NOON STOOD NEAR THE BUILDING ENTRANCE WITH A BOOT jacked up against the wall and smoking a cigarette waiting for a tenant to come in or go out. He had smoked two before someone exited. He flicked the cigarette into the street and at the last moment deftly stuck the toe of his boot between the door and the jamb.
At the bottom of the stairwell he paused and looked up. It was only five stories. Dani’s apartment was on the fourth. He put his hand on the banister and started up the stairs. The building was old and the smell reflected it. The stairs were some type of hardwood with green carpeting down the middle and the carpeting was wearing thin. The building was all but silent. Occasionally the muffled sound of a voice through one of the heavy wood doors. A baby crying. The yip of a small dog. But all these sounds were momentary and then the silence would return.
He stood in front of Dani’s apartment. Number 404. Noon didn’t move. Just stood there with his hands at his side. Looking intently at the door. It had been painted white at one time but the paint was chipping and the blond wood beneath was starting to show through. He stood there, savoring the moment. The missing starlet to his strange endeavors. He put his ear to the door. The wood was cold on his skin. He could hear the television going. He waited and listened for any sound of her but there was only the television. He took his ear away and tried the doorknob but it didn’t turn. He took the knife and snapped it open and held it behind his back and was about to knock when the door two apartments down opened and a mother and her young son came out.
Noon snapped the knife shut and stowed it in his pocket. He made eye contact with the mother and the mother moved her son to the far side of the mezzanine, and they regarded one another intensely and she shooed her boy along saying, Come on, Joey.
When he heard the entrance doors open and close and when the building had gone silent again Noon snapped the knife open and knocked on the door. He waited. He knocked again. No one came. So he wedged the blade in the jamb and twisted it and the latch released and the door quietly inched inward. He stepped through and closed the door behind him and looked into the living room. Without taking his eyes away from the room he took off his boots by pulling the heel against the toe of the other. Stepped into the hall and in his socks he didn’t make a sound. He went into the living room. All the cheap venetian blinds were closed. The television playing to an empty room. He went to the bedroom. The door was open. The bed was unmade. Some clothes on the floor. A lamp on the bedside table was on. Under the light was a photo booth strip of pictures. He picked it up and regarded their faces. The two of them smiling. The two of them making comical expressions. He folded it and put it in his shirt pocket. Then he went to the bathroom. He flicked on the light. It smelled like someone had recently taken a shower; the air was damp. Fog still in the corners of the mirror. There was underwear on the floor and he knelt and slipped the point of the knife through one of the holes and lifted the garment and pulled it off the blade like you might fruit from a skewer and he brought it to his nose and breathed in and then he balled it up and put it in his pocket.
He went back out to the living room and sat on the couch and watched the television for a moment. It was showing football highlights. Then he stood and went to the television and turned it off and the screen went a flat gray. He went back to the couch and sat in the silence and listened for anything to make a sound. He laid the knife across his lap. He tilted it back and forth and the blade caught the lamplight and he looked up at the dead television screen and the light from the blade was winking in the glass.
He waited like that for almost an hour but no one showed up. He looked at the time on the microwave over the stove. It read 9:10 in blue numbers.
He went back into the bedroom and lay down on the bed with the knife beside him. Then he turned off the lamp and lay there, waiting in the darkness.