En Español

I had come down twelve steps of that stair and stopped, and I had left the door of the flat standing open above me, which I noticed at about step nine and did not go back to correct. There is a version of me that closes doors quietly behind himself on the way out of a difficult afternoon. I have been that man for three years and I am very good at it, and I stood on a cold stone stair in the New Town with my hand on an iron rail and found that I had walked out of a room and left it open behind me, which is not walking out. It is standing in a stairwell where you can still be reached.

Then her feet on the stone above. Not fast. She came down the first flight the way she walks anywhere, as if the floor has…