The neighbour across the courtyard

The building was old, one of those with a light well down the middle, and her flat faced his exactly. Twelve metres of air between two windows. At night, with the lights on, twelve metres is nothing at all.

He moved in during March, into a furnished rental with a dining table he never used and a mustard velvet sofa that had been nobody's choice. He brought three boxes. Two were still taped shut in July.

A light well works like a badly tuned speaker. In the first weeks he learned that the dog on the fourth barks at the lift, that the couple on the sixth argue on Sundays around two, and that somebody somewhere plays the same four songs on a guitar and never finishes any of them.

It took a week to notice the curtain.

It never quite closed. Always a hand's width open, always on the same side. At first he thought it was carelessness. After a month, he stopped thinking that.

She got home around ten. She turned on the kitchen light, never the living room. She took off her earrings first, always the earrings, and left them on the counter in a coffee saucer that must have lived there for years.

He knew this the way you know the things you won't admit to watching.

In April she started taking longer.

Nothing was declared. It was the kind of change that only exists for someone paying attention, and he was. Where before she crossed the kitchen in twenty seconds, now she leaned against the counter and stayed. Looked at her phone without touching it. Once she stood there for four minutes with her back to the window, and he counted all four with his heart doing something ridiculous for a man of thirty-eight watching a wall of glass.

In May she left the curtain a hand's width wider.

He made a mental list of what he knew about her, and the list was at once too long and empty. That she drank tea, not coffee, in spite of the saucer. That a hanging plant of hers had been dying slowly since April. That she slept with the television on, on Thursdays. That she lived alone, or at least that nobody else had ever been in that kitchen in four months.

He did not know her name. He had not asked the porter, and the reason he had not asked was exactly the problem.

He tested a theory.

On a Tuesday he turned off his own living room light at five past ten and stood in the dark like a teenager. Across the way she came in, lit the kitchen, took off her earrings. And then she stopped.

She turned her face towards his window. She looked into the dark for a good ten seconds.

Then she turned the kitchen light off too.

He spent the rest of that night unable to read a line of the book in his hand. At two in the morning he went to the window again. Her flat was still dark, and even so he had the absurd impression that the two of them were doing the same thing at the same time, each on their own side of the twelve metres.

It took until July.

It was a Friday of heavy rain, the kind where the light well really does become a speaker and the water doesn't stop hitting the glass. He was at the window with a glass in his hand, watching the rain more than anything else, when she appeared.

She didn't turn on the kitchen. She went straight to the window.

She stood there, twelve metres away on the diagonal, the hallway light behind her cutting out her silhouette, and she looked. No pretence, no turning towards a phone that wasn't there. She looked the way he had been looking for four months and had never had the nerve to admit.

He raised his hand.

It was a small gesture, almost embarrassed. Half a hand, chest height, the wave of someone unsure he's doing the right thing.

She raised hers. All of it. Not embarrassed in the slightest.

And then, unhurried, she drew the curtain and closed it.

He stood looking at the still fabric. His stomach dropped. Four months, and he had ruined it with half a raised hand.

Thirty seconds later, the buzzer rang.

"It's me," said the voice, and he didn't need to ask who me was.

She came up barefoot. He noticed when he opened the door: bare feet on the cold landing, hair wet at the ends from crossing the open well between the two blocks.

"Four months," she said.

"You counted too?"

"I started before you did."

She came in without waiting to be invited. She walked to the window, that window, and looked at her own flat across the way, curtain closed now, seen from his angle for the first time.

"So this is what you see," she said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"Every night at ten."

"Not every night."

She turned. She was smiling, and there was nothing shy in it.

"Every night," she repeated. "I know, because I left that curtain open on purpose, and I'd have known if you weren't watching."

He had no answer for that. She took two steps and settled the matter for him.

The rain kept on all night.

Her name was Vera. He found that out afterwards, which in the order of that night made perfect sense.

At some point they ended up near the window again, and she laughed at the absurdity of being on this side of the glass. He switched off the last light. In the dark the twelve metres stopped existing altogether.

The mustard sofa, which had been nobody's choice, did the job.

In the morning she put on his shirt to cross back. She stopped at the door.

"That hanging plant is dying," he said.

"I know. Since April."

"You're overwatering it."

She looked at him for a second with an expression that was hard to read.

"Tonight I'll leave it open," she said.

"The curtain?"

"The door."