Fourteen

In March, the Live to Write in Alameda community participated in Storied Stories 2025, an exercise in which we each chose a different floor of an imaginary apartment building and then wrote a scene in our character's apartment on that floor. Our assignment was to write a scene in which our character enters the apartment in one mood, and leaves the apartment in another. We then tied the scenes together in real time during a reading at Books Inc. Alameda. This is the scene I wrote, set in an apartment on the fourteenth floor.

Garrett pauses at the threshold before reluctantly sliding his key into the lock. He props the glossy black door open with his foot and scoops up his messenger bag and the shiny white plastic sack stuffed with takeout boxes. As he feels his way into the dark and dumps his armful onto the kitchen counter, the front door thunders shut in his wake.

Ordinarily his west-facing unit grows warm in the afternoons, so he keeps his ceiling-to-floor blinds pulled. But today has never progressed beyond gunky, steel-gray skies and relentlessly pounding rain, and the closed blinds add to the apartment’s tomblike oblivion. He slaps at the wall until he locates the light switch. The recessed ambient lighting fades on, subtle and suggestive, but tonight the effect feels too slow and dim.

From his heap he unearths the stack of letters he collected from the mailbox before riding up to fourteen. (When purchasing this apartment five years ago, he chose this floor for its near-middleness, offering city views and a glimpse of the bay without the price of higher floors. But also because, since childhood, he’s been amused by the secret that the fourteenth floor is really the thirteenth, because every superstitious architect skips over that diabolic prime number.)

Flicking through the pile, he finds a birthday card in a yellow envelope from his mother and another in baby blue from his sister. The rest is bills and credit-card offers. Nothing from Pamela.

He turned forty-seven today, the first birthday since he and Pamela separated. Twenty-five years of birthdays spent together. He believes he can remember them all: every exquisite prix fixe dinner, getaway weekend, group celebration with friends in a bar’s private backroom. She hasn’t called or texted, but he’s been holding out for a card. Some sign that she remembers too.

Garrett smacks the mail on the counter. He slips off his loafers and carries his things through the apartment, his damp socks squishing imprints on the wood floor. He pauses to turn up the thermostat against the chill. In his bedroom, he deposits his sodden bundle on the rug by the bed. The rain roars against the glass, followed by a torrent of wind that makes him grab the bed post, questioning his balance.

If Pamela were here, she’d insist on going out in spite of the weather. She’d have shown up in his office lobby and waited for him to come down, after he’d spent the weekend day working on casework; she’d wear a little black dress and stiletto heels, puddles be damned. He would complain about it but follow her out into the miserable night, to a restaurant she booked months ago, the hot reservation of the year. Always a mystery to him until the Uber pulled up in front.

“I prefer to stay in sometimes,” he grumbles aloud, as if she’s sitting on the bed listening to his protests once again. Pamela wanted excitement, noise, glamor, variety. Garrett likes what he likes. 

He peels off his sticky dress shirt and designer jeans, his weekend work outfit, then pulls on sweatpants and an ancient Stanford t-shirt, and shoves his feet into wool slippers. Poking his head into the laundry room, he notes the cat’s empty bowl and opens the cabinet to pull out the bag of food. His only evidence that the cat Angie still lives here is that every day he has to refill this bowl, which he does faithfully with an expensive blend of wild-run chicken and wild-caught whitefish for this entirely domesticated beast who ignores him altogether. He adopted Angie solely so he could prove to Pamela how compassionate he could be. Now that Pamela doesn’t live here anymore, the cat almost never makes an appearance.

Garrett shuffles back through the living room, pausing to raise the blinds. The night is dark, the window rain-splattered, but he can spy the pulse of the Alcatraz lighthouse in a sliver between two buildings. He lingers to watch the predictable white heartbeat renewing its promise of safe harbor every five seconds.

A savory aroma from the kitchen snaps him from his reverie. He’s ordered his favorite dishes from the Italian restaurant he’s gone to for years, a half block from his office. In the kitchen he unfurls the knot in the bag to find plastic containers with clear lids fogged with steam. He didn’t even have to order when he called; Liliana, the founder’s daughter who now runs the place, recognized his voice right away. “It’s your birthday, Garrett? Leave it to me.”

He lifts out boxes of lasagna, rigatoni with sausage, chicken piccata. His mouth waters like a ravenous animal’s. Warmth flows through his arms and chest. He pulls a bottle of Barbera from the wine rack, clumsily uncorks it, and tips some wine into a glass. As he reaches for a plate, he notices a folded piece of pink notebook paper at the bottom of the bag.

Garrett takes a generous gulp of red wine before picking up the note with his fingertips.

Happy birthday, Garrett. The restaurant closes at 10 tonight. Let me take you for a celebratory nightcap? L.

He scarfs down five bites of rigatoni before shoving the rest of the takeout into the fridge and bounding toward his bedroom. In ten minutes he’s showered, dressed, and cologned. He pulls a raincoat and an umbrella from his closet and slips the pink note into his back pocket. As he leaves, he pauses to close the door tenderly behind him.