Most days, he brought the same kind of sandwich, wrapped in wax paper the way someone does when they have been doing it for decades.
I brought whatever I had managed to make that morning.
We spoke about little things. The weather. A book he was reading. His irritation over the elevator that had been out of order for three weeks.
Nothing important, yet somehow all of it mattered.
Charles always carried a small notebook in his shirt pocket, its corners worn and softened. After lunch, before he rose to return to his cart, he would take it out and jot something down. Mealplanning kits
Quickly. One or two lines.
I figured it was a grocery list, or maintenance reminders, or something just as ordinary.
I never asked.
That is the part I keep returning to now. Not once did I ask what he was writing.
The jokes began gradually, as most unkindness does.
“Lunch with your boyfriend again?” someone said one afternoon, grinning as if it were the cleverest thing they had said all week.
