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I didn’t have time to answer before it also arrived with its pleasant little tone and some clanking as the inner door slid open. The outer door opened, too, and Oliver walked out.

“Hi, Gramps,” he greeted the mean old man. He spotted me. “Hi, Kat.”

“This is your grandfather?” I pointed.

“This is your grandfather?” the old man mimicked. “Who the hell is she?” he asked Oliver.

I was glad to note that he didn’t seem to remember that I’d been in his shop, or maybe it was just another way to be rude. “I live in 1C,” I said.

“Jasper’s old place?” the man asked. He got a funny expression—nostalgia? But then he said, “He should have called himself Jasper the Charlatan. Or just Jasper the Dickweed.”

“Ok, Gramps, let’s go upstairs,” Oliver said. He put his arm around the old guy’s shoulders and I expected another nasty remark, but the man smiled at him in a very pleasant way. I would have almost said that he beamed.

“Bye,” I told them both.

Gramps ignored me but Oliver waved. We had gone for a run together, just once, and it was only because we’d happened to encounter each other in the lobby as we were both heading out…

That was a lie. I had been skulking around there, waiting for him, because I had been too nervous about going upstairs to knock on his door. I’d been pleased with the results of my sneakiness, because it was easier to run when you were with someone. You were distracted, so you didn’t count every painful step in your mind or look at your phone every four to five seconds and then lament how slowly time passed.

On that run together, I had learned that he was twenty-six but he’d somehow gotten a PhD at age twenty-two, so he’d been working for a few years. He was a hydrogeologist, which meant a scientist who mostly studied water flow underground. He was also a freelancer, but I thought that he was more successful at it than I was. He had projects all over the country, which accounted for the work trips that Mrs. McGlothen had discussed.

Why hadn’t she told me anything about his grandfather? I had asked her about Oliver, and while she’d gone on for a long time about his eyes, she hadn’t seen fit to mention that his gramps was the man from the record store across the street. Yes, his eyes really were a spectacular color—not like violets, as she had said, but more like the deep, purply blue of a summer sky. I could understand getting caught up in those for a while but it still seemed weird that she’d failed to mention a nearby relative.

As I stood there thinking, the woman who knew so much about hip-hop came into the Milaflores Building. She acted happy to see me and wanted to talk about a show that she was attending on Saturday at a place called the Orpheus Odeum. She asked me if I wanted to go with her, since I’d seemed to be so interested in music. I heard myself say something unexpected.

“Yes, I would go,” I answered.

“Great!” She explained how we would drive there and that, due to knowing the owner of the theater for the past fifty-odd years, she always got to park in the employee area and use their entrance, too. “We’ll have fun,” she said, smiling.

I nodded, thinking. Maybe, if we got to be friends, then she would be able to come in and listen to the song that I heard…in fact, I would set that up now. “Would you like to have, um, an appetizer before we go? In my apartment?” I called as she went to the elevator.

“I’ll bring the beer!” she answered.

I would to go the next morning and get some chairs and food, unless she was interested in sitting in my creaky desk chair and munching on cucumbers. They really were very refreshing but probably not enough to serve. That evening, I waited—no, I didn’t wait. I happened to be seated in my desk chair and through my window, I saw Oliver and his grandfather leaving the building together. They walked to an old black car, one that I’d thought looked like a hearse when I’d seen it parked before on the street, and Gramps got in and drove off.

I woke up on Saturday and did my yoga, looking out the window when I wasn’t twisted on the floor or partially inverted. Eventually, I did see Oliver walk out of the building again. He always took a moment to do something to his watch, so I had time to bolt out of the door and fly down the stairs. I arrived on the sidewalk already a little out of breath.

“Hi,” I said. “Oh, are you going for a run right now?”

“Yes, I was.” He glanced down. “Are you?”

I nodded. “We could go together.”

“Would you need shoes, though?”

He waited while I returned upstairs for those. It was a lucky thing, because I had left my door open by mistake (which was another lucky thing, because I had also forgotten my key). But he was still waiting for me when I came back down, now with all the appropriate stuff (except I had forgotten my water bottle).

“I’m sorry that my grandfather was rude to you yesterday,” Oliver told me as we started off. “I don’t apologize for his behavior in front of him, because that makes him say things that are even worse. But he’s not actually a mean person.”

“It wasn’t nice how he imitated me.”

“No, I think he was just surprised because you’re small but your voice is deep.” He ran a few steps and added, “I’m always trying to explain away his insults but he can excuse himself if he wants to.”

I nodded in agreement. “Also, I’m not that small. I’m almost five-four.” If I stood on a book. “And my voice is nowhere as deep as yours.”

“That’s true.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize for other people,” I told him. “I usually felt the need to do that for my mom, but as I got older, I stopped myself.”