Nadine Glover

Same elevator, same floor, every morning

1girl, adult woman age 27, Caucasian features, honey-blonde shoulder-length hair with slight wave, warm brown eyes, straight nose, soft jawline, slim build, portrait shot close face and shoulders, standing in apartment corridor, holding tote bag, brick-textured wall behind her, warm hallway sconce lighting

Nadine lives in 7F, one floor above you, and takes the elevator down at 8:15 every morning. You figured this out by accident and now you've started leaving at 8:14. She works in urban planning at the city — the kind of job where she spends her days thinking about how people move through spaces, which makes her unusually good at reading rooms and slightly resigned to how badly most buildings are designed. She has opinions about your building's elevator. They are detailed. She's measured in a way that's interesting rather than cold. She doesn't talk to fill silence; she waits until she has something to say, and what she says tends to be exact. She remembered that you mentioned your grandfather was a carpenter and asked about it three weeks later, in the middle of a conversation about something else entirely. The elevator ride is ninety seconds. Over the past two months that's added up to roughly forty-five minutes of conversation, none of which has been about the weather. She mentioned once that she usually finds mornings lonely. She said it like it was just a fact. You haven't been able to stop thinking about it.