Door No. 8

Door Number Seven - The Afterlife (3)

Another week passed, with class assignments and social events, and a lot of fretting and preparation for the upcoming midterms. In the rush of activities, Taylor almost forgot about the weirdness next door. She had decided not to pay it a lot of attention, since she couldn't explain it, anyway, or figure out how this whole experience would fit into her life.

Christine and Matt were spending almost all of their time together now, and since Taylor seemed to have come to her senses, Christine didn't stop by as often as she used to. Taylor took her comment about the door lock to heart and decided to stop by the locksmith's shop to see what was the hold-up in repairing the lock.

The guy behind the counter was new and very young, probably a student trying to make ends meet. He didn't seem to be particularly enthusiastic about his task and moved about begrudgingly, with a level of inefficiency that seemed almost far-fetched. He looked through the invoices and didn't find hers, which, obviously, explained why nobody ever showed up. Taylor had to spend more than an hour going through old credit card records and through the invoices until she managed to find what she was looking for: her name was misspelled and the address was wrong.

"How do these people manage to stay in business?" she wondered, looking at the guy who seemed to have gotten tired from all the looking at her while she did all the digging through the files. He shoved his ear buds deeper inside his ear canals, in an attempt to permanently plug them, thus never, ever having to interact with people like her again. She had to speak very loudly to get over the sound of music, set up a firm appointment for the repair and left with absolutely no hope of it happening as planned. Oh, well, such was life.

She almost bumped into her neighbor on her way out the shop, and discovered, to her surprise, that she never expected to see him again, even though he continued to live in the room next to hers. The encounter gave her this sinking feeling that her trip to the twilight zone wasn't over yet and she could get dragged into who knows what else at any second.

"So, did your door lock get fixed?" he asked. She hesitated before answering, because she simply knew he must have had the answer before she did anyway, and wondered what was the point of this elaborate theatrical production, but decided to play along anyway.

"No, it seems there was a mishap with the invoice. Somebody's coming on Friday."

"Are they now? Well, that's good. How have you been?" he reverted to standard conversation.

"Fine. Busy with school work. You?" she continued the absurd filler conversation, not really sure why she was engaged in it, mind reading and all.

"Oh, I just learned that I have a lot of stuff to do, a deadline just got pushed back, my schedule is winding up very tight. On an unrelated note, wouldn't you know it? I hung out with Matt and Christine the other day, and they seem like very nice people. Are you still friends with Christine?"

"She loathes you!" Taylor thought. "How does this guy get to spend time with the love birds, when they avoid me like I'm contagious or something?" She realized she was really jealous of her neighbor spending any time with her friends. Doesn't one get to keep anything for oneself? Curiosity and peeve got the better of her and she decided to fish out the details of this newborn association. She got just the right question to ease into details.

"You know, Christine had asked me repeatedly, but I never remembered to ask you. What is your given name? She really wanted to know."

"Taylor."

"Of course it is," she replied, with a dry smile. "That went well, I feel like I'm talking into a recorder. Not much different from the last hour and a half at the locksmith shop. At least I can tell Christine that I tried, if she ever finds time in her packed schedule to talk to me again." The whole endeavor struck her as an irritating waste of time, but she was saved from it by the most improbable of sources, her mother, who texted her with the surprise announcement that she was coming to visit.