The day had given Art little reason to connect with reality. And this was fine with him.
He had spent the last eight hours moving back and forth between a computer screen and his paper-cluttered desk, deeply engrossed in a theory of four-dimensional symmetries and in preparing a lecture on linear algebra. The beauty of the former and the challenge of the latter had kept his mind bound in matters that were simple and clear.
But now, as he walked back from the tram station to his apartment, reality finally caught up with him.
It was the reality of a featureless, grayish sky boring the world below it with its dreary drizzle. Art had been told, by a colleague at work, that this was the default weather in Tavetia.
After the few weeks he had spent in this country, this rang true.
He shivered in the cold November evening wind as he entered Dumstreet. The houses lined up along it were last millennium, brick-and-mortar, three-storied affairs. Their solid, heavy style another default of this country.
Art longed for the high blue skies, the architectural generosity, the bright colors, and the warm weather of his home on the other side of the Atlantic.
But that was where Jane lived.
Dumstreet 9, where the university had organized him to stay, was set back from the wet sidewalk by a strip-shaped excuse for a garden, a row of bushes no more than five steps across. The white plaster façade held an array of windows, arranged in a three-storied, symmetric pattern on both sides of the staircase's larger set of glass panes. The burgundy of the arcane shutters that adorned the windows was the only color in sight.
As he approached the door, it was opened from the inside. A woman stepped out. He didn't see her face. It was turned towards a phone she held in her hand and hidden by her long, dark hair. But her thin frame told him she was his upstairs neighbor, the waitress. She banged the door shut and passed him without looking up once.
"Good evening..." he said, in what he believed to be a humoring tone of voice, as she disappeared around a corner without even looking up from her device.
Mrs. Meier, the Janitor, had told him about that woman's profession and name, but he had never talked to her. The few times he had seen her, she had had her eyes on that phone of hers and had seemed in a hurry.
He found the door unlocked and entered. The warmth was a relief, but the usual scent of detergent-scrubbed stone grated his sense of smell. He locked up after himself. Janitor Meier had made it absolutely clear that the door had to be locked at all times. Not that this was a dangerous neighborhood—Tavetia had one of the lowest crime rates in all of Europe—but locking doors was obviously considered to be the proper thing to do. Unless you were a waitress in a hurry, maybe.
Apart from the front door, two more doors branched off from the hallway at the ground floor. The one on the left led to the apartment where Mrs. Meier lived and went after her janitorial or property manager duties, whatever they were. Art was still trying to figure them out.
The door on the right side led to the communal laundry room and the storage compartments. Between the doors, a pinboard held messages from the landlord, the janitor, and the city—the ancient and indisputable law of the house. Next to the pinboard, a flight of steps led up to the floors above.
As Art placed his foot on the first step leading upstairs, the left door was opened.
"Ah, good evening, Mr. Sharpe. It's good to see you." Mrs. Meier wore a long, floral dress, black with red roses, its thick fabric reminiscent of a heavy nightgown.
"Good evening, Mrs. Meier." Art eyed her expectantly. His first weeks in this house had taught him that the janitor's sudden appearances were hardly ever accidental. He wondered if she spent the day lurking behind that door of hers, lying in ambush, ready to pounce on any tenant she heard passing.
"Have you settled in now?" Her smile revealed a set of tombstone-shaped teeth.
"Yes, thanks."
"My son has told me you received some furniture yesterday."
Her grown-up son lived in an apartment of his own, on the first floor, directly below Art. He must have heard the noise when the delivery men had brought the table and chairs Art had ordered.
If Mrs. Meier was the house's NSA, her son was her field spy network.
"Yes." Art wondered where this was going. "I had a delivery. A table and two chairs."
"Excellent." Her smile was still in place.
"Anything I can help you with?" he asked.
"Er... no. Just wanted to ask you if you need help with the roster that I gave you."
The roster. Art remembered the thing. Mrs. Meier had handed it to him the day he had arrived. It was a calendar, meticulously adorned with her spindly handwriting. The document was a detailed deed of assignment of the duties and resources of Dumstreet 9 to its inhabitants.
"The roster?" Art repeated. "No, thanks. I think I'm fine with it."
"Lovely." Her smile was obstinately clinging to her face, like a squatter to an abandoned building. "Because, you know..." She hesitated. "There has been... a complaint."
"A complaint?"
"Yes." She nodded, sending a wave of motion through her copper-dyed, permed hair. "You do know that it's your turn to sweep the staircase this week?"
A mixture of embarrassment and amusement rose in Art. He had completely forgotten about the sweeping. In fact, the thought of this kind of duty had seemed so unreal and abstract to him that it had utterly failed to connect—his mind must have been unable to hold on to it. The strange concept of him cleaning the staircase had been washed away by the continuous stream of infinitely more relevant facts and facets that flooded him each day.
"Of course, the sweeping." His grin felt false. "Was planning to do that tomorrow... Saturday. Didn't have time during the week. The work... you know." He gestured vaguely into the direction he thought the campus might be.
"Of course." Her smile was steadfast.
A vague sense of irritation stirred at the back of his mind. "Er... who complained about it?"
"Aw... one of the neighbors. You know how it is." Mrs. Meier waved the matter away. "It doesn't matter. Just make sure to sweep the stairs whenever your week comes up, and we're all fine."
"Yeah, sure." Art nodded. "I'll sweep tomorrow. First thing in the morning."
"Excellent, Mr. Sharpe." She nodded, then waved her hand at him in a brief, fluttering motion. "Do have a nice evening."
"Thanks, same to you."
She retreated into her apartment and closed the door.
For a moment, he stared at the blue-painted wood.
There must be a whistleblower in this house. A tattletale.
YOU ARE READING
The Egg at Dumstreet
Mystery / Thriller[Completed] A U.S. expatriate is cast into a rainy, foggy corner of Europe. He went there on the pretense to work on his research, but he actually wanted to put as many miles as possible between himself and his ex. The university he works for has fo...
