Same Blank

The man behind the counter cut both keys without looking up. Two from the same blank was a common order. The machine sounded like a dentist’s drill for four seconds, then stopped, then four seconds again. He slid them across the counter on a square of cardboard.

“There you go.”

She paid. Put one key on her ring, where it clinked against the others and settled. Held the second one loose between her thumb and forefinger. The edges were sharp and identical. Fresh brass, no wear.

Outside the hardware store the street was doing what streets do at eleven on a Wednesday. A delivery driver double-parked with his hazards on. Two women stood outside the pharmacy sharing a cigarette, passing it back and forth without speaking. The pharmacy had a sign in the window that said OPEN in letters that had faded unevenly so the O was almost gone.

She walked. The second key was in her coat pocket now, next to her phone. She could feel both of them against her thigh — the key’s teeth, the phone’s flat glass. Four days ago the phone had held a conversation she could still hear if she let herself, two voices being careful with each other, choosing words like picking up broken glass, each piece placed down gently on a counter that was already clean.

It was a Sunday. She’d been sitting on the kitchen floor. The chair had laundry on it she hadn’t folded. Her back against the cabinet under the sink. The phone on her knee, on speaker, tilted against her thigh.

He spoke first. He was careful. She could hear the gaps where he put things back. There was a tap running on his end — the small collisions, a dish set down, a drawer pushed closed.

She’d looked at the ceiling. A crack in the plaster she hadn’t noticed before, a thin line running from the light fixture to the corner. She followed it with her eyes while he talked. The crack turned twice.

The pause came after he said “I think we both.” The tap on his end was still running. The pitch changed as the water rose. Higher, tighter. The tap stopped.

She said okay. He said okay.

The laundry on the chair was his shirt on top. Grey cotton, one sleeve hanging over the armrest. She’d washed it with hers. It smelled like her detergent now. She looked at it. The phone screen dimmed, then went black. Her reflection in it. Dark hair. The cabinet handle behind her head.

That was Sunday. Now it was Wednesday. Two keys in her coat. The delivery driver still there. The pharmacy O still almost gone. She turned the corner and went inside.

The apartment was on the third floor. She took the stairs. The elevator had a mirror.

The hallway smelled like someone else’s dinner — garlic, oil, the particular sweetness of onions that had been cooking too long.

Inside. Coat on the chair. Keys on the counter. Both sets.

The hook by the door was brass and slightly crooked. She’d bought it at the same hardware store on a Saturday in November. The same man behind the counter, or she thought it was — the apron was the same, he didn’t look up. She’d found the hooks between the drawer pulls and the picture wire, hanging on a pegboard in plastic packets. Brass, chrome, black iron. She picked brass. The door was white.

The drill was borrowed from the woman on the fourth floor who’d said “keep it as long as you need.” Three months and she hadn’t asked for it back. The building was quiet on Saturdays. She could hear the bit catch the plaster, then the wood behind it, then the hollow where the wood ended and there was nothing to grip. She moved the hole two centimetres left. The second hole held.

The screw went in at an angle. The head not quite flush.

He’d hung his jacket on it that evening. She watched him from the kitchen, her hands in the sink. The jacket swung once and settled.

Now the hook held nothing. She put her coat on the chair instead. She always put her coat on the chair.

The left side of the medicine cabinet was empty. The shelf she’d cleared still had a ring where a shaving cream can had sat long enough to leave a mark on the particleboard. She hadn’t wiped it.

She opened the drawer by the bed. His side. She’d taken everything out three weeks ago — the phone charger, the book with the dog-ear at page forty. A sharp crease, deliberate, pressed with a thumbnail along the fold. He’d read forty pages in two nights with one lamp on. She could hear the pages from the bathroom, the small sound of a finger catching paper. Then the book went in the drawer. He picked up his phone.

She’d found it after. Opened to page forty. A paragraph near the bottom was underlined in pencil — a faint line, barely visible. She read the sentence. She read it again. It was about a man standing in a train station holding a suitcase he hadn’t packed himself.

She closed the book. Put it in the bag with his shirts and the charger. Left the bag by the door for three days. Then put it in the hall closet with the winter coats.

The last thing she’d picked up from the drawer was the earplugs. She ground her teeth at night. She found one of them on the pillow on a Tuesday — foam, flesh-coloured, warm from his ear. He was in the shower. She picked it up and it slowly expanded in her palm, the foam remembering its original shape.

She put it back on his side of the pillow. On Thursdays she could hear him roll over and reach for the case on the nightstand, the small click of the lid. She would lie still and listen to him fitting them in, pressing each one with a fingertip, waiting for the foam to seal.

He slept on his left side. She could see the earplug in his right ear, a small flesh-coloured disc. His breathing changed when the seal took hold. He couldn’t hear her after that.

The drawer was empty now.

She took the second key from her coat pocket. Put it in the drawer. Closed it.

She made coffee. Stood at the window. The delivery driver was still double-parked three floors down, hazards blinking in a rhythm she watched until he pulled away and a silver Peugeot took the space before the hazards had finished their last blink.