Sol
by Alex Littlefield
Every so often, towards midnight, Sol visits her apartment. He arrives consistently at 11:30pm. Sol’s punctuality should mitigate the shock of his visits, but somehow she has never grown completely accustomed.
The conditions he’s imposed on her tenancy are more than a little invasive; no bikinis are to be worn in the back yard, she has had to disclose her profession (teacher, preschool) on move-in, and she has 
signed away her right to host more than fifteen people at a time. In this context, a sixty-year-old Hasidic man making late-night calls to her apartment can seem like just another rider on the contract.
In fact, Sol’s presence has come to feel almost heartening; he acts like her surrogate father in an otherwise faceless city. He slides into her apartment—seeming to levitate, since his black coat always hides his feet—and makes a pretense of checking the thermostat, which has been broken since she moved in. She thinks he is also checking for a gentlemen caller, but by some stroke of luck these two bodies have never collided.
“It’s 11:30,” he says, when he’s made his rounds. “You should really go to bed if you want to wake up on time.”
Most twenty-somethings would rile at this sort of directive, but she abides it and has even begun to anticipate—if not quite look forward to—Sol’s visits. One night, towards his usual hour, she leaves her front door unlocked.
Sol knocks, then tests the knob. When it slides open, he seeps into the room with more fluidity than normal.
“Hey,” he says, “you didn’t lock the door. This is a dangerous city. You don’t want just anyone walking into your home.”
Sol sees danger everywhere. He wouldn’t shake her hand the first time they met, explaining that he could not touch any woman who wasn’t his wife. His mother included.
She once asked if he had children. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I can’t count them on my fingers and toes.”
