Eric worried at the brim of the hat. He rubbed the felt hard between his fingers – anxiously – all the way around the edges. The brim had long since warped and in some places become wafer-thin. It didn’t matter. Eric had never worn the hat.
He stood in the bus shelter on the other side of the street from Emma’s building, watching carefully as people who weren’t Emma came and went. Buses kept stopping in front of him and bus drivers kept looking out expectantly, then crossly, realising Eric was not waiting for buses. Eric stared past the drivers and through the buses as they left his field of vision.
It was raining and the rain poured off the shelter’s roof and collected at his feet, soaking through his shoes and socks while he failed to notice. Eric’s feet had been wet for hours.
After several more hours Emma had still not emerged and Eric crossed the road. A car tore through a puddle inches in front of him, spraying water high in the air and down the back of his collar. He watched water mist in front of streetlights and noticed rainbows failing to materialise. Some puddle landed in the upturned crown of the hat he never wore.
At the entrance he waited again. He’d spent the entire evening watching near-constant traffic stream in and out of the block of flats and all of a sudden it faded to nothing. He stood to the side of the entrance pressing himself against a concrete wall and feigned lighting a rain-soaked cigarette. He sucked on it and swallowed the nicotine-flavoured water.
Eric had drunk four cigarettes when the heavy door opened and a man emerged, disappearing under a cloud of rapidly opened umbrella. Eric caught the door and grunted with effort, feeling weak. He squelched into the foyer, seeping into a carpet, which – though perfectly clean – was a colour that made it look dirty. There was no doorman, no receptionist. Eric knew this, from before.
A lift lived in a recess towards the back of the foyer – hiding, for no particular reason. Eric pressed △ and electricity jumped across his wet hand. He made a sound that was brief and shrill and coincided with the lift doors opening. There was an old woman inside, head wrapped up in a plastic bonnet.
The old woman and Eric looked at each other: her with concern for her safety and his mental state, him with a nervous smile. His shirt was stuck to his body and partly flesh-coloured. A suit hung from his bones like the sodden, ill-fitting skin of a victim. A white rose in the lapel had become horribly waterlogged and drooped mournfully towards the floor.
“Good evening,” said Eric cheerfully. He raised the hat to his head to doff, pouring a quantity of water over himself.
The old woman sprung to life and bustled past him, muttering something that may or may not have been a reluctant greeting as Eric stepped into the lift.
He pressed 5, but was now unsure. On reflection, he had only really been sure for perhaps ten minutes – the ten minutes it took to cross her road and wait for someone to open the door. But all the hours prior to that had been hours of uncertainty, looking for a sign – through her window, through his memories – and now he was forced to consider the possibility that he was acting purely out of desperation and impatience. What if he was not welcome? But up he went. It wasn’t too late to go down again, he thought, deep down knowing that he wouldn’t.
And so when the doors opened on 5, Eric found himself dripping down another hallway, having accidentally made up his mind.
At Emma’s door – a red door he had seen many times though not recently, and which had on various occasions filled him with excitement and lust and pride and warmth and jealousy and rage and bitterness and now fear – Eric placed his hand on the wood and paid attention, feeling nothing. He laid his cheek and ear beside his hand and waited for heat or sound or vibration. Some minutes later, he peeled his skin from the door and balled his hand into a fist and knocked on the wet imprint of his face. He waited forever.
And then Emma opened the door, dressing gown not quite done up. A blood waterfall of dyed-red hair framed her face, cascading down her neck and pooling in her collarbones. Eric tried very hard not to stare into the loose fabric where her small breasts were hiding – nipples barely concealed by shadow – making an extremely conscious effort to affect the air of a man who was both nonchalant and respectful; who not only accepted the past was past but recognised that her fearsome intelligence precluded any attempt to parlay apparently platonic kindness into an overture.
She looked at him with startling green eyes slightly widened and an expression that suggested mild surprise but was otherwise painfully inscrutable.
“Oh. Hello.”
“Hi…” said Eric, tasting rainwater on his lips and feeling hair stuck flatly to his forehead as his brow did things he didn’t want it to. He held up something wet and shapeless.
“I brought your hat.”