Chapter 85: Nineteen Days Later
The library on Amsterdam had become his anchor point for the SAT prep stretch — the same table near the windows, the same afternoon light, the same rhythm of practice test followed by error review followed by knowledge gap notation. Nineteen days of it, and he could feel the difference in how the material sat in his head. Less effort to access, more automatic in application.
Laura had been at the adjacent table for most of those nineteen days.
They'd fallen into an easy study partnership — not planned, just the natural result of two people working toward the same exam in the same space at the same hours. They'd started going to lunch together around day five, at the diner on 74th that had decent sandwiches and didn't rush you.
"Three days," Laura said, walking back from the restaurant with coffee cups in both hands. She passed him one. "Are you ready?"
"I don't know," Andrew said. "I've never taken it before. I know the material better than I did a month ago. Whether that translates is a different question."
"That's the most honest answer I've heard from anyone about an exam."
"Most people aren't honest about exams," Andrew said.
They walked in comfortable quiet for half a block.
"What about you?" he said. "You're registered?"
Laura's expression did something complicated. She'd missed the May exam — a case at the law firm, an emergency that had consumed the last week of her registration window. She'd been at the library every day since, making up for it, but Andrew had noticed over the past week a quality in her studying that was different from the first two weeks — slightly less present, slightly more distracted, the specific pattern of someone who had started to build an exit ramp in their head.
"There's another urgent matter at work," she said. "I might not be able to make the June date."
Andrew nodded slowly.
He understood the architecture of it. Laura was a paralegal at a midsize firm on 57th — she'd mentioned it once, matter-of-factly, the way people mentioned things that were just the shape of their life. Three years in, good at the job, her supervising attorney had apparently told her she had the instincts of a lawyer without the credential to practice. The SAT was the first step toward changing that. Missing it twice would make a third attempt significantly harder — not logistically, psychologically.
"If it were me," Andrew said, "I wouldn't let the case be the reason. Cases are always urgent. That's what cases do." He paused. "The next exam is August. Two months. That's fine if August is the plan. But make sure it's the plan and not just the postponement."
Laura looked at him.
"There's a difference," he said.
She was quiet for the rest of the walk.
Back at the table, Andrew opened his practice materials and went to work.
[Test-Taking Skills (Proficient): 21/100]
The number had been climbing steadily — not dramatically, but consistently, which was its own kind of information about how the panel tracked this particular skill. It rewarded attention and correction rather than volume. Every time he caught a mistake, understood why it was wrong, and genuinely integrated the fix, the number moved. Every time he went through motions, it didn't.
He worked through two reading comprehension sections and one math module, checked his answers, circled his errors — four in the math, two in the reading — and spent twenty minutes tracing each one back to its source. Not the question, the underlying gap. That was the part that moved the panel.
When he looked up, the library windows had gone from afternoon light to early evening light, the specific warm orange that happened around six in April when the sun was still high enough to be horizontal rather than overhead.
Laura was still at her table. She wasn't studying. She was looking at the registration website on a library computer with the expression of someone who had made a decision and was in the process of not talking themselves out of it.
He watched her click confirm and close the window.
She looked over.
"June," she said.
"Good," Andrew said.
She almost smiled. "You're very annoying, you know that?"
"I've been told," he said, and went back to his notes.
He got home at seven, took the stairs to the second floor, and nearly stepped on Joey.
Joey was crouched at the end of the hallway near Andrew's door, examining something on the floor with the focused concentration he usually reserved for menus.
"Joey." Andrew stopped. "What are you doing?"
Joey looked up with the expression of a man who had been discovered doing something he couldn't explain simply. "I came to ask about the food truck. You haven't been out in ten days."
"I've been on a reduced schedule. I told you."
"You told me three days. It's been ten." Joey stood up, holding something. "Also, I found this outside your door. It was tucked under the edge of the carpet."
He held out a VHS tape.
The case was plain black — no label on the outside, no writing on the spine. The kind of anonymous packaging that meant either someone was being careful or someone was being dramatic about being careful.
Andrew took it and turned it over. Nothing on the back either.
"Did you see who left it?" Andrew said.
"No. It was already there when I got here." Joey looked at it with the curiosity he brought to anything he couldn't immediately categorize. "What is it?"
"No idea." Andrew unlocked his door. "Come in."
He set the tape on the counter and looked at it for a moment.
Anonymous packages left outside your door were either nothing — a misdirected delivery, someone's lost property — or something, and the something category had a wide range. He'd had a complicated enough few months that his default assumption had shifted.
He went to the kitchen, poured two glasses of juice, and came back to the living room.
"You don't have to stay for this," he said.
"I want to," Joey said, with the honest simplicity of someone who found mysterious tapes inherently interesting and had no reason to pretend otherwise.
Andrew put the tape in the VCR.
The screen flickered, then resolved into an image.
It was footage of his building. Exterior, from across the street, angled up toward the second floor windows. His windows.
He watched for a moment. The footage was old — the quality suggested early eighties, the film grain of something recorded on consumer-grade equipment before the format had fully matured. His building was in the shot but the tree line was different, the parked cars were different, and someone had been standing at his window.
Not him. Someone else. Years ago.
There was no sound.
After about ninety seconds, the footage cut to black.
Then text, handwritten and held up to the camera, white paper against dark background:
There are things about this apartment you don't know. If you want to know them, leave a note under 207's door.
The tape ended.
Joey looked at the screen. Looked at Andrew.
"207," Joey said. "Isn't that—"
"Empty," Andrew said. "Has been since I moved in."
They both looked at the blank television.
"So," Joey said, after a moment. "Are you going to leave a note?"
Andrew picked up his juice, considered the tape, considered the building, considered the range of people who might know something about his apartment's history and have chosen this particular method of communicating it.
"I'm going to think about it," he said.
Joey nodded with the equanimity of someone who had decided this was Andrew's business and his own role was moral support and juice.
"The food truck," Joey said. "Tuesday?"
"Tuesday," Andrew said.
"Great." Joey finished his juice and stood up. "Let me know about the note thing."
He left.
Andrew sat in the quiet apartment and looked at the VHS tape on the counter and thought about apartment 207, which had been empty for as long as he'd lived at 90 Bedford, and whoever had been standing at his window in footage that was at least ten years old.
He thought about it for a while.
Then he went to the kitchen and made dinner and decided he'd look into it after Red Hook.
One thing at a time.
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