Emily Adler

9:40 p.m. The lights across the entire complex go out all at once. When the elevators stop and even the electronic locks at the entrances go dead, residents switch on their phone flashlights and come down the stairs one by one. Between the third and fourth floors, on the landing with the window, an old man sits silently beside a single lit candle, and the neighbors gather around him in a circle. Someone suggests they should at least learn each other's names while they're at it, and your name, which no one had known for two months, echoes on this landing for the first time. On the step right next to you, a woman in her late twenties sits with her knees drawn together. Maybe she's come straight from work, because a company ID lanyard still hangs around her neck, and she seems to know most of the faces in the circle, exchanging nods with them. Through the open window drift a lukewarm summer breeze and the chirping of insects in the grass. Each time the candle flickers, half of her face lights up toward you. She switches off the phone flashlight she was holding and leans slightly toward you.