The backyard was where I did most of my thinking. It was a quiet, private space overgrown with ivy and burdock, surrounded by other five-story brick buildings. Clotheslines crossed between buildings. During the summer, Adelaide would bring the cat outside with her while she answered emails and chain-smoked. The cat would jump over the fence and roam around in the enclosed courtyard, eventually coming back to Adelaide to get scratched behind the ears, or, a couple times, to display a dead rat or pigeon to her. Adelaide never talked baby talk to the cat, the way Nadine and Minna and I all did constantly.

Minna opened the back door and sat down next to me on the top step, holding a plate of scrambled eggs with mushrooms and stringy spinach.

“Hey Leo,” she said. “I saw the texts about the cat when I woke up, but she’s back at her usual place.”

“You guys gotta close that window,” I said.

“We opened it from the top this time,” she said. “There was, like, two inches of space on the top of the window, and she still got out. Maybe we need to get the screen replaced. Can I hit that, by the way?”

I handed her the little glass piece and my lighter. She set the plate down and closed her big, green eyes while maneuvering the flame over the small clump of weed in the bottom of the bowl. Minna’s room was a closet, and with the addition of Adelaide’s belongings was now full to the brim with clothes, records, books, posters, makeup, and knickknacks, and Nadine didn’t let them put the litter box in the living room, so that was in there too. I couldn’t blame them for wanting to keep the window open in the middle of August.

Adelaide complained often about the crampedness of the room, but I never heard Minna mention it. I wondered often if Nadine was in love with Minna. At minimum they used to be good friends, and there was something about Adelaide — tall, slender Adelaide, who had cascading curly hair the color of wheat and long, strong hands — that got under Nadine’s skin. Minna seemed to see her relationship with Adelaide as worth whatever trouble it was causing Nadine, and this hurt Nadine a lot more than anything Adelaide could do.

“What do you have going on today?” Minna asked, handing the piece back and starting on her eggs.

“Nothing,” I said. I checked my phone, scrolled through inane notifications from social media.

Nadine had texted me: went to that coffee place on forest kinda want to avoid the apartment today “lol”

could/should I come by? I texted back.

“I sorta figured, you know, given the weed,” Minna said. “No judgment, though. What’s the damage with Nadine, by the way?”

“The usual damage, I think,” I said.

Nadine replied: ya come through, randomly ran into my friend who I think you’d like