The hallway smelled like somebody down on the first floor had burned pork chops again. Grease and scorched onion drifting up through the stairwell, catching in the back of Harold's throat. He'd come out for the mail—had it tucked under his arm, a phone bill and one of those glossy circulars from the pharmacy, coupons for things he didn't need—and there she was.

Standing in her doorway. Little pink robe barely tied at the waist. Hair still damp at the ends like she'd spritzed some perfume in it, that sweet cloying stuff she wore that always gave him a headache when she passed him in the hall. Her lipstick was fresh.

Harold stopped with his key halfway to the lock.

He looked at her. Really looked. Not the polite once-over he gave her when she offered to bring his trash down. The real look. The kind he hadn't given a woman in—Christ, a long time. Long enough it felt like waking up a limb that had gone dead under him.

"Evenin'," he said.

His voice came out rougher than he meant it to. He cleared his throat. Slid the key into the lock but didn't turn it.

She was pouting. Fidgeting with the tie of that robe, fingers working the knot loose and then tightening it again, loose and tight, and the neckline of the thing was gaping enough that he could see the curve of one tit almost down to the nipple. Not almost. He could see the edge of the areola if he wanted to. He wanted to.

Well, hell, he thought.

Fifteen years in this building. Fifteen years of coming home to an empty apartment, eating dinner over the sink, watching the news with the volume too loud because there wasn't anybody around to complain. His wife—Ellen—had been dead longer than some of the kids in this building had been alive. He'd made his peace with it. Or he'd thought he had.

Then this one moved in. Baked him brownies. Brownies. Like he was somebody's granddad who needed cheering up. He'd eaten them standing at the counter and thrown the little foil pan away, and that had been fine.

What hadn't been fine was three weeks later, lying in bed at half past one in the morning, listening to her through the wall. The headboard. The knocking of it. Her voice going high and stupid, oh god, oh god, oh god, like she'd never had an orgasm before. And Harold, seventy years old, staring at the ceiling with his hand under the sheet and a hard-on he hadn't had in longer than he cared to count.

He'd hated her for it. Truly hated her. Sweet little thing in the hallway with her good mornings and her let me get that for yous, and at night some parade of men with their trucks parked crooked in the lot, and her making noises like a bitch in heat while an old man next door tried to sleep.

He pulled his key back out of the lock. Turned toward her. Kept his weight easy on his back foot, hands loose at his sides, the mail still tucked under his arm like he had nowhere in particular to be.

His heart was doing something it hadn't done in a while. Not fast, exactly. Just—present. Making itself known behind his ribs. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Reminding him it was still in there.

He let his eyes drop. Not much. Just enough that she'd feel it. Down the line of that robe, over the swell of her chest and back up to her face. Slow. Deliberate. The kind of look a man his age wasn't supposed to give a girl hers, especially not in a hallway under a fluorescent light that buzzed and flickered every few seconds like it was trying to make up its mind about dying.

He tilted his head.

"You're gonna catch cold, honey," he said. Mild. Almost fatherly. "Standin' out here dressed like that."