Years ago, when his mother had downsized, he’d moved his old bedroom furniture from Harrisburg to NYC. The bed was a twin and plenty big enough for him, but the furniture was heavy maple. He’d damn near given himself a hernia moving it all in here, and now he risked one again as he grunted and groaned to angle the nightstand out from the wall for a look.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
A section of the floor, maybe three feet in length, appeared to have separated from the side wall. Just a few inches, but if he angled his head right, he could see into the apartment below.
This wasn’t good. In fact, this could be very bad. The building dated from the late 1940s, which made it like three-quarters of a century old. It just might be coming apart. He didn’t want to be here if it decided to come crashing down.
He understood how he’d missed the gap, hidden away as it was on the floor behind the nightstand. But it opened into the ceiling of the apartment below. How had anyone missed that?
He decided to go check.
He didn’t know his neighbors much beyond a non-committal nod in the hallways. Didn’t really want to. Not because he didn’t like them or anything, but he wasn’t looking for friends here. He had a few writer friends around the city and they’d get together now and again for drinks and dinner and to bitch about the industry. But truth was he’d actively avoided making friends in the building. He had to bang out a minimum of 2K words every day—what he called his Daily Duty—to keep the royalties flowing and pay the rent.
Frankie took the graffiti-bedizened stairway down to the third floor. Apartment 3F was directly below his own 4F. He knocked and waited while he assumed he was being checked out through the peep hole. Then he knocked again.
Finally, a tentative “Who’s there?” from the other side.
“Hey, there. I live above you. I think we share some structural damage. Mind if I come in and take a look?”
The door opened and a familiar wrinkled black face peeked out. He recognized her but her name was a blank space in his mind. He’d helped her carry her groceries up the stairs more than a few times.
“I know you,” she said in her Jamaican accent. “You that writer mon.”
He bowed. “One and the same, ma’am. Look, I won’t be a minute but I’d just like to check out your ceiling.”
She hesitated, then swung the door open. “I guess I can trust you.”
“Seriously”—what the hell was her name?—“I’ll be just a sec.”
The rooms of her apartment were laid out exactly like his but hers were richly redolent of cooking spices. Jerk chicken, maybe? His mouth watered as he hurried through the front room to the bedroom where—
He stared in shock. The ceiling was perfect.
“Whassa mattah?” she said, coming up behind him.
He stepped closer for a better look. A few minor cracks in the plaster, sure, but no three-inch gap. No gap at all.
How could this be? Was he in the wrong apartment?
He took a mental picture of the bottles and hairbands and such on the dresser right under the spot where the gap should be, then mumbled a lame excuse and hurried upstairs.
Back in his apartment he made a beeline for his bedroom and dragged the nightstand a little farther from the wall—just enough for him to squeeze in behind it for a better look below. Good thing he was skinny. He knelt and craned his neck, but as he leaned on the edge he felt it soften—not crumble but soften and—
“Oh, Christ!”
—he tumbled through.
He managed to swing his legs under him and land partially on his feet in a crouch, then plopped onto his butt, damaging nothing beyond his pride. As he straightened he looked around and saw a king-size bed and a dresser against the wall, but its top was bare and made of a different wood from the old Jamaican woman’s. He’d landed in someone else’s apartment.
Whose then? Not some trigger-happy drug dealer with an AK-47, he hoped. Best to announce himself to avoid surprises. That gap in the corner of the ceiling showed where he’d come through. He could explain everything.
“Hello?” he called, moving toward the door. “Hello?”
No reply, so he peeked out into the short hall leading to the front room. Empty. And the front room looked empty too.
Yes!
One more try: “Hello?”
Again, no answer. He had the place to himself. Okay. Not a good idea to exit by the door—someone might see him and think he was up to no good. Best to go back the way he’d arrived.
In the bedroom he dragged the dresser—luckily it didn’t weigh much—under the opening, then placed a chair atop it. Now all he had to do was stretch and haul himself back into his own place. As soon as he was home, he’d get on the line to the property manager.
He pushed his head and chest above the floor line and was straining to lever the rest of himself up when he heard a sound in his living room. He froze and listened.
His apartment door had just opened, and now it closed. Softly.
He opened his mouth to call out but then shut it. He’d locked the door—a reflex when you lived in a place like this—which meant the intruder either had a key or had picked the lock. Frankie had never given a key to anyone.
Shit. Someone was boosting his place.
What would Jake Fixx do?
Well, fuck that. His recurring character—written under his own name—was an ex SEAL who could take down multiple attackers with ease. And what was he? A sedentary writer with atrophied muscles who hadn’t worked out since his teens.
He’d wait it out and hope he wasn’t discovered.
But the big question was why—why would anyone break into his place? He had no valuables beyond his laptop, which wasn’t particularly high end anyway. And even if that were stolen, all his work was
