ABERG

june 1, 2026

He had cleared the drawer twice already. The first time he had sorted the contents into categories: batteries, twist ties, takeout chopsticks. The second time he had thrown most of those categories away, because Maren was moving in on Saturday and he wanted her to have the drawer entirely, which meant the only honest thing was to empty it.

Underneath the liner he found a key.

It was small, brass, ordinary. The keychain was an enamel tag the size of a fingernail with the word ABERG printed in cream lettering on a navy field. He did not know anyone named Aberg, had not known anyone named Aberg, could not have lost something or gained something belonging to anyone named Aberg. The apartment had been his for nine years.

He set the key on the counter and made coffee.

The pour was slow because the filter was new and stiff. He watched the water bead on top of the grounds before it sank through. Outside, a truck reversed somewhere on the next block, the safety chirp coming in regular pulses. The cabinet above the stove had a square of paint slightly lighter than the rest where the previous tenant had left a calendar, and he had never repainted it because he liked having an indicator that he had inherited the place rather than built it.

He drank the coffee standing up.

The key stayed on the counter. He looked at it twice and then made himself stop looking at it, and then he looked at it once more because he was annoyed at having made himself stop. He picked it up and held it against the cabinet handles to see if it would fit any of them. It did not. He tried the front lock from the inside, which was foolish (the lock was newer than the apartment by a decade), and then he tried the back door to the fire escape, which he never used, and which the key did not fit either. He set the key back on the counter.

He thought about the woman who had lived here before him. He had met her exactly once, at the handover, and her name was something with an R, Renee or Rachel, and she had given him the keys in a small ziplock bag with a rubber band around it and told him the radiator in the bedroom hissed only at three in the morning, which had turned out to be true. He thought about whether her name could plausibly have been Aberg and decided no, definitely no. She had been older than him and Polish and she had said her husband’s name twice in the conversation, Tadeusz, both times as if she were reciting it from a list.

He washed the cup. He dried it. He put it back on the open shelf above the sink and turned around and the key was still on the counter, and he saw that he had been arranging his morning around not picking it up and putting it somewhere.

He picked it up and put it in the small ceramic bowl on the entry table where he kept change.

Then he took it out of the bowl and put it in his pocket.

Then he took it out of his pocket and put it back on the counter.

The drawer was clean. He wiped it once more with a damp cloth and left it open to air. He thought about whether to tell Maren about the key when she arrived on Saturday, and he decided he would tell her, and then he decided he would not tell her, and then he decided he did not yet know which.

He left the key on the counter and went out for the paper.

if it stayed with you, write to me.