Apartment Seven by Greg F. Gifune Read Free Book Online

friends with another young couple that lived in the building, Alan and Gary. Even after we’d moved, Jenna and I returned to the building many times over the years to socialize with them, but Gary had passed away more than three years ago and we’d not been back since. I felt guilty about that, and knew Jenna did too, but we had our own lives to handle, and Alan had made it clear he needed time and space after the death of his partner, and albeit reluctantly, we’d given it to him. Unfortunately one day bled into the next, and weeks became months and eventually years. Regular phone calls and emails dwindled down and eventually stopped altogether. We’d been so close back then, but staying away became habitual, easier somehow once a certain amount of time had passed, and the longer it went on the easier it was.
    At the corner, I stopped. The building was right across the street. Unlike the nearby retail district it looked more or less the same as it always had, a relatively unimaginative three-story brick walkup in a less than desirable neighborhood.
    It seemed an eternity since Jenna and I had lived here. Just starting out, all we had was each other, and that was more than enough. I’d been so sure of myself then, so sure of us. Even though I had no right to be, I was convinced nothing could ever stop us and that we’d always be as happy and carefree as we were in those early years of our marriage.
    I crossed the street and was reminded just how wrong I’d been. Less than twenty years later those same young couples making friends and planning what they’d thought would be the rest of their lives together were no more. There had been such hope, promise and happiness. And now? One dead, two separated, all estranged. And all of it so senseless , I thought, so unnecessary .
    I stood beneath a streetlight and watched the building. My lungs had finally settled down, so like any good addict, I smoked a cigarette.
    Our old apartment was on the second floor. Alan’s was right across the hall. But for a dreary yellow light filling one of the windows facing the street, the building was dark. If Alan still lived there, he was home.
    Two dark, dirty staircases and an equally unpleasant hallway later, I stood knocking at the apartment door. It opened almost immediately, as if the person inside had been expecting me.
    The drawn face of a man with thinning hair and a closely cropped beard peeked out at me. Alan was only a few years older than me, which put him somewhere in his early fifties, so it didn’t seem possible he could’ve aged to such a degree in just over three years. But he had. The lines in his face were much deeper, the bags under his eyes much blacker, and he’d lost quite a bit of hair since I’d last seen him. But his devilish smile hadn’t changed a bit.
    “Well, look what we have here,” he said in a gentle voice I remembered fondly. “The Ghost of Christmas Past, I presume?”
    “Afraid not,” I said. “But I think I may be on the run from him.”
    “Aren’t we all?”
    I couldn’t help but smile a little too.
    “Charlie Cerrone,” he said, as if speaking my name might make me real. The door opened wide, and he reached out, placed a hand on my shoulder and guided me toward him. We hugged. There was less of him now, his body more fragile than before, and he smelled vaguely of pleasant cologne. “My God,” he whispered, “it’s so good to see you.”
    “You too.”
    We released each other, and Alan ushered me in. The apartment was similar to what I remembered but it no longer looked as lived in. He and Gary had been something of an odd couple, in that Gary tended to be a bit of a slob and Alan was always the neat and organized sort. Though funds were never in abundance Alan always decorated with an understated, classic style that made the small space warm, vibrant and inviting, and he kept a clean, tidy home. But the apartment had become so orderly and maniacally clean that it possessed the