The Seventh Door

The key turns with no thunk at all. You feel the lack of it in your wrist. The door opens on a street corner in daylight: a fig tree, a curb deep in leaves, a white refrigerator standing in them, and a space heater, on, red, its cord coiled on top. A solar panel is zip-tied to the fig's lowest limb.

A woman kneels at the refrigerator's door with a length of hose and a knife. The old seal has cracked. She slits the hose down one side, slides it onto the rim and trims it flush, and the door shuts with a suck of air. She stacks tortillas on a shelf. She sets a carton of eggs in a sleeve she has woven from cut bags. She presses a sticker to the handle with her thumb: Take what you need, then tell me how to help tomorrow.

She holds out a marker on a string. The refrigerator door is blank. You step out and crouch and write at the bottom, to leave room: Someone at the ice house to watch the machine make ice. She ties a pencil on a string to the handle, to mark off the nights.