Open Letter

June 7: The super brought my mail up. She didn't have to.

Found this notebook in Harold Finn's closet. Unit 4C. He died December 3rd, noticed December 5th. I'm keeping it.

The city says I have until morning. Landlord's already texting about showings.

Forty-seven units. I know every one. The leaky faucets, the broken locks, who pays late, who I haven't seen in a while. I should have noticed Harold sooner.

The fridge: milk gone solid. Three eggs. Pickles. I bag it all. Harold ate to keep going, not to enjoy. Or maybe he loved pickles and I'm making assumptions. It's all trash now.

One set of plates. One set of bowls. One chair at the table. Not two chairs and one's missing. One chair.

March 3: Blue sky after four days of gray.

I've lived through hundreds of blue skies after gray. Wrote down nothing.

Books: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard. Cracked spines. Pencil marks in the margins I can't read. His handwriting was terrible.

April 14: Read Heidegger. Understood less than before.

Empty violin case. Either he played or he wanted to.

Photographs in a shoebox. A woman. Wedding photo, courthouse steps, neither of them dressed up. Then her at a university, him in the robe. Then just her laughing at something. Then just him, thin, not laughing.

Last photo: Harold in front of this building. Just standing there, waiting.

I have photographs like these. Richard leaving gets earlier every year in my memory. Marisol's wedding I can barely picture now. The grandkids I don't see.

March 19: The coffee shop on Bleecker has closed.

April 2: Heard a child laughing in the hall. Missed that.

June 7: The super brought my mail up. She didn't have to.

I remember this. Sort of. He had the flu. His mail was piling up in the box downstairs. I was checking the heating vent in 2B. Sweating like crazy. Saw his box overflowing. Brought it up. Knocked. He answered in his bathrobe. I handed it over. He said thank you. I said it was nothing.

Forty-five seconds. Maybe less.

He wrote it down.

The notebook has forty-three entries over eight months. Only one mentions some other person. Me.

The mattress has a stain. I'll need to call someone.

One pair of dress shoes, resoled twice.

December 1: Cold. Stayed in. Remembered her laugh.

The wife from the photographs. Probably.

Marisol's number is in my phone. It's always been in my phone.

My apartment's two floors up. Same view.