Apt 5

You cross Bleecker the same way as always, know where the delivery bicycles will suddenly appear, can count the seconds it takes to cross Seventh Ave before the light turns, but when you turn the corner at Morton Street, the feeling in your blood vessels is different. You could walk that last block blind folded, but this is not your home. There are no keys in your pocket; you ring the buzzer and wait to be let in. The dog is confused, but he melts in your palm when you ask him.

It's strange to leave, at the end of the night. Walk east along Third Street, cross Broadway under a thick, full moon. But you unlock the gate at your new stoop, the steep one, squeezed in between the seafood restaurant and the deli on the corner, and something about it feels right. The West Village melts away as the maddening noise of Second Avenue at midnight peaks. You go to bed in a room you do not know.

But it knows you, already.