“Just some blankets,” he said. “Go back to sleep, Deb.” Martin kissed Debra on the temple. “Save your energy for your panel.” Then he went into the kitchen to drink down cold coffee that smelled like mulch. Ruby and Debra followed him. “Dad,” Ruby said as he poured his coffee. “Do you think you need help in the foyer?”
“You’re not going up there, Ruby,” Debra said.
Ruby touched Martin’s wrist. “I could go with you and see if anyone is there.”
“Nope,” Martin said.
“What if the person’s violent?” Ruby said.
Debra smoothed down her hair, which had frizzed around her face. “I did hear a story at work last week from Alice? About how a super tried to kick out someone sleeping in front of the building. And the person stabbed him.” Debra eyes narrowed into what Martin thought of as her secret-sociologist look, a pained, almost Lily-like expression that appeared anytime she was suppressing some kind of observation on institutional failings.
“He got stabbed?” Ruby said.
Martin felt his heart speed up. Debra smoothed her hair again. “They think the stabbing person had a heroin problem. Some young kid around Ruby’s age.”
“Why would you compare me to the stabbing person with the heroin problem?”
“Not comparing!” Debra patted Ruby’s back. “Just saying. Not a fun situation for anyone.”
“I won’t get stabbed,” Martin said. “You know that. I had to ask some guy to leave the foyer just a couple weeks ago and he went right away. It’s always fine. Nobody wants trouble.”
“You’re right,” Debra said. “They’re just tired.”
“Except for that stabbing guy,” Ruby said. “He seemed plenty awake. There should be a doorman. The people in this building are rich enough that there should be a doorman.”
Martin swallowed his coffee, the cool of it thickening in his throat. A couple of people on the co-op board had recently brought up the possibility of hiring a doorman, but the idea had been shot down. Where would a doorman go? When you pushed open the front doors, you stepped into a small foyer with an intercom panel. There was room for someone to curl up on the ground, but no room for a desk and chair in the foyer. And the lobby beyond the foyer door was simply a long hallway, wood-paneled and beautiful, but too narrow. Expanding its size would mean decreasing the apartment size for everyone on the first floor.
“The building’s not big enough,” was all Martin said to Ruby. Then he stepped back into his sneakers, old New Balances jury-rigged with orthopedic foam insoles.
Debra took Ruby’s arm. “We’ll watch through the intercom and if your dad needs help, if there’s a violent person up there, we’ll know.” Debra pushed a button on the wall and the camera on the intercom in the kitchen came to life. Right now the grainy black-and-white screen showed nothing but one of the foyer’s mirrors. Everything seemed quiet through the camera, but its scope was limited—it did not show the floor, so if someone were lying there, that person would still be invisible. “We’ll be watching and listening,” Debra said. “If anyone tries to stab you, babe, just give a shout!”
“I’ll be sure to shout if someone stabs me.” Martin moved past them and out the door. Before he hopped into the elevator, he stood for a moment in the laundry room, which was closed to tenants at this hour, and breathed in the detergent smell. He hadn’t been nervous when he’d received Neilson’s call, but now he worried: What if someone violent was up there, and Ruby and Debra heard him get stabbed? Even with the static of the intercom, a stabbing sound would be a bad sound, a spurty sound. Not only would he be dying, he’d know his wife and daughter would be witnesses, traumatized for life, and Ruby already with so much debt—the therapy bills on top of that?
Sometimes, in moments of great distress, Martin half believed his chest had turned translucent. He feared that if he took off his shirt, instead of old-man flab, there would just be a glass window, and behind the window a cage of ribs and inside the cage of ribs, a heart that everybody could watch sputter and clog and fail, like a dying animal at a zoo. As he rose up in the elevator, he could feel it happening. His chest becoming glass. Everything becoming fragile, brittle.
* * *
—
When Martin enters the lobby, nothing seems in the least out of the ordinary!
Shh, Lily, Jesus, you old lovely croaking girl.
But yeah, she was right. Nothing in-the-least out of the ordinary. Though it was always a little weird, going from the scuffed floors of the basement to the terrazzo tile of the lobby, the gilded mirrors and cherrywood paneling that lined the hall. Nobody, as far as he could tell, had broken into the lobby. He went down the lobby hall. Through the locked glass door leading to the foyer, he saw not just a bundle of blankets but a woman, asleep, a gray gust of hair around her pallid face. Her worn puffy winter coat was the same pink color as the pack of tissues in her hand. Each time she breathed out, the trickle of snot caught in the groove under her nose moved closer to her upper lip.
“Excuse me.” Martin pushed the glass door open, so it pressed gently against the woman’s arm. “Excuse me, ma’am, but you’ll need to leave.”
The woman cracked open one eye. She lifted the pack of tissues and rubbed the plastic packaging against her nose. “I have family upstairs I’m waiting for,” she said.
Martin glanced toward the intercom. Debra and Ruby would be able to see him but not the woman, who was still on the floor.
“I’m here for Lily,” the woman said.
His jaw felt too soft, as if the roof of his mouth might cave in. “Lily?” he said.
“Yeah. I’m her cousin. I tried to buzz 5A and nobody answered. I’m waiting for her to get home.”
Her voice sounded a little like Lily’s. For a moment, he wanted to let her in. He wanted to open the door to her. To lead her up to what had been Lily’s apartment. But of course that was impossible. “Ma’am,” he said, “I’m going to have to ask you to—”
Her face was reddening. “I told you I know Lily, Lily in 5A, I’m related to Lily in 5A, I’m Lily’s cousin.”
“Lily is. Well.” Martin paused. “Passed.”
“Passed? As in dead? You mean dead?”
“Well,” Martin said. He swallowed. “Yeah.”
The woman stood up, her legs wobbling. “I need to get in the apartment.”
“You need to leave, ma’am.”
“Your breath stinks.” She put a hand on Martin’s shoulder as if to push him aside. Her grip was very strong. “Give me the fucking keys.” She was yelling now. “Let me in.”