Happy people live here

who might have been following her and who would come out, once she was gone.

When she entered her apartment she saw it, a letter addressed to her and it was lying on her mat as if someone had pushed it under the door. Normally letters were left in her mailbox in the basement but someone had delivered it, whoever they were. She took the letter and placed it on the table beside her notebook and just as she was about to carefully peel it open, the intercom rang.

“Good evening,” she said, regally.

“Good night Madame. You’ll be knowing that the swimming teacher is here. Do you want I should let him up?” asked The Porter.

Linda cringed as he spoke.

“Let him in. I’ll be down in a minute. Tell him to wait.”

The Porter said something, trying to be polite but Linda had already taken the receiver away from her ear and didn’t hear him.

It wouldn’t have been anything important anyway and would no doubt have been said quite poorly. It wasn’t his fault. It was just his kind, where he came from and because of it, how he spoke.

It bothered Linda.

But she wasn’t racist or anything.

In her room, Linda slowly unpacked her plastic bags. She was so happy with the things she had bought and she couldn’t wait to unwrap them. She was always this way with new things. Her most favorite time when she was a girl was before opening her presents when they were laid out on her bed and she could line them up and count them all one by one and then try to pick them all up in her arms at once. She could never hold them all, though. One would always fall onto the bed or worse yet, onto the floor.

She always loved, though, the moment before opening a present, imagining what it could be. It was always so much more fun than tearing off the package and having to put on that stupid smile and trying her hardest not to cry when she saw what it really was. When it was never anything like she had imagined.

And worse than getting a stupid present was having to say 42