Stagnancy

by Amy Marcott

As soon as I step inside my studio apartment after a long day of selling train tickets to preoccupied travelers, I can sense someone’s been there. Hints of my morning shower with Dove soap should echo back to me, but instead the air's density has been altered with an exhaled burp of cheap cheeseburger tinged with a whiff of WD-40. I'm pretty sure it's my landlord, a man with a perpetually youthful face who removed his ball cap the first time he met me, although I haven't yet asked him to fix anything. The easy, lonely intimacy of my furniture seems undisturbed: the open futon abuts the small wicker coffee table, which rubs against the leg of a chair, which shoulders the café table. I didn't peg my landlord for a panty sniffer, but I check my underwear drawer just in case. Sadly, everything looks folded just the way I left it.

6S

Amy Marcott has been published in Memorious and Juked and is at work on her second novel. Her first, Other People's Houses, is currently under consideration.