"Mark, I know you're in there! The Wi-Fi is down! My card didn't work! Julian had to call his mom to pay for the Uber! Do you have any idea how humiliating that was?!"
Humiliating. That was the word.
I walked to the door. I didn't open it; I spoke through the wood.
"You have your stuff, Elena," I said. "You have Julian, and you have the aesthetic. You don't have an apartment anymore. My name is on the lease. You're not listed as a tenant."
"You can't do this!" she screamed. She was definitely crying now—real tears, panic tears. "Where am I supposed to go?!"
"Go to Julian's," I said. "He's a visionary. I'm sure he has a vision for where you're sleeping tonight."
"He lives on a couch, Mark! He doesn't have a room!"
"Sounds like a logistics problem," I said. "Good night, Elena."
I walked back to the bedroom, put in my noise-canceling earplugs, and turned off the light. She pounded for another twenty minutes. Eventually, I heard the elevator ding again, followed by the sound of dragging plastic bags.
I slept like a baby.
The first month of silence was the loudest month of my life. I didn't hear from Elena directly—at least not in a way that required a response. I had locked down my digital perimeter: number changed, socials private, email filters set to send anything with her name directly to a folder marked "Trash."
But the silence wasn't empty; it was filled with the frantic scratching sounds of someone realizing the walls were closing in.
It started with the flying monkeys: mutual friends—mostly hers, some who I thought were mine—reaching out to check in.
"Hey, Mark. Just heard what happened. That's crazy. Elena is really hurting, man. She's staying at a motel. Do you think maybe you guys could talk?" Block.
"Mark, you can't just ghost someone you lived with. She needs her birth certificate." She had her birth certificate; I put it in the box labeled "Important," which was the first bag I put in the hallway. Block.
"Mark, Julian is being really weird with her. I'm worried. Call me."
That one gave me pause. But I remembered the smirk on Julian's face when I was told to move out of the frame. I remembered Elena's dismissal. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Block.