#004 | 7th Floor Harriet

Every time Harriet enters her apartment building, she darts to the seventh floor. It takes her 73 seconds to sprint up those stairs, which she does two to four times a day, burning about 50 calories per try. She’s not a runner, a notorious burglar, or a cheetah, but she manages to power through that bullish trek like her nephew Thibaut’s life depended on it. In a way, it did.

Harriet doesn’t need to be fast on her size 9.5s, but her history of speeding through that seven-floor trip goes back to her 16th birthday. As she celebrated finishing middle school, she invited her friends to her home for some Punch and Trail Mix. Thibaut skips Language Arts to attend this big occasion. Forget that he’s in the 4th grade. Just focus on the fact that he puts family first. 

Harriet’s friends are all her age, but they are about to become high school juniors, since they didn’t get held back two years for roundhouse-ing the nefarious P.E. teacher. Her friends are Jill, Zoey, Xander, and Johnno. The first three are American, but the last one, Johnno, is from Australia. New South Wales, to be specific. Newtown, to be more specific. 

Johnno thinks he’s a real whiz with his stories. Because he comes from where tank tops were invented, all of his tales cannot be verified, since no one wants to pay a couple thou just to fly over to another continent and interview a primary witness. So, on Harriet’s big day, Johnno tells a story about his party monster mate named X, who he brings up every so often. Johnno talks about how X once chugged an entire handle of St. Preux Rum, ran 12.5 kilometers (about 7.77 American miles), then concluded his race on Quay Street, where he found a woman named Sally Wilkinson, and married her on the spot.

Jill, Zoey, and Xander bought into the story immediately, and just like every adventure of Johnno’s that they hear, they belly-laughed until Xander started coughing out whatever he was eating. For the uninitiated, Xander has a sensitive throat and should chew his food slower, but never does. 

Harriet, on the other hand, couldn’t believe this ridiculous X story. 

“That’s bull, Johnno. I didn’t graduate hi-… junior… high to be talked to like a dimwit. X is a liar.” 

Johnno blinks real fast in disbelief.

He’s shared stories at every Punch and Trail Mix gathering this group has ever had up to this point. To be told, for the very first time, that he was mincing a story, was like having a handle of St. Preux shot out of a cannon and launched at his unit. He doesn’t like that, so he decides to immediately call X. Johnno hands the phone to the junior highly-educated Harriet. 

“You calling me a liar, Harry?” 

“Hi X, it’s just Harriet, and yes, I am.” 

They go back and forth until X challenges Harriet to fly over to Newtown, where she can witness him recreate the entire story, all while participating in the festivities herself.

The trick, though, was that if X proved himself to Harry —I guess I’m saying it now too— HARRIET, then he would send an assassin after Thibaut. Harsh, I know, but you didn’t hear the rest of the things Harriet said to X over that phone call. It’s probably best no one else does.

So, three days later, Harriet arrives at the Sydney airport, and X picks her up. The 20-minute drive to Newtown sees X and Harriet intensely bark at one another, like dogs in rival gangs. X parks right outside of his townhouse. The two of them head to the liquor store. They stretch. They kickstart Phase One, as they each “cheers” with their respective handles of St. Preux, chugging it down like it isn’t 94 Proof. 

Phase Two sees these newly-acquainted rivals run 12.5 kilometers, basically to a rusty green bench in the middle of the Botanic Gardens and back. In case you all forgot, Harriet isn’t a runner. She isn’t a notorious burglar, and she’s probably not a cheetah. She just has that “dawg” in her. She keeps up with X throughout all 12 and a half kilos until they detour to Quay Street. 

Phase Three. After six minutes of knocking on doors and speaking to a strange crop of strangers, they run into Sally Wilkinson. A different Sally Wilkinson. X marries her on the spot, just like he did in the original story. Harriet’s jaw drops.

After icing her face for six days, due to her jaw being wide open the entire flight home, she apologizes to Johnno, and the five friends move on with their lives. But ever since her New South Welsh-ish journey, she’s had trouble being around Thibaut. 

Knowing that her Aussie trip has put a target on her nephew’s back, she’s been cautious about spending time with him amongst strangers. The thought that X’s assassin could be out there has made her unwilling to go anywhere with him unless all of her buddies were available too. Her friends saw this as her wanting to spend more time as a group. They didn’t think she saw them as collateral.

Thibaut asks her to take him to the new Pacemaker sequel, but she declines, even though she actually loved the first one. Pacemaker 1 didn’t have the $80 million budget that the sequel got, but it had so much heart. Noel “Ritchie” Richards is in it, and he puts on a solid performance for a bassist-turned-movie star. Thibaut asks her to help him with his solar system project, but she blows him off. He even invited her to his fancy yo-yo club meets, but she had to hold back tears as she told him she could no longer do stuff like that around him.

As her bond with her nephew grew colder than a rapper’s wrists, Harriet felt it was time to invite her buddies over for some Punch and Trail Mix. Gathering everybody together would be the perfect opportunity for her to come clean and tell them about what X told her if she was proven wrong. An excited Thibaut nearly hits his head on the ceiling, overzealous as he tells her that he’ll swing by after hanging out with his friend Andy at his house.

The day finally arrives. With all the emotions bundling up inside her, Harry decides to let loose and tell a joke. It kills. Xander’s mouthful of trail mix ends up choking him, and he curls over. Johnno segues into another tank top island story about a woman he kept running into at a Woolies, only for him to find out that she was a newly licensed private investigator, who had no idea how obvious she was being. She wasn’t following Johnno, but it was a strange coincidence that they bumped into each other three times a month through most of 2018. 

Jill and Zoey notice that Xander has been quiet, but do nothing. A stressed-out, and energy-deficient Harriet realizes that she’s starving. 

“You guys want Alfredo? I know you all like Alfredo. Thibaut likes Alfredo…” 

Jill, Zoey, and Johnno nod in unison. She reaches into the kitchen cupboard, where she keeps a binder full of delivery menus, and whips out one from D’Amato’s, an Italian joint about 15 minutes out. Their food is OKAY, but the servings are generous, and they don’t complain about getting tipped in nickels only. While waiting for that D’Amato delivery, Harriet chugs several cups of punch, as Jill tries to tell a story of her own, only to lose track of her journey.

The little hand on the clock hits six, as the big hand hits 12, implying that it’s six o’clock. Harriet gets a ring from the delivery driver, which couldn’t have been better timed since she was already bored to death by Jill’s speaking. She heads downstairs to get the food herself. As she opens her apartment door, she stops and notices something on the wall.

“Huh. That’s new.” 

There’s a small part of her that thinks about peeling off one of these paint chips, but she knows how weird the maintenance guy is with people touching the walls. She begins heading down to the sixth floor, as a door pops open. 

“Can ya keep it down out there?!” 

“I’m sorry, I’m just having a difficult, last couple of years.” 

The tenant in unit 603 pops their head out. He’s a 60-inch tall, bubbly man. 

“Enough with the excuses! Stop stomping ‘round like a buffalo, ya heard?” 

“M-Mr. Snodgrass?!” 

Her eyes light up, as she recognizes this sweaty character as the P.E. teacher she once demonstrated her Muay Thai against. 

“I didn’t know you lived here Mr. Snodgrass. You look like shit.” 

“Fuck you, you… Cynthia Rothrock-wannabe bitch! I still can’t see out of my left eye on most days, y’know! Try teaching physical education with a twitchy eye.” 

“You don’t need two eyes to suck at everything.”

“You suck, at everything!”

Harriet feints hip movement as if she’s about to pull out that kick again. He flinches. That’s a wrap on floor six.

She continues her slow, heavy-footed walk down to floor number five. Harriet’s clubber feet have an almost musical composition to them, like an orchestra of tired limbs, fueled by a fear of imminent doom. Oh shit! Thibaut! Where is that goofy billy goat?! Harriet looks around, hoping to will him into existence on this fifth level of floors, but she remembers he’s still at his buddy Andy’s house. 

“Oh, thank someone’s god.” 

Next floor.

Harriet has no connection to the 4th floor, so we’ll skip that one.

By the time she reaches floor #3, she feels her feet begin to swell. Her knees buckle, she feels the sweat dripping down her forehead, and her breathing is getting out of control. 

“What the hell?” 

She’s blown away by how out of shape she feels. Could it be the six cups of punch? The hunger? Or was it the fact that she hasn’t drank actual water in a couple days, because of the X-possibly-killing-Thibaut plot?

Nevertheless, she proceeds, taking the turn along the 3rd floor to approach the next flight of stairs. Overwhelmed by the messy situation she’s found herself in, she looks up to the ceiling lights, but someone must’ve upped the brightness because next thing you know… she’s… she’s out cold.

There’s a beverage company out in Japan that makes a popular salty lychee beverage that kills in the summertime. It’s a fruity, refreshing bev that hits that spot, perfect for when you have mid-summer heat waves beating down from above. Harriet dreams about this drink, which makes sense since she watched a YouTube about it not too long ago. Harriet licks her lips, imagining that she’s got a hold of that delicious bev. 

She comes to, only to realize that it’s blood in her mouth, not salty lychee. 

“Yikes.” 

She wipes her face, discovering that she has broken her nose from her face-first dive down an entire flight of stairs. 

“The fucking ‘fredo better not be cold, cause I swear to someone-“ 

She slowly gets up, using every ounce of her depleted energy to will her way towards the last set of steps. With a hand on the rail, she inches forward, as the front doors come into view. 

“Where you at, MFer?!” She screams at the top of her lungs. The delivery driver is nowhere in sight. But she sees a bag hanging on the front door handle. She limps her way to the entrance, throwing her “runner, but not a runner” frame onto the only thing protecting the tenants from the real-world weirdos, and reaches for this reusable plastic bag. She looks inside, finding the paper receipt for the Alfredos she ordered, name and all, as well as the numerous containers of pasta that her desperate body could probably annihilate in one sitting.

With the package secured, Harriet recollects herself and begins the long climb up to the much-loved seventh floor. She gently hypes herself up. 

“I can do this. I can do this.” 

The ascent to the top begins, but she’s hit with a wave of emotions. All those times she sprinted up to her apartment at a remarkably consistent 73 seconds… All the times she could’ve entered her home without the sweat patterns of a middle-aged gym-goer… All of that was being put on the line tonight, as she carried her cold Alfredo like it was her own, aware that her nephew’s precious life was still at stake. She wrestles her way up to the second floor. 

“I’m doing this for you, Thibaut. Don’t you die on me, boy.” 

She hunches over the door to unit 201, as she rips open the first container of Alfredo for an emergency bite (or five).

Off to floor three.

She steps past the pool of blood she left earlier, marching on like a soldier. She makes it to the fourth floor. Again, it’s an insignificant level, so we’ll carry on.

Floor five appears, and she hears a familiar voice in the distance. 

“Harriet.” 

She does a half-turn, as she says “Thibaut, for the last time, it’s Aunt Harriet, you-“. 

She stops. He’s not there. 

He’s still at Andy’s house. Or is he? The contrasting fear and self-assurance give Harriet this disgusting feeling inside. She opens up the second helping of pasta.

She looks up to the sixth floor, hearing the Italian sports/gossip program Calcio Incredibile play from Snodgrass’ television set, whose cartoonish bouts of hysteria ring in the background. Harriet works her way up to that floor and, very maturely, nods to Snodgrass, even though he isn’t looking. She takes the opportunity to get another bite of ‘fredo.

As she enters the final stretch of her vertical hike, she sees the shadows reflecting from her apartment. She’s overwhelmed with joy, knowing that she’ll get to see her friends again soon. They’ve spent so much time apart from each other. How have they been? Did they finish school? Did Jill finally shut the fuck up? The possibilities were endless.

Harriet powers through those last steps, clamping her way to her place. She pops in, uses what little energy she has remaining to prop up the violated pasta like a trophy, only to see the disturbed looks on her friends’ faces. Someone else has finally joined the group.

“Oh, Thibaut… Thibaut… I’m so sorry…” 

“Harriet.” 

“Aunt Harriet.”

She gives him the warmest of hugs. He’s alright! A sense of relief overwhelms Harriet.

“We have to talk.”

“I know! I know. There’s a lot I want to clear up. So let’s fuel up first then get this dialogue go-"

“Xander’s dead.” 

Oh— the cocktail of emotions she’s going through right now… She stampers, trying to verbalize something amidst this undying starvation and jungle juice of feelings that’s rushing through her veins.

“That’s fine.”