No Footprints by Susan Dunlap

long?”
    â€ŸDoes he practice? Long as he wants. That’s the deal. Rock bottom rent; never complain.”
    â€ŸHow do you”—I shouted over the latest burst—‟stand—”
    â€ŸAt school. Girlfriend. Hang out.”
    â€ŸTessa, how does she?”
    â€ŸDunno.” He fingered his headphones.

    â€ŸHer boyfriend, does he come here?”
    â€ŸNo one comes here, not if they don’t have to.”
    â€ŸNo one comes to see her here?”
    â€ŸWhy would they?” He seemed anxious to block out noise, in this case me.
    â€ŸShe told me to wait in her room for her.”
    He jerked his head toward the hall.
    The walls were covered with acoustic tiles, in the hall and—I pushed open her door—in her room. Which just meant that the noise came through the inadequate carpeting. I’d been expecting this room to be the size of the living room—Tessa’s half of the apartment—but if it’d held a king-size bed, I’d have had to edge around it. It didn’t. No bed at all. There was a desk, a serious metal file cabinet, the kind that has folders left to right rather than back to front. Neat, tall stacks of papers on top, bigger, more irregular piles against another wall. And on the carpet, dirt streaks from two narrow tires. No landline. No computer, damn! I pulled open the closet and almost fell over a rolled mat. Her bed? How could she live here? Much less work here? Maybe she was deaf? No, of course not—she’d heard Mike’s horn; she’d talked to Kristi and the woman at the resale shop. How could anyone with normal hearing endure this? Why?
    The pipes screeched and kept at it. I could barely keep from running out, but made myself look through the closet. Of course it was empty, but for a pair of bike shorts. On the floor was a pile of blankets, sheets, pillow. I turned back to the room, hesitated, and picked up the pillow and shook it. Just a pillow. The sheets under it were just sheets. But under that—voilà!—was a laptop.
    I shifted the nearest pile from the top of the file cabinet to make space. It was made up of college catalogs: Allegheny in Pennsylvania, Bucknell University, Lehigh, Lafayette, Muhlenberg, Susquehanna, all in
Pennsylvania. The next stack held schools in Virginia, and there were ones for Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey, and, finally, Ohio. What was this fascination with East Coast colleges?
    A new screech made me slam my hand over my ears. Papers on the bulletin board shook. If there were an earthquake I wouldn’t notice. If the building were attacked by terrorists I’d be dead before I realized it.
    I moved the computer so I could see the door and turned it on. Please don’t use a password! I prayed to the balance-in-the-universe gods, the ones who arrange for you to whip through town on all green lights—that after a day of all reds. And damned if they didn’t come through—bagpipe payback? —not only to a screen but, after one click, right to Google. I had only to click on History to see a list of colleges that went on for pages. Websites showed one homey place for eager happy students after another. One after another students hurried or strolled though sun and snow, among pines and oaks. But never palms.
    I checked the list more carefully. No state universities, no Ivy League schools, but, if the ones I recognized were examples, small liberal arts schools. Not one of them was in California.
    Odd.
    The noise stopped. The silence was piercing.
    How long had I been here, in this stranger’s room? I just hoped if she came back I’d hear her lugging her bike up the stairs. Quickly I skimmed down the history, now ignoring the colleges until I came to Bank of America. I clicked on the website, but of course a password was necessary.
    I glanced nervously toward the hall. No one was there. I clicked on Documents, Self. Everyone knows better, but please be one of the