it would. “Good,” she said. “Really good, actually.”

“The display?”

She looked at her. “How did you know?”

“You’ve been thinking about it all week,” Sonya said. “You mentioned it twice without meaning to.”

Lookmhee tried to remember when she had mentioned it. She could only recall once. “You noticed that?”

Sonya shrugged slightly. The Sonya equivalent of yes, obviously, it wasn’t difficult.

“A customer cried,” Lookmhee said. “In a good way. I think.”

Sonya was quiet for a moment. Then: “That’s what good writing does.”

“It’s a window display.”

“It’s curation. That’s writing.” She looked at the television, where Freen and Becky were arguing about which movie to put on. “You made someone feel something they needed to feel. That’s the whole point.”

Lookmhee looked at her. At the clean line of her profile, the way she said things like that — true, certain things — without seeming to notice that they landed.

“You say things like that,” Lookmhee said, “and then act like you didn’t.”

Sonya glanced at her. “Like what?”

“Like something that’s actually quite — ” she searched for the word — “kind. And then you just move on.”

A pause. On the television, Freen had won the movie argument by virtue of already pressing play before Becky could stop her. Becky was protesting at low volume. TK was already watching.

“I say what’s accurate,” Sonya said finally.

“Sure,” said Lookmhee. “That too.”

Sonya looked at her for a moment with an expression that Lookmhee was slowly, over the weeks, learning to read. It wasn’t quite the carefully neutral one she wore in hallways and at first meetings. It was something with more in it — something that hadn’t decided yet what it wanted to be.

Then she looked back at the television.

“Watch the movie,” she said.

Lookmhee watched the movie.

✦ ✦ ✦

The movie was two hours long and somewhere in the middle of it Freen fell asleep on Engfa’s shoulder, which happened so gradually and naturally that no one said anything about it. Becky kept up a quiet commentary on the plot that was funnier than the movie itself. TK watched everything — the screen and also, Lookmhee noticed, the room — with that still, observant quality she had.

At some point during the second half, without Lookmhee fully registering when it happened, Sonya’s posture had shifted. She was slightly more relaxed — not dramatically, not in a way anyone would notice unless they were paying attention — leaning back a little more, the careful composure she normally wore sitting lighter on her.

Lookmhee was paying attention.

She looked at the screen and thought about the book on her shelf. The one Sonya had read because she had mentioned it once, in passing, at Becky’s apartment. The one Sonya had brought over without ceremony or explanation, just — here, I thought you’d want this.

She thought about it looks like you, said simply, to her apartment and its plants and its slightly uneven shelf.

She thought about that’s what good writing does.

She opened her notebook — she had brought it without thinking, habit by now — and wrote three words at the top of a new page. She looked at them. Then she closed the notebook and put it back in her bag.

Some things needed more time before they became words.

She was the second to last to leave. Becky went first, taking her whiteboard under her arm with great dignity and ignoring Engfa’s pointed look. TK woke Freen gently, which involved saying her name once at normal volume and catching her when she startled awake, and they went downstairs together. Engfa started clearing bowls.

“I’ll help,” Lookmhee said.

“You don’t have to—”

“I know.” She started stacking anyway.

They washed up together in the small kitchen, Engfa washing and Lookmhee drying, and it was quiet and comfortable in the way that only happened with people you had known long enough or well enough to not need to fill the silence.

“You’re settling in,” Engfa said. Not a question.

“I think so,” Lookmhee said. “It happened faster than I expected.”

“That’s how it works here.” Engfa handed her a bowl to dry. “This building — I don’t know what it is about it. People come in not knowing anyone and then very quickly they know everyone.” A pause. “You fit here.”

Lookmhee thought about that. Fit. It was a word she had not associated with herself in a long time — she had spent most of her life feeling slightly adjacent to things, close to fitting but not quite. She had thought that was just how she was.

“Thank you,” she said. “For making me feel that.”

“I didn’t make you feel it,” Engfa said. “I just said what was already true.”

Lookmhee thought: that’s exactly what Sonya said too. I say what’s accurate.

She smiled at the bowl she was drying.

Sonya was still there when she came out of the kitchen — still on the couch, phone in hand, doing something on it that she put away when Lookmhee appeared.

“Still here?” Lookmhee said.

“I was waiting,” Sonya said. She stood, picked up her jacket from the arm of the couch.

“For what?”

Sonya looked at her steadily. “To walk back,” she said. As if this was obvious. As if there was no other explanation and she was mildly surprised the question had been asked. They were all on the same floor — Engfa’s 4A, Lookmhee’s 4B, Sonya’s 4C — just a short walk down the same hallway. There was no practical reason for Sonya to wait.

Lookmhee felt something warm and complicated move through her chest. She filed it under amusement again, because that file was getting very full but she wasn’t ready to open a new one yet.

“Right,” she said. “Obviously.”

They said goodnight to Engfa and stepped out into the hallway together. It was quiet out here — late enough that the building had gone still around them, just the low hum of the lights and the distant sound of the city outside the window at the end of the hall.

Ten, maybe. That was all it was from Engfa’s door to theirs. Ten steps down a familiar hallway they had both walked a hundred times alone.

“Third essay,” Lookmhee said.

Sonya glanced at her.

“You said I’d know it when I got to it,” Lookmhee said. “The book you lent me.”

“You haven’t read it yet.”

“I will tonight.”

They reached their respective doors — 4B and 4C, side by side — and stopped.

“Goodnight,” said Lookmhee.

“Goodnight,” said Sonya. She unlocked her door. Then she paused, hand on the frame, not quite turning around. “You belong here,” she said. Low and even, like the other things she said. “In case that wasn’t already clear.”

She went inside.

Lookmhee stood in the hallway for a long moment, keys in hand, the quiet building around her, the city humming somewhere below.

Then she went into her apartment. She made tea — actually hot this time, and she actually drank it. She sat on her bed under the string of lights with the book Sonya had lent her and found the third essay and read it twice.

She knew it when she got to it.

She opened her notebook.

The three words she had written earlier were still at the top of the page. She looked at them for a while. Then she wrote below them — slowly, carefully, the way she wrote when something felt important enough to get right.

She wrote for a long time.

When she finally closed the notebook and turned off the light, the city outside was very still and the thin strip of park was silver in the moonlight and somewhere through the wall of 4C the soft suggestion of music was playing.

She listened to it until she fell asleep.

✦ ✦ ✦