Chapter 3

Piper's POV

I grabbed the neck of my shirt and hauled it up over my shoulder so hard the seam popped. My other hand flew up and started swatting at the air between us, like there was a cloud of invisible flies only I could see.

"No. No no no. I'm not — I'm not that. I'm your neighbor. 2B. Across the hall. My name's Piper, I just —"

He lifted his chin a little, and looked somewhere below my chin, and said, in that flat, careful voice, "Your collar's down again."

I looked.

It had slid off my shoulder in all the grabbing. There it was, my whole left breast practically out in the hallway light with the nipple showing, for the second time in two minutes.

The sound that came out of me wasn't a word. It was short and thin and high, the noise a dog makes when somebody steps on its tail.

That's it. That's my entire life. That's where it ends. I got twenty-four years and then I died in this hallway. Of embarrassment.

I slammed the door so hard the frame rattled.

Then I sat down with my back against it and put both hands over my face.

The replay started immediately. It ran front to back, and then it ran again, and the second time everything was sharper, the exact angle of his jaw when he'd said prostitute, the way he'd checked the hallway in both directions first, like he was being polite about a thing that could get us both arrested. Third time was worse. Third time I could hear my own voice saying that's the whole point of the shirt in a tone like I was reading off a script somebody handed me.

I pressed my palm against my cheek. Hot. Not warm — hot, like I'd been standing too close to a stove.

I looked down at the shirt. Six years old, thin as tissue, collar stretched out of shape.

I ripped it off, balled it up, and threw it at the corner.

My phone was going off in the pocket of my jeans on the floor. I leaned over, dug it out.

Roni: How did it go

Roni: How did it go

Roni: Piper

Roni: PIPER

Me: I might have to move.

Roni: What

Me: I might have to move out of the state.

I typed the whole thing out with my back still against the door. The shirt. The door handle catching it. The line I'd said out loud with my own mouth. Are you a prostitute. I sent it and put the phone face down on my knee and waited.

The screen lit up six times in a row. Six messages, all of them nothing but H A H A H A H A H A.

Roni: Piper, that's not a bad start

Roni: At least you made an impression

Me: He almost saw me naked. And he thinks I'm a hooker.

Roni: But you're not

Roni: And you've got a great body. You should be showing it off. What's there to be embarrassed about?

Then the phone actually rang.

"There's still a chance," she said. She was laughing, and trying not to, which made it worse. "New approach. We're going to be smart this time."

"I'm not going back over there."

"Piper. When's your rent due?"

I closed my eyes. "...I know."

"Then go again. Not in that shirt. And this time I'm coming with you."

"You're here?"

"No. I've got a new trick for you. You've got earbuds, right? The little wireless ones."

"...Yeah?"

"You put one in. I call you. I coach you the whole time. I hear everything, I tell you what to say."

"Roni, that's insane."

"I talk, you do. Trust me. Put them in and call me back."

She hung up.

I sat there for a while with the phone in my lap and the dead shirt in the corner.

Then I got up.

I found a dark long-sleeve at the back of the drawer and a pair of jeans with no holes in them, and I put my hair up and pinned the loose bits back so it looked like I'd meant to do it. I put the earbud in and pressed it. Her voice came through so clear she could have been standing at my elbow.

"Can you hear me?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Here's the plan and it's not even a plan. Help him first. Do not get close, do not touch him, do not do anything cute. Just be useful. Once he's decided you're a person, then you talk. Not before. Got it?"

"Got it."

"Piper."

"What."

"Breathe."

I looked at myself in the mirror. Dark shirt, jeans, hair back, glasses on. Nobody would look at this person and wonder what she charged.

Normal. I'm a normal person who came to help a neighbor move. That's the whole thing. That's all of it.

I opened the door.

He was coming up the stairs with four boxes stacked so high I could only see the top of his head and one shoulder, and the boxes were tilting, and the whole thing was about to go. I stepped back against my own door frame to give him the hall.

"Talk," Roni said in my ear. "Clear it up first. Then offer. Slowly."

I turned my face toward 2A like I was looking at something on his door, and hissed, "About before. I'm sorry. I'm not — I'm not a prostitute. I saw you moving in and I thought, we're going to be neighbors, maybe I could help. That's all that was."

He set the stack down. He straightened up and looked at me, and his face did that thing where it went somewhere else for a second before it came back.

"I believe you," he said. "But I don't need help."

Then he turned around and started unlocking his door.

I stood there. My toes curled up inside my sneakers, one after the other.

Well. At least I'm not a prostitute anymore. At least I've got that.

"Don't quit," Roni said. "Say something else. Say something real."

"I can't just —"

"Do it."

I bit down on my tongue and said it fast, before I could hear myself. "Wait. When I first moved into this building, the guy who lived in your place helped me. I didn't have anything. He carried my bags and then he bought me a slice of pie at the diner on Main and sat with me while I ate it, because I didn't know anybody. I told him I'd pass it on."

He stopped with his key in the lock. His back was to me and his shoulders were up around his neck, and he stood like that for a long moment, long enough that I started planning the walk back to my own door with what was left of my dignity.

Then he turned around.

"Alright then," he said.

I blinked. "Really? Thank you — really."

He picked a box off the stack and held it out. It looked small. My arm still dropped an inch when I took it.

Downstairs there was an old pickup at the curb with the paint gone chalky and the bed loaded with furniture, a mattress folded over on itself, boxes stacked and strapped. The tailgate was down. He started sorting through it and handing me the light things, one at a time — a box of books with the corners soft, a canvas bag of odds and ends that clanked, a carton of cups wrapped in newspaper.

"Ask him things," Roni said. "Not too deep. Just keep it going."

"Where'd you move from?" I said.

He got his shoulder under a big box and stood up with it, and answered like he was filling out a form.

"Military. Got out. Came out here to help a friend run a club."

"Oh."

He walked past me toward the stairs. I followed with the books against my chest.

Military. That explained the way he stood at rest with his feet apart and his weight even. The way he came around a corner. That thing where he was always braced for something to come through the door.

But his hands didn't fit it. When he'd handed me the box, I'd seen the back of his left hand, the flats of white scar tissue across the knuckles, old and thick.

And the answer itself didn't fit either. It had come out too smooth, all the edges worn off, like he'd said it into a mirror enough times that it stopped meaning anything.

I hitched the box higher and started up after him.

I couldn't have told you what it was. It was just there, in my stomach, low and cold and certain: that man was not only a veteran.