Coming Down With Boxes

The outside staircases are a bad idea the city committed to and now can't get out of. In February they're a spiral of ice with a railing that comes off in your hand.

I'm going up with four bags of groceries in each hand because I refuse to make two trips. You're coming down with a box.

We do the dance. You go left, I go left. You laugh. We try again.

"Moving out?"

"Moving out."

The box has books in both languages, a Bodum, and a rice cooker with the cord wound around it in a way that means somebody taught you to wind cords.

You set it on the landing to let me past. The step is only wide enough for one of us to be right.

I don't ask. There's a version of the question that isn't nosy and I don't have it.

Three trips later the truck is still at the curb with the back open, half full. By four it's gone.

The bags cut into my fingers and I could see the lines on my palms for an hour afterward.

Somebody moved into 3B in June. He plays bass. He's fine.