A Convenient Stranger

You step out of the elevator on the first floor when the workday is already over, but the city does not know it yet.

Half the lights in the lobby are off. Behind the desk, the security guard is looking at his phone; reflections of the ceiling lamps tremble in the black glass of the turnstiles. Ahead is a transparent door in an aluminum frame. Beyond it, the street: cars slowly squeezing toward the intersection, people weaving around one another with their hands wrapped around paper cups, the windows of the building across the way glowing in the same neat rectangles.

The door is so transparent it hardly seems like a door at all. Just a vertical seam between two identical halves of the city.

“Imagine,” says the man standing beside you, “that the moment you cross this threshold, you’ll find yourself in a completely different world.”

You turn to look at him.

Nothing remarkable. A gray coat, no hat, a face you couldn’t describe a minute later. He seems to have been waiting for someone by the exit, though he isn’t holding a phone or watching the door.

“No one knows whether it’s better there or worse,” he continues. “Maybe much worse. And there’ll be no way back. Would you go?”

“Where?”

“Through the door.”

He nods at the glass.

A bus passes beyond the door, blocking the far side of the street for a moment. Then the coffee shop, the traffic light, the people in business clothes come back into view.

“It’s just the street out there.”

“As long as you’re in here.”

You want to ask where he came from and why he is talking to you, of all people, but someone bumps your shoulder. You step aside to let the people from the elevator pass, and when you turn back, the man is gone.

Perhaps he went out with everyone else. Perhaps he slipped behind a column. You search for a gray coat among the passersby, but suddenly there are gray coats everywhere.

You could shrug and leave.

So you do.

You reach the turnstile, tap your badge, and pass through. Then you stop.

The door ahead still looks perfectly ordinary. Beyond it, the light turns green and the crowd on the sidewalk begins to flow across the street. A woman in a blue suit hastily fixes her hair while looking into the glass. A courier steadies his bicycle with one knee. At the curb, a taxi’s hazard lights blink.

You go back.

Trying to look as though you have simply forgotten something, you walk up to the door and take hold of the cold metal handle. Carefully, you pull it toward you.

Nothing happens.

The city goes on beyond the door. Tires whisper over asphalt, someone honks, and above the intersection a camera turns with a soft grinding sound.

You are about to let go of the handle, annoyed at your own suggestibility, when another sound begins to emerge through the noise of the traffic.

At first it sounds like something wrong with an engine—a low, uneven rumble. But then it separates itself from the street, surges, breaks, and recedes.

The surf.

Then comes indistinct speech. Several voices are talking very close by, though no one on the sidewalk in front of you is moving their lips. The words are foreign and lilting, full of guttural consonants. High above, a bird cries—or an animal capable of flight. Warm air touches your face, smelling of salt, sun-baked stone, and something sweet and spicy.

You slam the door shut.

“Wait,” she said. “Why did I slam it shut?”

He fell silent.

They were sitting at a small table by the wall in the very same lobby. The coffee shop had closed almost an hour ago, but the woman behind the counter had let them stay. Two paper cups stood between them. Hers was empty; he had barely touched his coffee.

Behind her was a transparent door in an aluminum frame.

“You got scared,” he said.

“I haven’t done anything yet.”

“You heard the surf.”

“The surf isn’t frightening.”

“Foreign voices. Birds.”

“Neither are they. You want her to be frightened. Otherwise her decision won’t cost her anything.”

“All right. She doesn’t slam the door.”

“No, let her slam it. Just don’t say it was because her knees went weak.”

He smiled.

She did not smile back.

“It’s your knees that went weak,” she said.

He looked at the door.

Outside, a bus went by, turning the glass into a dark mirror for a moment. Both of them appeared in it: she sat with her hands on the table; he was hunched slightly over his untouched coffee.

“Then?” she asked.

He ran his thumb along the seam of his cup.

“The next day, you walk past again.”

“Why?”

“To check.”

“Check what?”

“Whether it really happened.”

“All right.”

The next day, you stay late at the office again. Not because you have a lot of work. Quite the opposite: for the last twenty minutes, you have been moving files from one folder to another and reading an email you answered long ago again and again.

When the lobby is almost empty, you walk up to the door.

This time you open it only a few centimeters.

You hear the surf at once.

It is louder than yesterday. A wave crashes against something massive, something made of stone, then slowly drains away. Foreign voices argue. Little bells are ringing somewhere. The warm wind fogs a strip of the cold glass.

You slip your hand through the gap.

Outside, the evening is cool and people are buttoning their coats. But your fingers are hot. The air touches your skin and leaves the faintest trace of stickiness, as if from sea salt.

“Can she pull her hand back out?” the woman asked.

“She can.”

“And if she takes a step?”

“Then she can’t.”

“Why?”

“That’s how the door works.”

“You just made up that rule.”

“At some point, someone has to make up the first rule.”

“Convenient.”

“How do I get home, then?”

“There’s a service exit. On the parking-lot side.”

“You made that up just now.”

“Yes.”

She turned her empty cup until the seam in the paper lined up with the opening in the lid.

“Is the stranger there?”

“Where?”

“On the other side.”

He hesitated for a moment.

“Yes.”

“How does she know?”

“She doesn’t.”

“So he might not be there.”

“He might not.”

“He appears, asks her to leave her life forever, and immediately disappears. Then perhaps he waits for her in another world. Very convenient for him.”

“He doesn’t ask her to leave her life.”

“What is he offering, then?”

“A choice.”

“Without him?”

“He told her about the door.”

“Exactly.”

She leaned back in her chair and looked at him. Her gaze made him want to hurry on with the story, leaving no silence between them.

“You come back every evening,” he said. “And each time you open the door a little wider.”

“I get hooked quickly.”

“At first you only listen. Then you put your hand through. Then you place one foot on the threshold.”

“But I don’t shift my weight.”

“You don’t.”

“What holds me back?”

“Everything that remains here.”

“For example?”

He looked into his cup.

“Your job. Your apartment. People you know. The route you always take. The store near your building. The door you have to lift a little or the key won’t turn. The pot of basil in the kitchen that you keep forgetting to water but that grows anyway.”

She lowered her eyes.

“You don’t have much of an imagination.”

“Why?”

“You’ve put my basil in her kitchen again.”

“Basil is an ordinary plant.”

“And she has my door, too.”

He wanted to say there were thousands of doors like that, but he did not.

She pushed her cup away by the width of her palm.

“You’ve already decided,” she said.

“I haven’t answered yet.”

“Technically. Three days ago you told me about it the way people talk about the weather. And now you’re making up a story about a door.”

The security guard looked up from his phone and then lowered his eyes again.

She did not apologize.

“Who else remains here?” she asked.

“I gave you the list.”

“You listed things.”

“People, too.”

“What people?”

“Different people.”

“Which person?”

Outside the glass door, a woman with a dog stopped. The dog nosed toward the crack between the doors, as though it had caught a scent from inside. Then the woman tugged the leash, and they moved on.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You’re lying.”

“It’s a story.”

“Is that why you’re lying?”

He looked up at her.

“All right. One person remains—the man calling her into another world.”

“But he’s there.”

“Not yet.”

“Then where is he?”

“In front of the door, too.”

“On which side?”

He did not answer.

She laughed—a short laugh, no more than a breath.

“Even in your own story, you can’t decide whether he went through.”

“Maybe he went through earlier.”

“And he’s waiting?”

“Yes.”

“Or maybe he hasn’t gone through and just wants to see whether she’ll go through first?”

“Maybe.”

“Then he doesn’t need a door. He needs a test.”

He squeezed his cup. The lid buckled with a click.

“He isn’t testing her.”

“He is.”

“He wants to know whether she’s capable of leaving everything familiar.”

“For what?”

“For the unknown.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘for the unknown.’ People go into the unknown for someone or something. No one needs the unknown for its own sake.”

“Some people go.”

“Then let him go find some people.”

She stood as though she meant to throw away her cup, but stayed beside the table.

“Do you know what his trick is?” she asked.

“What?”

“He wants her to choose the door herself. Then, if it turns out badly over there, he can say: I never invited you. I only asked.”

“He warned her it might be worse.”

“That isn’t honesty. It’s an alibi.”

“He doesn’t want to be the only reason.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. He started to speak and stopped.

She waited.

“That isn’t for him to decide,” she said.

He turned away toward the glass door.

Outside, a light rain was falling. In the headlights, individual drops flared and vanished. People passed very close by, unaware of the two people behind the glass.

“Is there a sea where you’re going?” she asked.

He turned around slowly.

“In the story?”

“Anywhere.”

“There is.”

“And hot stone?”

“In summer.”

“And that sweet spice whose name you keep forgetting?”

“Cardamom.”

“Right.”

She sat down again.

“You’re skimping on scenery,” she said. “You’ve just moved the city from those photographs into the story.”

“I didn’t say the door led there.”

“You hardly say anything at all.”

The clock above the desk read a quarter to nine. The security guard stood, put on his jacket, and began switching off the monitors one by one.

The deadline for his answer was Monday. Saying yes meant leaving in two months—initially for a year, as the letter put it. They both knew that “a year” rarely meant much in letters like that.

Three days ago, she had congratulated him and had not brought it up since. Ever since, he had been trying to say the same sentence. In the car. In the elevator. At her desk while she searched for a document. Each time the sentence had seemed either too big, or ridiculous, or unfair.

Earlier that evening, he had asked her to stay ten minutes longer and said he had thought of an opening for a story.

“What happens next?” she asked.

“You come back one last time.”

“Why the last time?”

“Because soon it will become an ordinary door.”

“Perfect timing.”

“You’ll know.”

“How?”

“With things like that, you just know.”

“No. With things like that, someone sets a deadline so you’ll be afraid of missing it.”

“All right. There is no deadline.”

“There is, even without your door.”

The security guard coughed and held up two splayed fingers.

Two minutes.

She put on her coat and adjusted the collar. He stood, too, though his coffee remained on the table.

“The story isn’t finished,” he said.

“Of course.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

“Because you don’t know whether she goes through.”

“I don’t.”

“Finally.”

She picked up her bag and headed for the exit.

He stayed beside the table. For a moment, he thought that this would be the end of it: she would open the door and step out onto the ordinary street, and tomorrow he would send an email accepting the offer and spend the rest of his life thinking that he had once almost asked.

At the turnstile, she looked back.

“Are you coming?”

“Where?”

She looked at him as though he had once again tried to hide inside the story.

Then she passed through the turnstile, walked up to the glass door, and took hold of the handle.

She opened it.

Cool air rushed into the lobby. Traffic roared. Someone shouted something from across the street. The air smelled of wet asphalt and exhaust.

She stepped across the threshold and did not let go of the door.

“She has a name,” she said.

He came closer.

“Who does?”

“The woman in your story. As long as you call her ‘you,’ you can pretend she could be anyone.”

He stopped before the threshold.

She stood outside, holding the door. There was no more than half a meter between them, but the glass reflected the city and made the distance enormous. In the glass, he could see her back and himself.

He smoothed his hair.

Then he said her name.

For the first time all evening.

She tilted her head slightly.

“Now ask me.”

“I have to give my answer on Monday.”

“I know.”

“If I say yes, I’ll leave in two months.”

“I know that, too.”

He took a breath. The cold air smelled of rain. The sea was nowhere to be heard.

“I want you to come with me.”

She waited.

“I don’t know how things will work out there,” he continued. “I can’t promise it will be better. I’m scared, too. But I don’t want to leave without you.”

She was still holding the door open.

“Is that a question?” she asked.

He realized he had done it again: he still hadn’t asked.

“Will you come with me?”

She looked over his shoulder—at the lobby, the dark monitors, the two cups on the table, the elevators that would carry people upstairs again in the morning. Then she looked at the street.

“I don’t know,” she said.

He nodded. The door began to swing back slowly, and he thought she was about to release the handle.

“But now I can think about it,” she added. “Because now you’re there, not some convenient stranger.”

He stood without crossing the threshold.

“Well?” she asked.

“What?”

“In your story, is he just going to stay inside?”

She held out her free hand.

He took it and stepped through the door.

Beyond the threshold was the same street. The same cars, the same people.

The door closed softly behind them.

For an instant, he thought he heard the surf in the hum of the evening traffic.

But he did not turn around to check.