I follow her into a lobby, which I barely remember. The last time I was here, I was so excited to be inside Robyn that I didn’t pay much attention to anything else. The area has been done in white and stone. There’s a long bench against one wall with a potted fig that is too healthy to be real. A reception desk off to the right. It’s empty, with a chair pushed neatly under it and a clipboard sitting on top.
“There’s no one at the desk,” I remark.
“There never is. They had a guy in the evenings for about six months when I first moved in, but they cut the position due to costs.”
“So the desk is just for show?”
“Pretty much.”
I look up and see two cameras at the far end. Then I go outside and spot only one camera, leaving a whole section dark.
I clench my jaw.
I will sort it out first thing tomorrow morning, along with anything else I find.
“Come up. Look at whatever you want to look at. I’m really tired and could do with a hot bubble bath.”
I start to picture how she would look naked in the tub, and stop myself.
We get to the elevator. She presses the button. The doors open, and we step in, and the air in this small steel box is suddenly tighter than it was thirty seconds ago because the last time I was in here, she had her cheeks burning red and one hand twisted in the front of my shirt. Her hair smelled like coconut.I walked out of this elevator a good couple of hours later with a few new scratches down my back.
I look straight ahead. So does she. This is awkward.
The doors open on the fourth floor. She leads me to the apartment at the end of the hall and unlocks the door after looking through her purse for a few seconds.
I look at the door itself while it’s open. It’s a standard residential lock. Not good enough by a mile.
We step inside, and I check to see if she has a chain as well. She doesn’t.
Dammit!
I move past her to the open-plan kitchen and put the bags down on the white quartz. She comes in behind me, drops her own bag on a side table, and kicks off her shoes near the door.
“I’m going to take a walk through your apartment now,” I say. “Mind if I open things?”
“Whatever makes you happy,” she says, unpacking the groceries.
I go into the living room and look around. There’s a bookshelf packed full of paperbacks. I cross to the sliding doors at the far end and check the lock. It’s a basic latch that is easy to pop open.
The door opens onto a small balcony. I step out. The fire escape is right there. A black metal staircase that runs from the roof down past every balcony on this side of the building. Anyone with even a basic level of fitness could climb it and be standing on this exact patch of tile in under three minutes. I check the railing where it meets the wall, the way the staircase angles past the balcony. I lean over the rail and look down.
“Do you ever leave windows open?” I ask Robyn as I walk back inside.
“Sometimes. The bedroom window, if it’s warm. The kitchen one too, when I’m cooking.”
“Even when you go out?”
She pauses in the middle of folding up an empty paper bag and shrugs. “Sometimes. Like I said, we’ve never had any issues.”
“Don’t do that going forward.”
She looks up. “Okay.”
I’m glad when she doesn’t give me any shit. However, I’m not sure she’s going to take my advice.
“Here’s the thing: it’s easy to get to your balcony from the fire escape, and any idiot can pop a sliding door off its tracks. It wouldn’t be difficult to make it to your bedroom window from your living room balcony, either.
She puts the paper bag down. “O-okay. Got it. I’ll keep the windows closed.”
