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Rey had literally never had a neighbor this shitty. She’d moved into this apartment three months ago, and since then she’d had to bear, with gritted teeth and clenched fists, unimaginable transgressions: an hour of grunting and loudly dropped free weights every evening; humming and movement that could only be described as “stomping” on the landing; soft clouds of too-nice, knee-melting cologne on the stairs; package after package erroneously delivered to her door.
The inhabitants of both the other apartments on their shared landing always managed to get their unit numbers correct, so why Ben Solo couldn’t remained an unsolved mystery. Perhaps he’d never had a typing class. Perhaps his obnoxiously large fingers stirred up even worse typographical trouble than a wrong address did, so he spent his careful-typing energy elsewhere.
And then there were the notes: the elegantly penned bits of poetry dropped on the landing every few days. Rey didn’t know who they were meant for. Certainly if they were for Ben, the writer had never talked to him—or tried to talk to him, that is, given that every time Rey did him the courtesy of knocking on his door with a package he simply stared at her silently until she left.
The Saturday afternoon she’d finally gotten fed up with the constant clank of his free weights, Rey had received 1) a face-full of sweaty bare chest, 2) an intense glare, and 3) a gruff What? when Ben threw open his door. No, it was worth trying to talk to him. Surely anyone could see that. So the notes must have been for one of their other neighbors, blown toward their side of the landing on the light afternoon breeze.
That the notes were almost certainly meant for someone else did not prevent Rey from keeping them, however. She couldn’t just ask the other neighbors if they had a secret admirer—how would they know? Especially when she’d been lifting all the evidence. In any case, she couldn’t just leave them out to litter up the landing, she told herself as she fixed each one to her fridge.
She’d never had fridge magnets before, but after moving here, after finally getting her own place without a roommate, she’d spotted a box of those colorful alphabet magnets on a grocery run and couldn’t resist. Rey hadn’t yet made many friends in town, or at least not any she was ready to invite over. So she didn’t have to explain to anyone her choices in apartment décor: not the mismatched sheet set, not the thrift-store paintings, not the poetry snippets stuck to her fridge with bright magnets spelling out “CUNT” and “FANNY” and “BUTTS.”
She enjoyed the contrast between the bubbly letters of the curse words and the calligraphy spelling out lines like “Enslave me to your wanton charms” and “down her sides the mellow / golden shadow glows” and “He woke up every morning with apricot juice on his hands.”
One Sunday evening, as Rey was frantically searching for her earbuds—it was nearing six o’clock, when the daily weight-clanging began—someone knocked on her door. She peeked through the peephole and immediately shrank back, viscerally certain Ben’s glare could penetrate the glass from the other side.
What could he possibly want? He was risking running late for his workout, something that had happened only twice since Rey had moved in, which she had noted only because the clanging was louder on those days and accompanied by sounds more akin to growls than the usual grunts.
Realizing she could be causing such a delay as she cowered in her entryway, Rey hurriedly opened the door.
“Hello, Ben. What can I do for you?” She leaned against the doorframe and smiled her brightest smile, delighting in the discomfort he seemed to feel when confronted by anything even slightly happy.
Ben stared. Rey grinned.
“I’m going out of town,” he said.
Finally a reprieve, Rey thought. “Great,” she said.
“Do you know how to water plants?”
“I mean . . . yes?”
“How do you feel about rats?”
“Love them.”
“Have you ever had a pet?”
“I’ve had a pet rock.”
Ben glared at her apartment number, and in the silence Rey realized Ben had just said at least twenty more words to her than he had in the total time she’d lived here.
When he didn’t go on, Rey said, “Why do you ask?”
Ben sighed. “Some of my plants need to be watered daily, and I obviously can’t bring a rat on a business trip. I need someone to watch him but I don’t trust some internet person I’ve never met not to kill everything.”
“And you trust me not to do that?”
Ben glanced at her face and then glared even harder at the apartment number.
“I suppose. You do keep the landing tidy,” he said.
Rey wasn’t sure she wanted this responsibility, given that if she fucked it up she’d almost certainly have to break her lease to avoid Ben forever. But she did like rats.
“Fine,” she said. “When do you leave?”
“Tuesday morning. I’ll be back Friday evening.”
“Okay.”
Ben handed her a key and flinched when their fingers brushed. “I’ll leave detailed instructions on the counter. Please follow them carefully.”
Rey barely disguised her eyeroll with a fierce smile. “Of course. I’ll come by after I get home from work Tuesday afternoon.”
Ben stepped back, and Rey moved to shut her door when he said, “Um.”
She waited.
“Thanks,” he said.
Rey was relieved when the free-weight clanging that day was no rowdier than usual, even despite the half-hour-late start.
On Tuesday after work, Rey went to Ben’s apartment before her own. She felt the cool caress of comfortable wealth pumping out of the air-conditioning vents. After scanning the instruction packet on the counter—the handwriting looked familiar, like her boss’s, maybe—she gave the rat a few slices of carrot from one of the containers Ben had left prepared in the fridge.
“Hi, R2,” she said. “I’m Rey. These would probably be better with a little ranch dressing but I don’t know if you’re allowed to have that, sorry, buddy. Do you know if there was ever an R1?” She hoped Ben didn’t have an audio recorder in his apartment.
She placed one ice cube in the orchid pot, watered the plants on the balcony that Ben had specified for Tuesday watering, pressed her cheek against his closed bedroom door, called a goodbye to the rat, and left.
On Wednesday she dared to give R2 a few pets, offered him some apricot slices and munched on a few herself, watered the Wednesday plants. She stood in front of the closed bedroom door, touched the doorknob. She sat on the couch, adjusted the pillows. And then she left.
On Thursday she ate the rest of the apricots—Ben had left far too many for just the rat—and talked to R2 while she studied Ben’s bookshelf. A few popular science books, a few smaller books, and the rest mostly classics. She picked up one of the short books—poems by Amy Lowell, and more by Gerald Stern, and W. H. Auden. She opened Ben’s bedroom door, breathed in the faint scent of that too-nice cologne. It really was a shame someone could smell so good and also be such a grump. She flopped face-down on the bed, inhaling the pillows, then hurriedly straightened the comforter and darted out, closing the door behind her.
On Friday morning she re-read the instruction packet for the tenth time while she ate breakfast. He’d put it together so nicely, all very organized, with neatly lettered subheads for each section. She glanced up at the clock on the oven and the poems on the fridge caught her eye. She blinked; she looked at the instruction packet, back up at the fridge.
“Aha!” Rey was triumphant—Ben was the mystery calligrapher. Now she just had to figure out who all the poems were for. Apartment 326 was a married couple; an open crush on one or both of them could be a bold move on Ben’s part, she thought, but maybe he knew more about them than she did. Whoever lived in 328 was elusive. She’d have to make it a point to look out for them in the future.
Rey startled awake and fell out of bed Saturday morning when someone knocked aggressively on her door. She stumbled up from the floor to answer it. Ben stood there gaping—maybe she should’ve put a jacket or something over her thin sleep shirt. She crossed her arms, then promptly had to uncross them when Ben held out a stack of containers.
“Breakfast. For you,” he said.
“What?”
“As a thank you. For apartment-sitting.”
“Right. Sure,” Rey said, and stifled a yawn. “But this is enough food for, like, a week.” Her arms were getting tired; the thermos on the top of the stack swerved. Ben took the containers back, said, “Here, just let me—” and pushed past her to set them on her counter. And then he just stood in her kitchen, staring at the fridge.
“Yeah, I figured out your little secret, mystery calligrapher. So who’s the crush?”
Ben sputtered. Rey decided not to press the issue; she’d figure it out soon enough.
“Anyway, this is a lot of thank-you food just for watering your plants,” she said. “Especially given that my very existence seems to offend you most of the time.”
“It really doesn’t,” he said, but he looked offended.
“Oh, really?” Rey poked his arm and grinned when he flinched back. “Then why do you flinch when I touch you?” He glared at the fridge.
She leaned up in his face. “Then why do you look so disgusted right now?”
He lifted his chin to look above her head. “I’m not. I just—I just have a bad face.”
“Even if I agreed with that”—Rey paused to clear her throat—“that doesn’t explain anything.”
The sound that came out of Ben’s mouth was very similar to his growls on a late-workout day. And was he chewing gum?
Rey leaned in a little more, taunting. “Explain the glares. Explain the gruffness. Huh? You write somebody all this nice poetry and you can’t save any of that energy for saying ‘hello’ to your new neighbor?” Ben was blushing, and Rey worried she’d gone too far.
He scrubbed his face with his hands, and Rey was about to launch into an apology when he said, “The poems were for you.” Suddenly he met her eye and she took a quick step back. For her. So Ben Solo had a crush not on the married couple, and not on the elusive resident of 328, but on . . . her.
“I know I come off as rude,” he said. “My mother’s been harping about it since I was a kid. But you’re not disgusting.”
Rey laughed nervously. “Well, that’s a relief,” she said. Ben fidgeted. Rey looked at the food stacked up on the counter—she could see sliced apricots, biscuits, bacon. She looked back at Ben.
“Want to share some of this?”
He said, “I have more at home,” but Rey was already handing him a plate. The thermos was filled with coffee, and it was definitely not Folger’s.
Rey sat Ben down on a stool at the counter and stood next to him, staring at her full plate. She wasn’t sure the last time she’d shared breakfast with someone, or the last time she’d had breakfast that wasn’t a granola bar.
She said, “Thank you, for the food. I love apricots.”
“I noticed.”
Rey blushed. “And . . . sorry about the call-out.”
Ben shrugged. “I deserved it.”
After they ate, Rey said, “Was there ever an R1?”
Ben laughed, said, “No, it’s not like Rat Number 2 or something. He’s named after this robot toy my dad gave me when I was a kid.”
“Hmm. Disappointing.”
“I don’t think you get to have an opinion on my rat’s name. You just met him.”
“Excuse me—I think what happened was I took care of him while you abandoned him for a week. We had lots of bonding time.”
“Exactly how much time were you spending in my apartment?”
Rey stuttered, said, “Well, not, not that much time, really.” She glanced over at Ben; he was looking at her face, smiling, and she was speechless because she had never seen Ben smile, not like that, and it was directed at her, and it was all a bit overwhelming.
And suddenly she noticed she was standing rather closer to him than strictly necessary, close enough that he’d only have to lean a little to put an arm around her waist, close enough that she could smell his cologne. She felt very exposed in her thin sleep shirt, mentally applauded Ben for keeping his eyes on hers, never once letting them stray down to her chest.
She swiveled the stool with a hand on the backrest, let that hand slide forward onto Ben’s shoulder.
She stepped between his knees and said, “You smell very nice. Did you know that?”
He said, so quietly, “I try.” Rey was almost sure he stopped breathing when she leaned in to press her nose against his neck. If he started breathing again as she slid the tip of her nose over his cheek, she couldn’t hear it over the sound of her heart racing. And if he started again when she kissed him, she didn’t notice.
Eight months and a day later, Rey moved the last of her clothes over to Ben’s apartment. She’d been sleeping over there most nights since she and Ben had gotten together, but she hadn’t been ready to give up her own space yet. She’d donated most of her furniture, not that she’d had much to begin with, but they combined their dishes, so their mismatched set suited Rey’s mismatched sheets. Ben resisted when she brought over her stack of poems, her box of letter magnets, but Rey was adamant.
R2 had of course forgiven Ben for abandoning him for a week, but Rey was secretly certain the rat had grown to love her more. He sat on her shoulder while she and Ben ate breakfast every morning, and when Ben wasn’t looking she’d sneak him bits of fruit.
On the first day of their joint lease, Rey set up the fridge with new combinations: “RIP R1” held up “Don’t go far off, not even for a day”; “NOT DISGUSTING” held up “you’ll kill me if you stop”; “SNATCH” held up “I loved your sweet neck but I loved your shoulder blades more.”
But Ben's favorite was a poem Rey had transcribed for him in her best chicken scratch: "I'll lean upon her breast and I'll whisper in her ear / That I cannot get a wink o'sleep for thinking of my dear; / I hunger at my meat and I daily fade away / Like the hedge rose that is broken in the heat of the day." He pinned it up with magnets that spelled "APRICOTS."
