As Francis peered out and looked down the hallway, he saw nearly every other apartment door opened slightly, just like his. Around the corner of each, a neighbor’s face could be half-seen. All eyes were fixed at the end of the corridor where the paramedics had just entered with a stretcher. Two police officers stood outside, waiting for Miss Petrea’s remains to emerge.
Miss Petrea had been a frequent sight for Francis all the years he’d lived in the building, but he hadn’t seen her much lately. He recalled holding the front door open for her. That was two weeks ago.
Francis had lived in the building for more than ten years, now one of a minority of tenants who were not students. When he’d first moved in, Francis managed to support himself in a limited manner, as what a former boss once described as a “functional alcoholic”. He had arranged his life around drinking, selecting jobs that would not interfere with his habit: low-level shift labor, with hours to pick up when he needed them, or decline when he was “unavailable for engagement”. He’d been a banquet server, a telemarketer, a warehouse packer, and a dozen more things that would fit the gaps between binges. After he got sober, he still kept the same arrangement because he found it suited him well, and now that his availability was wide open, he could work quite a lot. The past year, he’d made enough money to live quite comfortably, if simply, in his small apartment.
Early on, there had been a girl, Alice. She was pretty, with dark hair and brown eyes thickly fringed with black lashes. He remembered Miss Petrea giving her dirty looks every time she saw the two of them together.
When they first got together, he drank hard liquor and she liked wine. Wherever Alice was, there was usually a glass and a bottle nearby. They met while drinking (of course), and for a while, it seemed like one long party. Then one night they had a fight. Not just a fight; a loud, savage, irrational explosion. He still couldn’t remember what it was about, but it had seemed to come suddenly out of nowhere. Afterward, Alice grabbed her things and left. Even though it was the only fight they’d ever had, it was enough to end the six month affair.
He saw her a couple of years later in a restaurant where he took shifts washing dishes. Francis was certain Alice never saw him, but every time the swinging double doors opened, he stole a glance from the kitchen. She was with a date, looking healthier and happier than he had ever seen her. When the dishes came back from her table, he saw they drank Italian sparkling water with lime. He saw the half-bow print of her dark chocolate matte lipstick on the glass.
Francis spent the rest of that night resenting her happiness, her apparent sobriety, her life without him. He took the single photograph he still had of Alice, one taken of the two of them, and stared at it for a long time, before a wave of spite rose in him. He had contemplated burning the picture, but couldn’t bring himself to strike the match. Instead, he’d tossed it in the hallway wastebasket as he left, swearing to nobody in particular that if she could stop drinking and be happy without him, then he could do the same.
He kept half his promise and never drank again, but never managed to achieve the happy part. For a long time afterward, he fantasized that she would fall off the wagon and return to him, a sorry drunk begging him to take her back.
Later on that year, Francis found his sobriety tested almost to the breaking point when he learned that Alice had died. She’d had a massive stroke, a mutual acquaintance told him one night when they were both on a restaurant job. Francis said nothing, rushing to the restroom. Mercifully, the initial shock was just enough to delay the sobs that spilled out when he closed the bathroom stall.
After the news, he socialized very little. Francis found it next to impossible to meet people, especially women, without a liquid third party to introduce them. He’d remained alone ever since. Alone, except for Alice one last time, in a dream.
She stood in front of him, silent, desiccated and pale in the short, grey dress she wore the last time he saw her. Dust powdered off her long, dark eyelashes like the wings of a moth. She held a bottle in her hands, one open palm grasping the bottom and the other twisting at the cork, which wouldn’t budge. As she struggled to open the bottle, she began to gnaw at the cork, snarling and whining like an animal chewing at a limb caught in a trap. In the dream, Francis closed his eyes tightly and covered his ears, and then he was awake, and she was gone. He slept no more that night.
When he was new in the building, it seemed like there were more old-timers like Miss Petrea living in small apartments downtown. Some were old couples who hadn’t moved out to the suburbs when the highways cut through the old neighborhoods, but most were solitary souls like himself. The building was clean enough, and even though it hadn’t been updated in a long time, that detail kept the rent low. It had radiator heat and old casement windows, which meant when he did save up enough for an air conditioner, it had to be a hard-to-find upright. In the fall and winter it was impossible to control the heat, and at any given time during the cold months, more than half of the windows in the building were opened at least a crack. Alice, who always kept her own place, called it the “hot building” when deciding where they should spend the night together.
Miss Petrea seemed old when he had moved in, and looked more or less the same for all these years. She was small, squat, and foreign, an unhurried badger with old-fashioned clothes, never without a kerchief on her head. Once, the topic of Miss Petrea came up when Francis paid his rent at the manager’s office downtown. The clerk, Luli, was chatty, not really friendly, but always ready for an audience. She said she used to see Miss Petrea at dinners at the Albanian Catholic church, especially when stuffed peppers or lamb with rice were on the menu. Miss Petrea got in a fight with some of the women in the congregation and stopped going. “They said she had the evil eye,” she stated, matter-of-factly. “That’s why I figure her family doesn’t want anything to do with her. A couple of times a year relatives out of town pay her rent in advance. I guess it’s so they can make sure she’s not where they are.”
Francis laughed and said, “She puts the evil eye on them?” Luli looked annoyed, tightening her brow and shaking her head. “It doesn’t work like that. You’re born with the evil eye. It’s like a disease that comes from a jealous heart.” Francis dropped his smile, realizing the offense he had caused, and said, “It sounds like they only hurt themselves.” Now it was Luli’s turn to laugh. “Think so?”
Francis’ skepticism faded along with his nerve as Luli kept talking. “My nonja saw an old lady make a baby die.” Francis was shocked at her bluntness. “It was when grandma was a little girl. A young mother was showing her new baby to some other women, and the old lady came up and said, “Such a pretty baby!”. She touched the baby’s foot. That night, the baby died in her crib. Nonja said she put its soul into a moth she hid in her hand, and smothered it in a little bottle.” Francis shuddered, then thought to himself, sudden infant death syndrome or something like that. But, as he tried to say it out loud, he found that he could not. All he could utter, quietly, was, “That’s awful” as he slid the envelope under the slot in the window.
After that, Francis thought about Miss Petrea’s family. He never once saw her have a visitor, or meeting anyone except a taxi driver. He saw Miss Petrea frequently in the corridor over the years, but had only heard his elderly neighbor’s voice a few times. Two weeks ago, he remembered how he’d opened the front door for her, and she’d spoken then.
It had been raining hard that night. Francis had barely heard her tapping at the window as he braced himself for the downpour. She must have forgotten her keys, he’d thought. Miss Petrea wore a crocheted black scarf knotted under her chin. The knot had loosened, and the wet, clinging material draped her face like a dark veil. As Francis pulled open the door, she’d said through the wet shroud, “Good boy. Glad that girl gone. I didn’t like her.” He realized she must have meant Alice. He recalled the sudden and disturbing realization that after all this time, she was still thinking about Alice; more specifically, Alice and him. He weighed whether he should say something, tell her that Alice had died. Instead, he just stood there with what he was sure was a stupid look on his face as the old woman slid past him and down the dark hall and disappeared into her apartment.
The sound of the front door slamming open returned him to the present moment, still standing in his doorway, watching with all the neighbors. The police held the door open as her porters carried her down the front stairs. Francis was struck by the smallness of the shape beneath the sheet, no longer the thick-set figure he remembered. Death had reduced Miss Petrea, as though to fit a small container.
It had been more than an hour since the ambulance had arrived. The police hadn’t spoken much, except initially to confirm that the deceased was Miss Petrea. He anticipated questions about the last time anyone had seen her, or did she have relatives, or was there anyone to call. Maybe they would speak to Luli if they already hadn’t. It occurred to Francis now that, with Miss Petrea gone, he was the old-timer on the 1st floor. It was the first death in the building since the other longtime residents, the Bells, had died shortly after he moved in.
Francis jumped at the clattering sound of the paramedics rattling past his doorway. The ambulance drove away, the police left a now-empty apartment at the end of the hall. The Bells… He hadn’t thought of them in years. Francis hadn’t liked Mr. and Mrs. Bell much, though he had spoken with them occasionally. He had even gone to their apartment for drinks once.
Short, skinny Mrs. Bell with her blue-black hair was always bossing around her husband, who seemed more than happy with the arrangement. The Bells had money, or at least they seemed more comfortable than most living in the building. Their furniture was nice, and their food, mostly cocktail hors d’oeuvres, was delivered from a gourmet shop.
Their liquor was top shelf, and though Francis was no connoisseur, he wasn’t going to turn down good whiskey. Mr. Bell brought scotch and sodas for himself and Francis and martinis for his wife. That evening, Mrs. Bell wanted to talk, and the topic she chose was their elder neighbor.
Hot as it was, skinny little Mrs. Bell wore a bulky cardigan pinned at the throat with a nice brooch. Her opinions came in a meandering stream of religious judgment, unhinged accusations, and thick smoke from the long, brown cigarettes they both smoked. Her husband sat and nodded his gigantic, bald head at his wife’s every remark about “the old witch” and “papist idolatry”. By his third strong drink, it occurred to Francis that Mrs. Bell might just literally mean “witch”. He made some excuse to leave, something about getting up early. After that, no matter how good the scotch, Francis begged off every invitation afterward.
Then one night, he heard a commotion in the hallway and looked out to see Miss Petrea and Mrs. Bell shouting at each other. The solitary old woman’s voice was shrieking two octaves higher than he had heard before, and she waved her hands and pulled down imaginary fistfuls of foreign words from the air. Mrs. Bell retaliated, stabbing a bony index finger at her adversary to punctuate each insult as her husband nodded, arms folded. Both women paused a second to draw breath, then Miss Petrea fixed both of them with her intense, dark-eyed stare and said, “Why you have so much? Why you so lucky? Why I gotta struggle? You don’t deserve!” The Bells looked momentarily stunned. Miss Petrea turned, grasping up her overstuffed shopping bags and storming inside her apartment, slammed the door. Mrs. Bell recovered a portion of her rage and shouted back, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” Then she and her husband went back inside their own apartment, slamming their door in a feeble response.
That was the last time anyone saw the Bells alive. The fire department said they had probably suffocated from fumes from a space heater found in their room, exhausted of fuel. The Bells’ apartment had a small back bedroom like all the places on that side of the building, surrounded by masonry walls. Francis couldn’t imagine anyone needing a space heater in the “hot building”, much less closing the window with the radiators going full blast.
Francis didn’t particularly want to leave his apartment, but a call from the temp agency meant a chance to work a late shift, and anyway it was time to go downtown to pay rent. In cash, because he had never gotten himself together enough to have a bank account. He washed at the sink, dressed himself and stepped outside into the corridor, patting his pocket to make sure his keys were there before his apartment door latched behind him.
As he started toward the door, something made him stop and look in the other direction. Gazing down the hallway, he saw that the door to Miss Petrea’s apartment was slightly ajar. Francis ducked his head inside the doorway, without placing a foot beyond the threshold. It appeared that the place had already been cleared out, still waiting for a cleaning. Hardly a trace remained of the old woman. To the left, just inside the door, whoever had hauled everything away had left a wooden chair and a table, the sort that concealed a sewing machine underneath. On it rested a chipped porcelain saucer with the stub of a candle and a burnt match. The place was littered with what looked like patent medicines. He stepped inside tentatively. From the floor, he picked up a pretty cobalt blue glass jar and a couple of small bottles with foreign labels, all of which felt empty. He placed the handful on the little table and resumed his journey.
Francis opened the office door and walked up to the glass window. Luli had seen him enter and looked up. Francis slid payment across to her without a word. Luli remained silent as well, focused on the assortment of large and small bills he had given her.
“Miss Petrea passed away,” Francis said, quietly. “I know,” Luli said. “Some of the women from the church went over and knocked but she never answered. They called the police. They said she must have been sick; she had medicine bottles all around. They found her in a back room with the window open, door shut. Maybe that’s why nobody smelled anything.” Francis stared dumbly as she spoke, all the while stamping rent receipts and other documents. “All that time and nobody even noticed. Disgraceful. You would think after so long, someone would go knock, or maybe call somebody before now.”
Francis got the distinct impression that Luli was trying to shame him. The implied blame in her words was clear, and he felt pressure to defend himself. It had been a couple of weeks since he had seen the old woman, but that wasn’t really unusual, and anyway, it wasn’t as if he had any special responsibility to look after her. He thought about what he should say, but only ended up mumbling, “It was only two weeks…”
“What are you talking about?” Luli said, with an edge to her voice. He said, defensively, “Well, I hadn’t seen her in maybe two weeks, but…” Luli looked at him with a confused, serious expression. “Two weeks?” she said in a challenging tone. “Yes,” Francis rebutted, lifting his head in weak defiance. “She passed me coming in, maybe two weeks ago but I keep late hours right now and…” Luli cut him off, shaking her head and stretching out her palm to halt his speech. “Months. The police said she was dead for months.”
Francis stepped backwards, shaking his head. “That can’t be right. I saw her…” Luli cut him off, stating bluntly, “She was already dead.” The blood drained from Francis’ face as he staggered back slightly. Luli jumped to her feet as he began to wobble backwards. He found himself landing in an old, hard chair across the room from the clerk’s window. Luli sped from her desk and opened the office door. She paused to observe him, satisfied momentarily that he would not hit the floor. “You okay? I can call somebody…” she said, but Francis waved her off, got unsteadily to his feet, and exited the office.
Walking home, Francis still felt stunned and dissociated. He scarcely noticed that it had started raining. He reached inside his pocket to retrieve his key for the building, finding that his jacket was soaked. He began to open his own front door but paused, looking again at the dark void at the end of the hallway. Miss Petrea’s door was still open. He walked slowly toward it, compelled to enter but reluctant at the same time.
There were no lights in the living room now, but light enough from the window. He returned to the sewing machine table and the jars. He picked one up and tried to see the contents through the glass, but the gloom from the window was too dim. He loosened the cap and spilled the contents on the tabletop: ashes and the wings and shells of moths. He placed the jar down and opened another. A single dead moth fell out, but something else remained. Locating a stub of a pencil in his damp jacket, he probed and drew out a piece of torn paper. Francis gasped upon recognizing Alice’s face; it was the photo he had discarded, torn in half, sealed in the jar.
A third jar sat unsealed, the lid beside it, the corner of a piece of torn paper visible at the rim. He could already see that it was the other half of the photo. His half. His hands shook as he reached for the jar. Picking out the scrap, he held both halves together, remembering the day the photo was taken. Not a perfect day, but the most perfect he’d known. A sudden wave of grief rose in him. He sat down in the hard chair next to the table and sobbed pitifully for only a second or two. He stared hard at the photograph once again before placing both halves together in the jar. Twisting the lid to seal it, he felt a strange, tightening sensation in his chest as his hands grew numb around the jar. Taking a long, deep breath, he wondered if grief, like envy, would be forever in Hell.
