Cockroach A

Raymond winced with each floor creak.

“Sorry, sorry,” he whispered to himself, hoping the woman in the other room was awake. If she was, she wouldn’t come alive with fright, her default reaction in their encounters. “Oh! you scared me,” when he returned from hours blundering around the city, or “Oh! I didn’t know you were here,” when he hadn’t left the apartment for days.