It was the end of the afternoon. The city was slowing down, as it was time to unwind after a day that had been grueling for some, as always, or simply busy, even though not for everyone.
The lights of the city were already coming to life, bringing with them the poetic sleeplessness of the concrete jungle. Though, if anything marred the beauty of the night, it was the smell of civilization, the fumes that didn't linger only in the arteries and veins running through the city, but everywhere, pervasive and not subtle at all, unless one was used to it. And everyone seemed used to it.
In front of a shop in the middle of the transitioning city, a woman stood by the road, casual, but focused, and not on the cold drink she was sucking through a straw. With a dark cap on her head covering not only her short hair of the same color but also lowered to cover a part of her features, she kept a discreet watch on the building across the road.
It was a high-rise, an apartment building which, at first sight, not many could afford to get a residence in. And the woman did not look like she was checking for an apartment to buy or rent.
Dressed in a dark jacket zipped to the chest, she had dark pants below, gender-neutral boots of the same tone as the rest of her ensemble at her feet. And on her back was a stuffed bag of a somber color.
She sucked her drink with noise that masked her tense state with nonchalance as she barely restrained herself from pacing back and forth. Time passed slowly, and the evening continued running its course, until she was jolted by a sight, and she sucked the last few drops still lingering at the bottom of her cup.
Her eyes on the man who was walking to the high-end apartment building she had been monitoring, she hurried to the side and dropped the empty container into the trash. With a few steps, she arrived by the road. Fortunately, the rush hour had passed already, and the traffic was lighter. Keeping her attention on the man whose hair looked difficult to distinguish between dark and brown from afar, she ran to the other side, and with an exhale, she adjusted her expression, pushed down further the peak shading her face.
With a deep breath, she hurried to the open entrance of the building, and exhaled. Her attention barely lingered on the staff behind the reception desk in the lobby. She locked her gaze onto the closing door of the elevator, and shouted, her face, even if partially hidden, full of emotion:
"Alex Lenner! Wait!! Don't you dare go!!!"
With that, she took off, and ran to the door that had been reflexively stopped by the one inside. By the time the staff reacted, she was inside the elevator, and the door was closing.
*Ding*
It was then that the woman in uniform behind the reception desk turned to her male companion, still processing what just happened. She asked, suspicious of what she had just seen:
"Was that mister Lenner just now?"
Her male colleague thought for a moment, then shook his head:
"No."
A pause, for the relief that she had not seen wrong, nor called a wrong name when greeting just now, to settle, she went on to ask again:
"So that woman…"
The male receptionist nodded, and voiced firmly:
"She made a mistake."
That got a frown out of the female receptionist, and in line with her professionalism, she proposed:
"Then should we send for the security to bring her out?"
But her colleague actually hesitated, torn between protecting the privacy of the residents, and another possible mistake. So he lowered his voice, and leaned over after looking at the empty lobby:
"Don't you think that she may be one of mister Lenner's… you know?"
That made the female receptionist pause, before her heart slid down to her stomach, and she fell into the same state of apprehension as her colleague.
"So, what do we do?"
Fortunately, her colleague had used the few seconds she had taken to understand the situation to think things through:
"Since we don't know if roughing that woman up will offend him, let's wait for her to come down and leave on her own. Anyway, mister Lenner is not home right now."
The woman thought for a moment, then nodded:
"Alright. Let's do that. But let's keep an eye on her."
"Yes."
With that out of the way, the suppressed desire to gossip climbed to the surface, and the male receptionist whispered with a schadenfreude-filled smirk:
"Do you think Mr Lenner finally got one of his conquests pregnant?"
His female colleague didn't even glance at him. His words made her fall into a daze, and she replied with a dreamy whisper that twisted his smirk into something bleak:
"I would be so happy if he could conquer me and make me pregnant."
_ _ _
_ _ _
A few seconds ago, the woman in black with half of her face hidden by a baseball cap of the dark color zoomed past the door that had been held back. But when she glanced at the man who had held back the elevator, she seemed taken aback, before she apologized:
"Sorry, I took you for someone else."
Even though half of her features remained obscured, as she avoided raising her head too much, her undeniable beauty made the stout brown-haired man pause before he smiled, like all men before beautiful women:
"It's alright. Are you still going up?"
The woman nodded, and pressed on the button of the last floor. That got her a surprised glance from the man. She did not speak anymore, and seeing that, the man also said no more. The door closed and the lift took off toward the floor whose button the man had already pressed before.
*Ding*
The elevator stopped, and the man stepped out, leaving after one last glance at the woman, his gaze carrying an indescribable emotion, like disappointment, but also like envy, all held in a soundless sigh.
The woman with short dark hair caressing her chin did not react. She did not raise her head until the door closed again, and the lift continued on its way. In the ensuing silence of the vertical journey, the woman turned slightly, to have her back to the camera on the roof of the metallic box, and took out her phone.
Glancing at it, there was a chat opened with an unknown number, with one message at the bottom that had been sent over an hour ago, containing four simple words, and reading:
"He is not home."