In the group chat
Dinners for Number Twelve
Joon had started the chat on a Tuesday, eleven minutes after he saw Mrs. Varga from number twelve being helped out of a taxi with her leg in a cast. He named it Dinners for Ilona, added nine neighbors, and posted a table: one name per evening for three weeks, with a note that she didn't eat fish and loved anything with dill. He had put himself down for both Sundays, because Sundays were when people forgot.
He kept the chat warm the way some people keep a stove going. When a student wrote, shyly, that he could only make pasta, Joon answered, "Pasta is perfect, she told me she misses it," and then knocked on Mrs. Varga's door to make sure that was true. He posted a photo of Thursday's mushroom barley soup. Fourteen hearts.
Then, on Friday, Mr. Petrov wrote: "This group sends too many messages. A list on the door would do the same job. Muting." Joon read it in the hallway. His face went hot, as though it had been said aloud in front of everyone, which in a way it had. He scrolled back and counted his own messages. Nineteen in ten days. It looked like a lot now.
He typed, "Sorry everyone, I'll keep it quieter!" and deleted it, because it sounded wounded. He typed, "Good idea about the list," and deleted that too; a list on a door doesn't tell a shy student that pasta is welcome. In the end he posted nothing, and felt the nothing all through dinner. "Do you think I talk too much in the building chat?" he asked his wife. "I think Mrs. Varga has eaten well for ten days," Mina said.
At nine the student wrote to him privately. "She asked for my pasta again. Thank you for adding me." Joon read it three times. Then he printed the rota, taped it to the front door for Mr. Petrov, and went back to the chat to remind Saturday's cook about the dill.