The Closed Door

The city at night was a whole different vibe.

By day it was overrun by a cloud of hurried people and shapeless noise.

Now the sidewalks were empty, and the silence let her enjoy the little details: the cozy glow of the streetlights, the shapes the shadows drew, the cool of the tiles under her bare feet.

To Eva nearly everything was too much. Things weren’t something to use, they were something to carry. And she had been letting go: what do you want shoes for when it’s so much better without them?

What she had left fitted into a school rucksack with room to spare.

And it wasn’t that she had little. It was that everything she had she used every single day, without exception, and there are very few people who can say the same. She had learnt it as a child, in a place she no longer talked about with anybody.

She walked unhurried. Fay trotted along beside her, stopping every now and then to sniff a corner before catching up again. You’d swear that cat had the spirit of a dog.

She had the bit of paper bag in her hand. Callejón de las Palomas, number 6, flat 1A. Nine o’clock. And underneath, in smaller, faster handwriting, “don’t chicken out”.

As she walked, she rehearsed what she was going to say when she got there.

“Hi, sorry I’m late, I got caught up doing some things”

No. Too silly.

“Hi, a little late, but I decided to come after all”

That one didn’t work either. It sounded like nothing, as if coming hadn’t cost her a thing.

And it had cost her everything.

She soon reached the alley and spotted number 6 right away. An ordinary building, its paint a little chipped, the metal mailboxes waiting patiently in the doorway.

She looked up at the front of the building for a lit window. They were all dark, and she told herself that at half eleven that doesn’t mean anything.

She took a deep breath and pressed the very first buzzer, 1A.

Nothing.

She rang again. Waited. Nothing at all.

“Maybe he’s asleep already,” she said to Fay, more to herself than to the cat.

She tried one more time. Nothing.

“I wouldn’t keep trying if I were you,” came a voice from above.

Eva looked up. Across the street, leaning out of a lit window, was a little old man in a tank top.

“Sorry?”

“If you’re looking for the young man, he’s gone. I saw him leave a while ago.”

“He left?”

“Loaded with boxes, big rucksack on his back. In the middle of the night, go figure.” The old man shrugged. “I just saw him walk by, that’s all I know.”

And he ducked back inside, closing the window.

Eva stood in front of the door with the paper in her hand.

He was gone.

The same little voice as always arrived, which never takes long.

“See? That’s why you shouldn’t put yourself out there. Because the door always ends up closed.”

She sat down on the doorstep. Fay climbed into her lap.

The only thing left to do was go back. Go to bed, forget about it, and tomorrow return to her usual corner, her nameless songs. Her warm, safe little nothing, where nobody let her down because she expected nothing from anyone.

Then something went through her head that wasn’t the little voice, and that one did make her angry.

That he hadn’t turned up late.

That the one who turned up late was her. Three hours sitting on a step to come to an empty flat.

And that she had gone a year and a half with no shoes, no keys and no address, telling herself that was being free. And that a bloke she had met that same afternoon had gone north at night without knowing where. And that she, in all that time, hadn’t gone anywhere. She had been in a lot of places. It isn’t the same thing.

She looked at Fay. The cat held her gaze without blinking, which is what cats do when they aren’t going to help.

“So what do we do now, huh?” she asked him.

Fay didn’t answer. He never did. But he hopped off her lap, walked a few steps down the street and turned to look at her. As if to say “this way.”

Eva knew that look. She trusted it more than any other.

“That way?”

Fay kept walking, no hesitation.

That boy had said he was going north.

Eva got up off the step and put the paper in the inside pocket, which is where she keeps the two things she owns.

“Okay, Fay. Let’s go see what’s up north.”

The cat set off with his tail up.

They followed the alley to the end. Then several avenues, each one darker than the last.

And then, a bridge.

On the other side, things changed. The houses and the streetlights ended, the ground stopped being asphalt and turned to dirt.

Eva stopped for a moment in the middle of the bridge.

On the stone pillar of the parapet, level with her face, there was something sitting looking at the water. Small.

Eva walked past without turning her head. She was very good at that.

A drop landed on her cheek. Then another. And ten seconds later it was raining.

She crossed the bridge. The earth was soft and cool under her feet.

She didn’t know where she was going or whether she would find him, and both of those she didn’t mind, because for the first time since she left home she was going somewhere in particular.

On the other side, Fay was waiting for her, in no hurry.