On Friday Noor took the stairs.
She told herself it was for the exercise. Six floors is nothing. She told herself she didn’t want to be the kind of person who waited for an elevator at 7:47 hoping to smell coffee and cinnamon. She told herself a lot of things between the sixth floor and the lobby and none of them were particularly convincing.
On Monday she took the stairs again.
On Tuesday she stood in the hallway at 7:46 and looked at the elevator and looked at the stairwell door and pressed the button.
The elevator came. Empty. She rode it alone to four, where it stopped, and the doors opened, and the woman in the green jacket stepped in with her dented thermos.
“There you are,” the woman said. Like she’d noticed. Like two missing mornings had mattered.
“Here I am,” Noor said.
“I’m June.”
“Noor.”
“I know. It’s on the mailbox.” June leaned against the elevator wall like she lived there. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something.”
The floor counter ticked. Three. Two.
“There’s a coffee shop on Elm that does cinnamon lattes. It’s where I fill this.” She held up the thermos. “Do you want to go sometime? Not in an elevator?”
The doors opened. Lobby.
“Yes,” Noor said. “Not in an elevator.”
June smiled. The eye thing again.
They walked out together. Noor held the door. The morning was cold and bright and smelled, faintly, like cinnamon.