A Knock at the Door

Whosoever is the kind of person that strolls up to your door at night and tries to make small talk like a good neighbor in the year two thousand nineteen is a real piece of work, and they haven't read any true crime, that's obvious, whispered my boyfriend Kevin when he refused to open up at 9pm on a Friday.

We were sitting on his white carpeted floor, our backs to the couch. His legs were stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his toes wrinkled and pale as if he'd just taken a cold bath. He placed his arm around my shoulders. It felt heavy and awkward, but I was glad to have it there. Before Kevin, I hated men. I still hate men, but Kevin's an exception.

Kevin likes elves more than sports, speaks emphatically, never angrily. He talks a lot about crime and freak accidents but listened quietly when I told him about the ghost I saw when I was seven. It hadn't done anything, I told him, just stared at me from the corner of Mom's bedroom, a silver light, an androgynous childlike face.

Kevin's townhome was bare in the way that only a bachelor's could be. Here and there, on end tables and on the floor, were Nat Geos and pamphlets with coupons and slim clothing catalogues he'd never signed up for. Animal heads had been mounted between windows, a snarling boar slain by his dad, and a buck that I couldn't bring myself to look at long enough to count its points. The place seemed big and empty, every sound thunderous: the ice machine, the air conditioning, a drip in the gutter outside.

It was late May. The windows were open, blinds were drawn. The lights were on. We heard the knock again. I looked at Kevin with a panicked face and then laughed silently, embarrassed. It was only a knock after all. I mouthed, Go see!

He wouldn't. We never heard the visitor's footsteps recede, only a soft rustle in the grass a few minutes later. Time passed, the two of us staring at each other, chests rising and falling. It was impossible to say how long we waited for some other noise or movement from the other side of the door. Nothing came.

Kevin and I had been together awhile, several months, depending on which of us you asked. I would have said two months. I count from the day he said he loved me, which came out like a burp, sudden and a little aggressive, and possibly because he couldn't keep it down. I'd said it back, wondered whether I was lying. I knew that I liked his company.

Kevin counted from the day he asked me to move in with him, three months ago. I had said no. In his mind, Shall we live together? was about the same as, Will you be my girlfriend? Kevin moved faster than I did. I was thirty-five, and he was my first boyfriend, and whether or not it worked out, he would probably be my last. I wouldn't do all this again, the texting and playing. I'd lived alone since college. One bedroom, one bathroom was all I needed.

What if that was God at the door? I asked eventually. I crossed a leg over his. What if we didn't open up for God?

Then good, Kevin said. I don't want to die yet.

You're thinking of the Grim Reaper.

Well, and I don't want to see him, either.

Who do you think it was then?

I realized we might never know.

Maybe it was a neighbor, I said next. Maybe you'll hear from someone tomorrow who will say, I came by but no one answered.

Kevin said he knew the neighbors, and the neighbors would text. He squeezed my arm. It wasn't a neighbor.

That night I fell asleep in his bed, in his Capitals sweatshirt with the deodorant stains, my head crooked against his awful...