Page 5 of Two Kinds of Stranger

‘I know. I was just too embarrassed to ask for help,’ said Logan.

‘You don’t get to be embarrassed – you’re injured. I’m fully functional, but it was me who managed to toss your case down the steps hard enough to break it.’

‘It was the cheap handle,’ said Logan. ‘You’ve been nothing but kind. No one else stopped to help me.’

‘Most people in this city are too busy to help a stranger,’ said Elly. ‘It’s kinda sad. We should help out more.’

They reached the other side of the street and kept going south until they hit 40th. A man in a large, filthy coat sat on a cardboard bed on the corner. No way of telling how old he was. Homeless people age faster. The streets of New York are like time machines. One night on a sidewalk feels like a week. A week feels like a year, and it shows on the faces of the homeless, and in their eyes.

Elly slowed, shifted the case under a different arm so she could reach into her pants pocket. She brought out five dollars and handed it to the man. He looked sleepy. He took the money, quizzically at first, then stared up at Elly. He mouthed athank-you.

Elly and Logan walked on.

‘You’re a good person, Elly,’ said Logan.

‘I try to do one thing every day to help somebody. I haven’t done that in a while. I’m not reallythatgood of a person,’ said Elly, thinking about James and Harriet. They had both hurt her deeply. A wound that she would carry on her heart for a long time. Yet they didn’t deserve to have their lives ruined for one mistake.

‘You don’t take compliments too easily,’ he said, smiling.

‘Like I said, I’m not so good. I just try to make up for my mistakes. Makes me feel better.’

‘So I’m one of your charity cases? Like that guy on the corner?’ he said again, smiling.

‘Maybe,’ said Elly, ‘but he’s in better shape than you. How did you say you broke your foot?’

‘Ankle, playing soccer. Guy stepped on my foot when I was going for the ball.’

‘Ouch.’

‘You’re telling me. I’ve got plates and screws and all kinds in there. . .Oh, wait, we’re here,’ he said, stopping outside an apartment complex.

It was an old building and from the bags of cement, plaster, buckets and tools piled up in the lobby, it looked as if it was about to get some much-needed maintenance and repairs. Logan hit the button for the elevator and waited.

It was cold outside, but surprisingly warm in the small lobby.

Elly noticed the elevator button hadn’t illuminated when Logan hit it. She wondered if he had not pressed it correctly; he’d still had his arm slung through a crutch at the time. She pressed it, firmly. The button didn’t illuminate. Logan leaned toward the elevator doors, rapidly pressed the call button, and listened for a few seconds. Elly couldn’t hear any of the usual noises that elevators make. No mechanical whirr from the jib wheel lowering the counterbalance, no distant rattle of elevator doors closing on an upper floor. Logan leaned back and looked at the LCD display fixed on the top of the elevator doors.

‘I cannot believe this,’ he said. ‘Yesterday, the garbage chute got blocked, today the elevator. I’m sorry, my building is a mess. My ankle is a mess, and my life is a mess.’

‘It’s okay. What floor are you on?’

‘Third?’ said Logan, the pitch of that one-word reply rising at the end, changing it into a question instead of a statement.

‘Well, I’ve come this far,’ said Elly. ‘No point in leaving you with the case here. Stairs are not your friend. Come on, I’ll race you,’ she said.

‘No fair,’ said Logan, and they both laughed as he pointed Elly in the direction of the stairwell. This was, in so many ways, a pain in the ass for Elly. She hated stairs, but she thought Logan was funny and a little cute in his own way. More than anything else, she was glad of the distraction. This poor guy hadbusted his ankle, and then Elly had busted his case. For the first time in weeks, she wasn’t thinking about the pain of having been betrayed by the two people in her life that she had loved and trusted the most–she wasn’t thinking about the millions of people who had watched her walk in on her husband while he was in bed with her best friend, she wasn’t thinking about the tsunami of abuse that followed James and Harriet and how, somehow, Elly bore responsibility for that too.

Logan’s broken ankle, broken case and shit-out-of-luck life was making her feel better in every way.

It may have been the third floor, which was better than the eighth floor, but it still meant six flights of stairs, which were just as hot as the lobby. The old pipes snaked along the exposed-brick walls and followed the stairs upwards like thick iron and copper snakes. And, just like snakes, they hissed too. Whatever serious problems this building may have had, heating was not one of them. By the time they reached the third floor and the door to Logan’s apartment, both of them were out of breath and covered in sweat.

‘Thank God,’ said Logan as he put his key in the door and pushed inside.

The apartment was like a lot of spaces in the city for young professionals–small but no doubt ridiculously expensive. A tiny kitchenette on the right. A living space with a tasteful leather couch pointed at a TV, some bookcases, and two doors beyond – one bathroom and one bedroom, she guessed.

Elly brought the case through to the living space, asked, ‘Where do you want this?’

‘Ahm, just dump it on the floor. I can slide it into the bedroom with my feet,’ said Logan, breathing hard from the effort of hopping up the stairs.