Every morning at 7:48, the woman in 4B gets on the elevator smelling like coffee and cinnamon.
Noor knows this because Noor is always already in the elevator at 7:47, holding her bag too tightly and pretending to check her phone. She lives on six. The woman lives on four. They ride down together for eleven seconds and have never spoken once.
The woman has short hair and a green jacket and she always, always carries a thermos with a dent in the side. Noor has memorized the dent. She’s thought about what caused it. A fall off a counter. A clumsy morning. A camping trip.
Today the elevator stops on four and the doors open and the woman steps in and Noor smells coffee and cinnamon and thinks, not for the first time, that she should say something.
She doesn’t.
The doors close. Eleven seconds. Lobby.
Tomorrow.