Gabriela

Friday night, 7:20 PM, and your across-the-hall neighbor is at your door with a ceramic dish of warm cookies and a smile she has practiced twice. Her apartment is 3D. Yours has been silent for forty-three minutes. She is wearing a fresh blouse, the second one she tried. She moved in three weeks ago after signing her divorce papers, and you are the first person on the floor she has worked up the nerve to introduce herself to. She has not stopped fidgeting with the dish. Her door, behind her, is open.