Fathom this!

That’s what neighbors do

The next time I saw her was in the hallway of my building. She was walking just ahead of me. I must have been staring pretty hard because as she opened her door on the second floor, she turned around and looked at me.

“You can say hi, you know,” she said.

“I’m sorry, I just—Hi!” I said. It was a shoe-staring moment.

She looked at me briefly and closed the door.

She lived in my building! I walked up two flights to my place, set down my stuff, and started pacing. She lived in my building! Nothing was going to happen, how could I approach her? I paced and paced. The kitchen was small, so I had to walk in a tight circle and started to get dizzy. How was I going to meet her? Nothing was going to happen.

I put her out of my mind. Nothing was going to happen, I’d never meet her properly. Maybe I’d run into her in the hall again. I’d say hi, she’d say hi, and that’d be it.

I didn’t think about her again until just before falling asleep. At the cusp of falling into a wrinkle of sleep in which time flies so fast that you wake up and it’s morning, a clear thought went through my mind: I’ll borrow sugar, that’s what neighbors do.

I might have even said it aloud.

Two days later, I was at her door. In my hand was a white mug that was missing its handle. I pressed in the little square nub of a doorbell. The apartment on Takojantie used to have the same kind. Most apartments built in the 80s in Finland did.

“Yes?” she said.

“I’m sorry to bother you but I was wondering if I could borrow some sugar.”

“Uh, sure.”

I held out the mug. She took it and went inside. I leaned to my left and looked in. A few pairs of shoes on a blue door-mat, a jacket hanging above on a coat hanger. Otherwise the white walls and the speckled linoleum floor of the front room were bare; the place looked a lot like mine, though the floor plan was different.

She returned with the mug. I remembered how I’d stolen this and two other identical mugs from an old work place. They were design mugs by Arabia. The handle of this one had broken off when I was washing it the first week I was in Turku. The other two I’d left for my old room mates.

I thought about telling her where I’d gotten the mug. No, it’d be too weird. She handed me the mug, half filled with sugar.

What now? Say something! I have to say something. This is so stupid, this whole plan. Nothing came to mind. Okay, good, this is better than stuttering something stupid. But I have to say something, anything! I just looked at her.

“Strange that nobody on your floor had any sugar,” she said, finally.

“Ah, well, I actually have sugar,” I said.

“And the store’s open. You’re pretty weird, you know.”

“Thank you.”

She pursed her lips and looked at the mug.

“Well, you have what you came for.”

I looked down at the mug, half full of sugar.

“Yeah. The sugar. Thanks,” I said. “I’ll return this to you.”

“The mug’s yours.”

“The sugar, I mean. Well, not this sugar. But… you know.”

“Sure. Bye then,” she said. She started closing the door.

“Bye!” I turned and started up the stairs.