This morning, this noon, whatever it was, I was not yet awake when my downstairs neighbor knocked on my door. I wanted to ignore it, having worked until four on my statement, but I’m the manager and have to answer. So I opened the door and there he was looking not much more alert than I; and there I was, greeting him with post-coital hair and glasses and wearing my grungy ink-stained bathrobe. He said he had been mugged and his keys stolen, and so he was locked out of his apartment. Could I open his door for him. I asked him to give me two minutes. I put on some clothes—the same clothes I wore yesterday, which are the same clothes I’ve been wearing for six months, it seems. I put in my contacts, brushed my teeth, and pushed my hair back into a ponytail. I got the spare key from the basement and opened his door. I asked him where it happened. He said at T.T. Minor school, the playground there. And yeah, I know it. Told him I walk through there all the time at night (we all do) and I’ve thought about it—about getting mugged, that it would be easy in that open space away from houses and streets and where the corners are dark for hiding behind. I told him I was glad he wasn’t harmed.

Later it occurred to me that someone out there has his address and keys to our building and his apartment. Now we’re changing the locks and I’m filing a police report.