Apartment 11A
by
KM Brunner
The grate of the fire escape bit into her bare thighs. Riley kicked her feet happily, perversely comfortable, even eleven floors up the tower. Her boyfriend’s apartment, the dump that it was, had never been her favorite place, but the fire escape? The poor man’s balcony? It was her home. She’d zip-tied an ashtray – ok, a plastic cup – to it and everything.
It was too cold to be wearing shorts, but Riley wore them anyway. She had great legs, and she thought – quite generously – that the man who lived just above their apartment could use something to look at. Besides, she hated wearing pants to bed and it was just about bedtime. Why would she bother changing into real clothes for a quick smoke?
Maybe she should’ve been more careful with the height and the cold. The wind, which had whipped half the hair out of her ponytail, turned the metal of the fire escape to ice. But Riley liked to feel that sharpness. The sensation made her feel alive. It was a harmless kind of pain, unlike the burn from fallen cigarette ash piling up on her leg. She could’ve hissed and swept it off, but she left it all there, content to let it cool on her thigh.
That, he would’ve yelled at her for.
Riley drew a quick breath through her teeth but otherwise did nothing while she weathered the worst of the pain. She didn’t even touch the little wound once the orange faded. David had hated this part of her – the self-destructive, sensory-seeking, risk-taking part – but she thought it was a treasure. Maybe in a few years, after some therapy or turning to God or whatever people do in their thirties, Riley would stop seeking danger but for now…
Her legs were growing numb and it was not her day to fall off the balcony, so she reopened the window behind her. Resigned to another night of poor sleep in Hellton Towers, Riley climbed back into the living room. The apartment was a shithole but they all were, even the corner “suites.” The whole place had roaches and probably asbestos, but when anyone asked, she told them it held a certain charm. To be fair, to Riley, Hellton Towers was charming. Sure, the building was crumbling around its inhabitants but she liked it that way. She especially liked that it wasn’t worth it – to the city – to spend the money it’d take to “fix” crime in the Towers. Where would the pigs start? All sorts lived there, good and bad sorts, but not one of them would lick a boot.
Hellton Towers had its own set of laws, loyalties, and punishments.
For example, the guy in 11B was a history professor. He used to work at Duke but resigned, probably in disgrace, but she didn’t know the details. Maybe he just wanted to be home. The “boys on two,” Mike’s boys, told her the Professor grew up near the Towers; he even did his dissertation on a nearby church (graveyard). He was too quiet to be infamous in town, but he was definitely a legend in the building. The rumor was that when he moved in, he brought just a duffel bag and an air mattress. Mike said in his first month there, the Professor beat one of his boys so badly he had needed reconstructive surgery.
“But the kid tried to jack his car, so…” Mike had shrugged. She remembered his amused smirk.
On the bright side, the Professor loved to be put to work, so all the kids in the building had a great – if strict – tutor. The Professor was a “valued member of the community,” as Mike once put it. Riley didn’t question that, ‘cause she quite liked the Professor. He had elbow patches like a professor ought to, and wore wire-rimmed glasses. His eyes crinkled when he smiled.
David, despite having lived there for years, was not a valued member of the community.
Grabbing a glass of water, she walked into their bedroom and sighed at the state of it. The sheets needed washing and the bottles of piss lined up on David’s side of the bed guarded it like sentinels. Riley used to have fantasies of pouring their contents into his mouth while he slept. She never had, but he would’ve deserved it.
It’d be all right if it were just one bottle, you know? At least their caps were screwed on. Riley would clean them up eventually but the idea made her hands itch, so she left them alone. She shook her head, disgusted. Another night with dirty sheets and piss bottles, but what did she expect, with a guy like David in an apartment like 11A? Mercifully, the room didn’t smell like urine. It smelled human, and at night, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. She always thought the two of them made a nice scent, or at least a tolerable one.
She rolled onto the mattress, landing squarely in her divot, and reached over to his side, which held a small pile of books. For the last few days she’d referred to it, in her head, as her “little library,” like the ones they had in town. Of course it wasn’t like a real Little Library – her books were definitely not free – but the name made her smile. David hadn’t slept in the bed for a while so she figured she could fill it. Besides, she was keeping its shape for him; it wouldn’t do for the mattress to lose the contours of his bony body.
Riley wiggled in place impatiently; she was waiting on a delivery. She’d ordered it to arrive in “the middle of the night,” and surely 2 a.m. counted as the middle of the night, but her welcome mat was still empty. Waiting was always difficult for her, and to make things extra irritating, her eye started to do that twitching she hated. One time she showed it to David, and he said “gross!” and continued with, “maybe you’re like, an alien. Or there’s an alien inside of you that wants out. Maybe it’s a boy alien. Do you think it’d gay to screw a boy alien?”
The twitch was a stress thing, and Riley was definitely stressed. She was anxious to get the package. And sure, maybe she was a bit possessive about it, but she just wanted it somewhere she could reach. She’d made a nice spot in the closet. There was extra space there; David didn’t have many clothes. It would fit well with his things.
After an hour of waiting, she startled at a heavy knock on the apartment door. Riley jogged to open it and released a breath when she saw the large trunk on her doormat. Whoever delivered it disappeared quickly. She made a mental note to tell Mike; hopefully he’d pass along the compliment.
Dragging the trunk into the apartment was easy but shuffling it into the closet was not. By the time she had it in place, she was sweating. She wasn’t really one to exercise, but she had to admit there was something satisfying about moving stuff and sweating from it. Riley patted the leather twice, thunks nice and heavy.
She pulled David’s trousers over to cover it and smiled to herself. It did look nice with his things. Mike had assured her the trunk would be well-prepared and worth the money, and he’d been right. He often was. It was an expense she couldn’t quite afford, but funerals were more expensive, and David told her once that he thought they were tacky. Who’d have come, anyway? Certainly not their neighbors.
The whole ordeal would have been tragic if he weren’t such a shit.
There are bad people everywhere – doesn’t matter what type of person they are. There are bad kids, bad teachers, bad baristas, and definitely bad boyfriends. There are bad girlfriends, too.
Riley thought girlfriend-badness was often justified, but in Hellton Towers, it didn’t matter either way. You could be almost anything there, including a murderer, as long as you murder the right people. Mike thanked her when she opened the door to 11A, and he got a glimpse of David’s prone body. His thanks was not surprising. The job offer, however, was. Riley was sorry to disappoint him, but she truly didn’t mind being a server. She wasn’t really the murder-for-hire type, anyway.
But when Mike offered to clean David up (for a price), she let him.
That night she learned firsthand that the boys on two were great at a variety of things, including making tea. Riley also learned that Mike charged a discounted rate for in-house cleanup. She didn’t even have to help carry the corpse downstairs.
What a Thursday.
Strangely, she was happy to have David – albeit a compressed version – back in the apartment. Though she trusted Mike, it was nice to put a bow on the whole thing. Or a lock. The trunk had a gorgeous lock.
As she closed the closet, Riley heard another knock. Slowly, she moved toward the entryway. She looked through the peephole. There was nothing – no one – there, so she opened the door.
At her feet laid a small pile of crumpled papers. She recognized them as David’s eviction notices, torn off the door. An envelope with her full name was taped in their place.
Rent due on the first, just put it in your mailbox. Renegotiation possible but unwise.
Riley remembered her first day in the Towers, the day she met Mike. He introduced himself with a wide smile, shook her hand and said, “We take care of our own.” The phrase, normal enough, had been said so soberly it frightened her, which was the point. But she recognized now that in saying that, he’d given her an opportunity. She smiled down at the note and startled when she heard someone clear their throat.
Next door, the Professor was just getting in. He was slipping off his Oxfords, obviously thankful for his night to be over. He lifted one hand in greeting and nodded at her. The corners of his lips were curled up into his ‘hello, sweet girl’ smile. Riley waved back at him happily, with so much fondness in her chest she felt she might die from it. For some reason, seeing the Professor’s socks made one thing very clear: she was home.
Riley ducked back inside her own apartment. She walked into the bedroom and, steeling herself, gathered David’s bottles into an old cardboard box. She’d bring them to the dumpster later. She pushed her books off the bed, stripped the thing of its sheets, and replaced them with clean ones. Finally, she opened the window. For the first time since she moved in, Riley didn’t crave the bite of the metal on her fire escape. She didn’t even want a cigarette. Riley was, for once, completely comfortable.
She belonged in Hellton Towers. She belonged with Mike, with the boys on two, with the Professor, and under the gaze of the weirdo upstairs. Riley even felt at home with the few kids who roamed the building, some of whom visited the Professor’s apartment with angry mothers at their backs.
Riley was a valued member of the community, and David?
David belonged in a trunk.
Bio:
KM Brunner has been published on some small-time websites and as a scholar in Technical Communication Quarterly. She lives and works in Boston with her three guitars and six tarantulas, waiting for the day she’ll find a wife who’s cool with all of that.
Punk Noir Press 
What an intriguing building. I would love to visit it again. Great job!
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