Page 1 of 56 Days
Today
It’s like one of those viral videos taken inside some swanky apartment complex, where all the slim and fit thirtysomething residents are doing jumping jacks behind the glass railings of their balconies while the world burns. But these ones stand still, only moving to look down or at each other from across the courtyard, or to lift a hand to their mouth or chest. Their faces are pale, their hair askew, their feet bare. Dawn has barely broken; they’ve just been roused from their sleep. No one wants to film this.
The residents look like they could’ve all been in school together except for one. Number Four is older than her neighbors by a couple of decades. She owns while the others rent. The patio of herground-floorapartment has abistro-styletable and chairs surrounded by carefully arranged potted plants; most everyone else’s is used to store bikes or not at all. Last Saturday night, she threatened to report Number Seventeen’s house party to the Gardaí for breaching restrictions unless it endedright now, and when it didn’t she stayed true to her word. She is a glamorous woman, usually well dressed and still well preserved, but this morning she is unkempt and barefaced, dressed in a pair ofbaby-pinkcotton pajama bottoms and a padded winter jacket that swings open as she strides across the courtyard.
She is also the only one who knows the code that silences the fire alarm. It went off five minutes ago—that’s what has woken them—and the residents assume they have her to thank for taking care of it.
There has never been a fire here but, in the last few weeks, three fire alarms—four if you count this one. The residents have complained repeatedly to the management company that the system is justtoosensitive, that it must be reacting to burnt toast and people who smoke cigarettes without cracking a window, but in turn, the management blamesthemfor triggering it. The noise no longer signals danger but interruption, and when it went off a few minutes ago they all did what they usually do: went outside, onto their balconies and terraces, to see what they could see, to check for flames or smoke, not expecting any and finding none.
But this time therewassomething unexpected, something interesting: two uniformed Gardaí standing in the middle of the courtyard, looking around.
So they stayed out there, watching and wondering.
The woman from number four stands with the Gardaí while remaining the regulation six feet away. She’s pointing at one of theground-floorapartments—the one right in the corner, at one end of the complex’s U shape. They have little patios instead of balconies, marked off with open railings instead of solid glass perimeters. No one is on that patio. Its sliding door is closed. But from some vantage points, the glowing orb of theliving-room’s ceiling light is visible through the thin gray curtains.
What’s going on?
Whose apartment is that?
Nobody knows. The Crossings is a relatively new complex and interactions are mostly limited to pleasantries exchanged at the letterboxes, the trash cans, the parking structure. Sheepish smiles during that window on Friday and Saturday evenings when it seems like everyone is going down to the main entrance to meet theirfood-deliveryguy at the same time. The residents are used to living above and below and beside other people’s entire lives while pretending to be utterly unaware of them; hearing each other’s TVs and smelling each other’s cooking but never learning each other’s names.
Even in these last few weeks, when they’ve all been at home all day every day, they’ve studiously avoided acknowledging each other when they take to the outside spaces—the balconies, the terraces, the shared courtyard—in an effort to maintain some pretense of privacy, to preserve it. Thecrisis-inducedcamaraderie they’ve been watching in unsteady, narrowly framed short videos online—someone calling bingo numbers through a megaphone at a block of apartments; a film projected onto the side of a house so acul-de-sac of homes can have a collectivemovie nightfrom their driveways; nightly rituals of hopeful, enthusiastichand-clapping—never really took hold here. They have kept their distance in more ways than one. No one wants to have to deal with a familiarity hangover when normal life returns, which they are all still under the impression will happen soon. A government announcement is due later today.
One of the guards twists his head around and looks up at them, these nosy neighbors. He pulls his face mask down with ablue-glovedhand, revealing pudgy cheeks at odds with a weedy body. They say that the Gardaí looking young is a sure sign you’re getting older, but this one actuallyisyoung, midtwenties at the most, with a sheen of sweat glistening beneath his hairline.
“False alarm,” he calls out, waving. “You can go on back inside.”
As if any of them are standing there waiting to see a fire.
When nobody moves, he shouts, “Go on,” louder and firmer.
One by one, the residents slowly retreat into their apartments because none of them want to be pegged as rubberneckers, even though that’s exactly what they are. This is the only interesting thing that has happened here in weeks—if you discount the fire alarms, it’s theonlything that’s happened.
Are they really expected not to look?
Most of them leave their sliding doors open and elect to drink their morning coffees just on the other side, so they can see without being seen. The couples mutter to each other that, really, they have arightto know what’s going on. They live here, after all. The solo occupants wonder if there’s been a burglary or maybe even something worse, like an attack, and if something happened to them now, with things the way they are, how long would it be before anyone noticed, before anyone found them?
This apartment complex is not far from Dublin’s city center. Before all this started it was buttressed by anear-constantsoundtrack of engine noise, squealing breaks, and car horns coming from the busy road that runs alongside. But in these last few weeks the city has slowed down, emptied out, and shut down, in that order, and, occasional false fire alarms aside, the loudest noise lately has been the birdsong.
Now, the sound of approaching sirens feels like a violence.
56 Days Ago
“Go ahead,” are the first words he ever says to her.
They are both on the cusp of joining the line for theself-servicecheckouts in Tesco. It’s Friday lunchtime and her fifth time this week coming in for yet another unimaginative meal deal: a colorless sandwich, a plastic bag of apple slices, and a bottle of water, which she’s just noticed is the type with thesickly-sweetfruit flavor added. This realization has stopped her in her tracks, paused by a stack of Easter eggs (Easter?Already?), and wondering if she can be bothered to go back and change it when she almost certainly won’t drink it anyway.
That’s when she looks up and sees him, politely waiting for her to make her move, leaving a space for her to join the line ahead of him.
He’s taller than her by some margin. Looks about the same age. Neither muscular nor soft, but solid. His dark hair is thick and messy, but she has no doubt it took forever to pomade into submission, to perfect. He wears a blue suit with a navy tie and alight-blueshirt underneath, but the sleeves of the jacket are creased with strain, the shoulders bunched, and the back of the tie hangs longer than the front. The top button of his shirt is open, the collar slightly askew, the tie pulledoff-center. He looks a little red in the face, his cheeks pink above patchy stubble.
And he’s so attractive that she knows instantly the world he lives in is not the same one in which she does, that he can’t possibly experience it the same way. A face like that affords a different kind of existence, one in which you arrive into every situation with some degree of preapproval. But you don’t know it, don’t realize that you’re being ushered into the priority lane of life every single day.
She wonders what that does to a person.
There’s an intensity to him, too, something simmering just beneath the surface. She imagines for him a whole life. He’s a man who works hard and plays harder. Who has a circle of friends he calls exclusively by inexplicable nicknames while they sit around a table in the pub necking pints and watching The Game. Who runs purely to run off bad calories. Who has someone somewhere that knows a completely different version of him, someone he is unexpectedly and devotedly tender to, who he only ever looks at with kind eyes.
“It’s okay,” she says, waving the bottle of water, starting to move away. “I’ve just realized I’ve got the wrong one.” She turns and heads back toward the fridges, feeling his eyes on her as she walks away.
