Alis found the passport while looking for the charger he said he had lost. The man in the photograph was the man in her kitchen. The name was one she had never heard.
She sat on the bed without opening anything else. Through the wall he was singing to the radio, getting the words wrong with an ease she had found endearing. They had been together eleven days. Before that there had been seven months of messages, two video calls and a series of problems requiring money.
The suitcase beneath the bed was already packed.
Her watch lay between his shirts. So did the earrings her husband had given her, wrapped in a sock to prevent them from scratching the watch. She appreciated that little consideration before understanding what she was appreciating.
She put the passport in her pocket and carried the suitcase into the spare room. The room had once been a store for the shop downstairs. Its heavy door retained an outside bolt, painted over so many times it had to be worked back and forth before it moved. Alis had meant to remove it when she first moved in.
He called to ask what time they were eating.
"Soon," she said.
She set two places. His bowl was the blue one he had admired in a photograph she sent, back when every object in her life seemed to become more interesting because he asked about it. He had asked where the earrings came from too.
At dinner he said his brother needed him for a few days. A problem with the house. He was sorry to leave so soon.
"Which brother?"
He smiled. "The troublesome one."
There had been two brothers in the messages. One had died before they met. Alis waited to see whether he remembered which.
He put down his spoon.
"What's wrong?"
She laid the passport beside his bowl. His face changed before his hand moved, the affectionate expression leaving so completely that she saw how much work it had required.
"I can explain."
"Where did we meet?"
"Alis."
"You wrote it better than I remember it. Tell me."
He reached for the passport. She drew it back. He stood, and she was frightened then, much more frightened than she had been finding the suitcase. She told him the case was in the spare room. Everything was still there. He could take it and go.
He went past her without another apology. She followed to the doorway. While he bent over the suitcase, checking the contents, she pulled the heavy door shut and slid the bolt.
The first blow shook dust from the frame. His phone was still charging beside the kitchen radio. Alis unplugged it and laid it facedown.
She waited in the kitchen, holding the passport against her chest. He shouted his real name. She had read it already. Hearing him claim it felt like another thing being taken from her.
The room's narrow high window opened over an enclosed yard. He shouted through it for a while. A man below told him to keep the noise down. Alis stood in the hallway waiting for a knock at the front door, ready to say she had found a stranger stealing from her. Nobody knocked.
When he spoke through the wood again, he used the name she knew.
"It's me. We can work this out."
She brought a chair to the door. On her lap she placed the pages she had printed during the months when the messages mattered enough to keep. There were photographs among them, some of a house she now supposed belonged to somebody else.
"You said you wanted a quiet place," she told him.
"I did."
"With a room to work in."
He said yes. His voice had become careful. She recognized the care from the early calls and disliked recognizing it now.
She read the message in which he described meeting her beneath an awning during a sudden storm. It was an imaginary meeting, written before he could travel. They would have coffee. She would tell him something ordinary about her day. He had made the ordinary part sound like the most desirable thing in the world.
"Read the next one," he said after a while.
She did. In the next one he had asked for money.
They sat on opposite sides of the door until she grew cold. She brought him water through the gap created by opening the door against a chair, then bolted it again before either could change the arrangement. He could have rushed her. Perhaps he was waiting. She lay awake expecting him to break something, hearing each shift of the suitcase against the floor.
In the morning she put toast on the blue plate and carried it to the door. He was already sitting close to it. She could hear his breathing.
"Where did we meet?" she asked.
He took time before answering. Then he described the awning, the rain, the coffee she had never drunk with him. Alis set the plate down while he spoke, freeing both hands to work the stiff bolt. She opened the door far enough to pass breakfast through and kept listening until he reached the part about her day.
