He texted his landlord the lie that he had Covid, even though he knew Ben was away on a road trip. But Ben could come back at any minute. Maybe he’d grown a little paranoid. But the apartment had gotten that bad. In the kitchen, he had put out the apple cider vinegar and dish soap for the flies the night before. Weeks too late. There were dishes in the claw foot bathtub and compost in the kitchen sink. The drain to the kitchen sink didn’t work. But he couldn’t let Ben know that, of course, because Ben would have to come into the apartment to fix it and to let him in would be to get evicted.      

In the main room, a sense of paper overwhelmed the eye. Dust motes played in the light let in by the tears in the cheap white blinds. Wooden bookshelves with chipped paint held a life’s education in volumes on subjects from D’Aulaires’ Greek myths to the Doonesbury comics. But the paper was also all over the floor and the futon in the center. Take out menus and receipts, tossed off scribblings and old newspapers, paper bags, stained and clean: they all lay where they’d been dropped.

At the head of the futon was a laptop on a fold-out tray table, blocking the way to the rest of the apartment, which had been closed off with the shutting and locking of a door. Nothing but more chaos lay beyond the door, and he’d fooled himself into thinking those three rooms had disappeared. The alarm on his phone pinged again. He’d put it off a dozen times and it was getting late—it was always late for him. He pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt he hoped was clean.

He wouldn’t look himself in the eye in the toothpaste-flecked mirror as he brushed his teeth. He did the check—wallet, keys—and hurried down the long, narrow staircase to the street. Rust was creeping up under the body of his car, but it looked all right for a date. Or hanging out. It was still too early to give it a name, or he was getting too old to know what to call it. Whatever it was, it was the fourth time he and this woman had spent time together.  

They went to dinner at a place where they sat in the street, the space blocked off by concrete barriers. They were a good-looking couple on a small city street. He made her laugh; she made him feel good. At the end, there was the usual light debate over the check and decision to split it. After, they stood on the sidewalk, holding hands.

“Do you want to go back to your place?” she asked. His apartment was nearby. They had been to her place once, when the kids were at her parents’. The expectation was unspoken; there was no good reason for him to say no.

He kissed her. “It’s just that I have to be up early for work.”

“We could go back to my place,” she joked. He could tell she was hurt by his refusal. She had two kids, two and four, and had to get a babysitter to go out that night.

“Yeah, that’d be perfect.” He rolled his eyes and they laughed.

“Next time,” he said. He kissed her again.

“I’ll hold you to that,” she teased, shaking her finger at him.

He liked her. He could like her more, given time, could see their whole future play out like a romance in a commercial. There was nothing wrong with that, but he knew he’d never see her again. He’d make excuses for why, wouldn’t text or call, and soon she’d stop trying. As a good-looking guy in his thirties, in a small town, he had his fair share of interest. Eventually, they all wanted to see his place. Sometimes they got mad when he said no. Sometimes they thought it was something they had done. Very few figured out it was his apartment that was the problem. They swore they wouldn’t judge him. They swore they could take it.

He imagined taking the chance, opening the door to the kitchen floor covered in onion skins and dirt. Leading the bravest one in, waving away the flies that hadn’t died in the dish of apple cider vinegar and dish soap he used because he couldn’t choose chemicals that polluted the planet. Showing her the produce he got from his job at the farm, stacked nearly to the ceiling. Presenting her his books, each of them a memory thick with dust. Sweeping away the crap that seemed to continually erupt, no matter how he tried. Hoping she would stay. Hoping she could tell him why.

– Tarah Dunn