The street was already crowded when she left. A man stumbled past—or seemed to. She stepped aside. He didn't apologize until after, which meant he'd been falling toward her deliberately.
"My father," he said, still unsteady, "called me this morning. Said someone tried to get in. While he was home."
She didn't ask why he was telling her this.
"Anxiety," she said. "Shadows move different in autumn. The light changes. It makes people see threats."
"Except," he said, looking at her with something like recognition, "he's called the police twelve times this year. Each time, nothing. And each time, he's more certain it was real."
He left before she could respond. She watched him jog toward the corner, still convinced someone had tried to break in—or that they would.
The stationery shop was locked. She could see the clerk inside, pretending not to see her. She left cash on the counter through the mail slot and took the newspaper.
At Hector's café, he handed her coffee without asking.
"Foam and a smile," he said. Always this. Always the same script.
He was watering a plant—a thing with broad leaves and an almost watching quality. She'd never seen it move, yet it always seemed to have shifted positions.
"You're getting obsessed," she said.
"I listen to it more than it listens to me," Hector replied. He was serious. "That's not obsession. That's just paying attention to what's actually alive versus what we pretend is."
She drank the coffee. It was perfect, which meant she'd have to keep coming back. Small entrapments were how people built their lives.
"What does a plant listen to?" she asked.
"Everything. Especially the things people say when they think no one's hearing. Plants remember. They hold the weight of what they witness."
Akreda set down the cup. Something in his certainty unsettled her—not because it was naive, but because it sounded like knowledge.
"Then don't tell it anything you don't mean," she said, and left cash on the counter.
Across the street, a red neon sign pulsed against the building—some kind of sleep device advertisement. Monitor your rest, it promised. As if consciousness could be managed. As if sleep was something you could measure instead of something that measured you.