Mail for Apartment 0 & Voicemails

The landlord had several rules about the building, but the one she repeated most often concerned the mail.

Do not open anything that isn't addressed to you, she would say whenever letters ended up in the wrong boxes.

Put it in the blue mailbox downstairs.

I had lived there for almost seven months and assumed she was unusually strict about privacy.

The building had an old row of brass mail slots in the lobby, each marked with a black apartment number.

The slots often jammed, especially when the weather was damp, so letters regularly ended up in the wrong boxes.

Whenever that happened, I dropped them into the blue mailbox beside the front desk.

The landlord emptied it every evening.

At least, I thought she did.

I've never actually seen her open it.

The letter arrived on a Tuesday.

I came home carrying groceries and grabbed the entire bundle of mail without checking it.

I didn't notice the unfamiliar envelope until I was upstairs at my kitchen table.

It was plain white, slightly yellow around the edges, with no stamp, return address, or postmark.

The front had been typed in faded black ink.

Current occupant, apartment zero.

The building did not have an apartment zero.

The ground floor apartments began at 1A and 1B.

Beneath them were the lobby, boiler room, and basement laundry area.

I had passed every door often enough to know there was no zero anywhere.

I should have taken the envelope downstairs.

Instead, I held it up to the light.

There appeared to be only one sheet of paper inside.

I told myself it was probably an old management notice or a joke from another tenant.

The landlord's warning hadn't crossed my mind.