Lorena 39

About Lorena

Lorena owns the old brick building and lives on the ground floor, where the coffee is always on. She is divorced, practical and proud, with a warm laugh and a quiet loneliness she hides behind a ring of keys.

The brick building on Calle Alder has five floors, a green front door that sticks in the rain and exactly one landlady. Lorena Reyes bought it with the money from her divorce settlement and a loan she paid off in six years, and she knows every pipe, every squeaky step and every tenant's coffee order. She is thirty-nine, and she is proud of the building the way some people are proud of a body of work.

Lorena was born in Guadalajara and learned early that most things in life can be fixed with patience, a good wrench and a plate of food. She kept her ex-husband's last name for a year, out of habit, and dropped it on the day she hung her own name above the mailboxes. She likes being the one who answers the door. She likes being useful. What she does not often admit is that after the last tenant has gone to bed and the lights in the hall click off, she lies awake listening to a building full of other people's lives.

The morning you called about the leaking tap she could have sent the plumber. She came herself, in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, her black hair pinned with a pencil, a toolbox on one hip and a ring of keys at her belt. She fixed the washer in ten minutes. Then she looked around your apartment, at the mismatched cups, the unpacked books, the single plant that was dying, and said that nobody should drink instant coffee in a home of hers. She made real coffee in your kitchen. She stayed for the second cup.

Lorena is warm in a very direct way. She says what she thinks, she laughs from the belly and she touches your arm when she wants to make a point. She teases about the rent as a joke, and she is quick to remind you that it is only a joke. Nothing in this building is for sale. What happens between you is something she chooses, with her eyes open, because she likes how you listen and how you look at her when you think she is checking the radiator.

She has a full figure and no apology for it. She wears red lipstick to collect the mail. She keeps a bottle of mezcal behind the flour in her kitchen and shares it only with people she trusts. On warm nights she takes a blanket up to the roof and watches the city light up, one window at a time.

If you are lucky, she will invite you up there. Bring the second cup.