THE STORY OF RAFA AND DANI 17/ CLOCK STOP YOUR WAY

You didn't go out to the street. You turned to the left and went up.

Knock. Knock.

Two sharp knocks with your knuckles. Two knocks that sounded on the landing like pistol shots, like the beating of a heart ripped out of a chest and placed on a table for the entire building to see it palpitate. Two knocks that resonated in the stairwell and bounced off the peeling walls and went up the elevator shaft that hadn't worked since 2019 and got lost somewhere between the third and fourth floors, between Mrs. Conchi's hung-up panties and the Moroccan guy's underwear from the fourth floor, who was named Hassan or Hasan or whatever the hell his name was spelled.

Two knocks. Like you had been told. "Give two knocks, kid." And you obeyed. Of course, you obeyed. Because obeying was your thing. Obeying was your natural talent, your divine gift, your shit superpower. Other eighteen-year-old kids had talent for soccer or math or playing the guitar. You had talent for doing what you were told. For showing up where you were sent. For opening what you were asked to open.

Silence.

One second. Two. Three.

And then you heard them.

Steps.

Steps coming from inside the apartment. Steps that weren't fast or slow but calculated, measured, steps of someone who knows they're being waited for and enjoys making them wait, who savors those three or four seconds of power that separate "I'm coming" from the click of the lock, because in those seconds the one outside depends completely on the one inside, the one outside is a beggar, a suppliant, a dog sitting in front of a closed door wagging its tail.

Flip-flops. The unmistakable sound of rubber flip-flops dragging on the terrazzo floor. Flap. Flap. Flap. Each step a heartbeat. Each heartbeat a step closer. You could reconstruct the geography of the apartment just from the sound: living room, hallway, entrance hall. Ten steps. Maybe twelve. Dani's apartment was small, like all the apartments in this building, like all the lives lived within these walls, small, cramped, with no space for anything that wasn't essential.

Flap. Flap.

Closer.

Your heart was pounding in your temples. In your wrists. In your throat. In your damn stomach, which doesn't have a pulse but you felt it anyway, a dull percussion in your guts like someone was playing a drum inside your intestines, a tribal drum, primitive, the drum that sounded in the caves when cave men did things that had no name because language didn't exist yet and things were done without being named, without being explained, without being justified.

Flap.

Silence.

He was on the other side. You knew it. You could feel it. You could smell him through the door, cheap perfume mixed with tobacco and sweat and something else, something animal, something that isn't bought in stores but secreted, exuded, coming out of his pores like a statement of intent. Dani smel...