---
date: '2025-06-01'
description: 'tw: addiction'
id: dundurn
modified: 2026-06-05 15:08:09 GMT-04:00
signature: AP
socials:
substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/livingalone/p/apartment-two-twenty?r=1z8i4s&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
tags:
- home
- p/fiction
- writing
title: apartment two twenty
created: '2025-06-01'
published: '2025-06-01'
pageLayout: default
slug: posts/dundurn
permalink: https://aarnphm.xyz/posts/dundurn.md
generator:
quartz: v4.6.0
hostedProvider: Cloudflare
baseUrl: aarnphm.xyz
full: https://aarnphm.xyz/llms-full.txt
---
![[posts/images/edward-hopper-house-by-the-railroad.webp|House by the railroad, Edward Hopper]]
The apartment was a cast-off corner of an old paper mill, ten paces to the windows blackened with soot and wood dust.
Gas pipes ran along the brick walls like exposed veins, feeding the single flickering lamp that cast everything in amber shadows.
Sunlight crept a cautious half-flight up the ashen brick, then gave up, leaving the upper reaches in permanent dusk.
Steel trusses crossed fifteen—no, twenty—feet overhead, bolted tight as though to contain the resonance of its past glory days.
_The ceiling pressed down between his shoulder blades._
Air tasted of coal dust and latent cold.
The radiator in the corner had been painted over so many times it looked like a small government monument to inefficiency,
its brass nameplate reading “Reg. No. 7439-B” in script so ornate it might have been lifted from a Victorian death certificate.
The galley kitchenette clung to the south wall: single hotplate, half-sized fridge, enamel sink no wider than his shoulders.
The Turkish cezve sat cold on the burner—J had brought it from the Berkeley flea market, back when mornings meant something.
“For our mornings,” she’d said, and he’d believed in plural futures then.
Across the room, the futon disappeared beneath drifts of half-folded laundry.
He sat at the blond-wood desk that N had helped him carry up the stairs last winter—or was it the winter before?
The MacBook’s A and W keys had been rubbed to ghosts by his index finger.
Eight coffee cups formed a semicircle around the laptop, each one a failed attempt at staying productive.
_One, two, three… six, six, seven, eight… ten… seventeen. He counted between the flickers._
“Vereinbarung”. Page sixty-three. Agreement. Arrangement. Understanding. _He typed: “contract”._
…
The cursor hadn’t moved for another twenty minutes.
---
Ausführungsbestimmungen. Executive provisions. Or maybe just decisions. Or maybe nothing at all.
It was Tuesday, which meant he should have been on bar shift four hours ago. Or was it Thursday?
The phone showed sixteen missed calls: K from Casa’s, the coffee shop manager.
Phone buzzing:
(415) Calling…
Her _area_ code.
He let it ring. Watched the screen go black.
He deleted the other voice mails without listening. There was a peculiar comfort in not knowing what he was avoiding.
The radiator’s midnight clang unfurled through what morning light remained.
His hands shook as he reached for the chipped Carrara-white mug. The espresso had grown a skin.
The coffee tasted like yesterday.
_The tremor began in his jaw, radiated to those shaky hands._
Across the courtyard, the couple in 3B had their curtains half-drawn again. Her blouse gaped; his hands braced against brick.
Sweat on her collarbone. He looked away, then back.
_He tongued the roof of his mouth: The chalky residue was now gone. Soon._
A knock at the door. People had been knocking all week—HOA notices, gas inspections, the property manager about his succulents dying on the fire escape. Or was that last week? Time kinked around the pills.
“It’s T. From the shop.”
_Which morning? The one that stretched back in time, or forward into the one that may never come?_
Laptop showed 3:47 PM Tuesday. His watch: 8:15. The cezve was still cold. The grounds in the pot were dry, still.
He stood, knees buckled. _When had he last stood?_ Ninety-seven pages complete. The floor tilted, then leveled. He counted the coffee bags on the counter—seventeen,
half torn, the other spilled on top of the counter—he couldn’t remember emptying them.
“I know you’re in there man. I can smell the coffee.”
_But the cezve was cold. He smelled his palms, reeked of stale espresso._
“I’m sick,” he rasped.
“Yeah, okay. Just… K wants to know if you’re coming back. Ever.”
He patted his pockets. One bar left. The pharmacy on King closed at six. His hand shook against the brick wall.
“Tell him Thursday.”
“It _is_ Thursday.”
Time had slipped again.
“NEXT THURSDAY!” he shouted, voice splintering.
Footsteps receded.
“Okay, just checking. You okay, bud?”
_He stared at the cezve. Still cold. J’s mornings were five thousand miles away._
“Ye—s,” he murmured.
The hallway fell silent. He saved the file `FINAL_FINAL_V7.txt`, and opened his notebook: “Translation as a disappearing act.”
New e-mail from __: “Standard rate, due upon completion.”
He dry-swallowed the last half-bar.
Thought-threads arranged themselves into neat ledger rows. Outside, light drained through budding branches.
His phone rang: San Francisco again—Dr. M’s office about the missed appointment. He’d been missing a lot of appointments lately. Missing everything, really, except this chair and this screen.
Radiator knocked once, twice. A brown leaf pirouetted off the last living plant and lay on the sill. Tomorrow he would water them. Or Thursday.
He stood, eye fixed blankly on the door. T’s footsteps had faded, but the knocking persisted inside his skull. _That clanging noise, that buzz_. His jaw tensed, and he wiped the damp palms against the jeans.
The tremors had returned, fingers twitching.
_The pharmacy closes at six._
He fumbled for his wallet, fingers shaking as he counted the bills—twenty, forty, sixty. Expired credit card, edges worn. _Barely enough for two bars._
At the door, he paused and looked back at the apartment: the cold cezve, the blinking cursor, the untranslated paragraph.
“_Five thousand miles…_” he murmured.
The warped floorboards yawning beneath each crooked step. Halfway down, he leaned briefly against the cracked plaster,
the wall bowing slightly, pressed against his shoulder. The floodlights blurred.
Faces passed—strangers casting sidelong glances at the thin man in yesterday’s clothes who moved like he was carrying invisible weight.
The pharmacy stood beside the coffee bar where he worked—high tin ceilings blackened with centuries of cigarette smoke.
He saw T leaning over the La Marzocco, the one he operated for two years before everything started sliding sideways. Their eyes met for a brief second.
T mouthed something, but the street noise—car horns, distant sirens—swallowed the words.
_He looked away, disappearing into the revolving door._
“Two? Again?” The pharmacist’s recognition carried a particular kind of weariness.
_He nodded, lips parting silently._
“Give me a minute.”
Shoulders tense, skin prickling beneath his shirt. The mirrors showed him repeated, pale, sagging.
His eyes fixed on the cabinet behind the counter. _School buses_, he thought, spotting the yellow rectangles. _Ladders_ for the scored white ones.
_He got the pills._
Outside again, prescription folded in the palm of his hand, he hesitated. The street lamps cast pools of yellow light. Glendale Park lay nearby.
The gate stood open.
He walked the familiar path past the memorial bench, past the oak where lovers carved their temporary eternities. His footsteps found their own rhythm,
leading him to the small rise where the city’s glow dimmed. Here, he lay back upon the damp earth.
The pills dissolved bitter beneath his tongue. The sky stretched above him, cool against his burning skin. When his phone rang—J’s ringtone, that particular melody of reproach—he felt the vibration through the ground more than heard it. He hadn’t returned her call back. Probably wouldn’t now.
Voices grew distant, submerged beneath a rhythmic murmur like waves pulsing behind his temples. _T and K calling his name, their footsteps hurried across gravel._
But their voices were already fading, drifting further away with each beat of his slowing heart.
_“No pulse… Breathing shallow…”_
_May 29th, 2025_
\[^sign\]
---
## updates.
Hi everyone, hope everyone is doing well.
I had a bit of trouble publishing this one given that between moving and other life events, but finally got some pockets of time to finish this.
This piece is a homage to my previous apartment in Hamilton, where I lived for two years.
I didn’t enjoy school and was dreading moving back to Canada after San Francisco. But this
apartment became part of me—it made me enjoy my stay in Canada. Getting to know the people working in the neighborhood became a major part of my life.
If you’re ever in Hamilton, here are some recs:
- Democracy on Locke, and Epic Books
- My favorite bar—s/o to Cima and staff (if you’re ever in town, check them out and tell them Aaron sent you)
- James Waldron Butcher Shop
- Mickey McGuire Cheese shop on Ogilvie Street
- Locke Street
Things I did there:
- Made friends with people twenty years older than me. Learned a few things here and there.
- Hung out with neighbors, which was a lot of fun, got to know a lot of people my parents’ age 😸
- Hosted a few [[thoughts/atelier with friends|functions]] there. (Once my dining table arrives, I’ll resume this in Toronto!)
- Morning walks and runs near Chedoke Park
- Falling out of love
- Falling in love
- Falling out of love again
The thing about living alone is that you grow used to being lonely—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
You realize you have more time and freedom to do whatever you want. This workflow fits me well, despite the
busy school and work schedule. I miss Hamilton quite a bit: its silence, its tranquility. Some of the people
I met there have become lifelong friends. Watching their journeys grow, with ambitions and hope—it was good.
But I knew I wouldn’t stay there permanently, so it felt like the right time to move.
I’ve been in this new spot for six weeks now, still finding my groove. Though I do feel a bit lost lately—not in the
sense that something has gone wrong, but rather that the energy and flow of city living pushes me to go outside and do more, to be productive while I’m here.
Sometimes this makes it hard to find pockets of time to do what I enjoy. Maybe I’ll rediscover this joy of cooking once the table arrives 😅
A bit of work-related: I have joined the core committers group for vLLM. I’m currently mostly working on structured outputs/speculative decoding/tool calling, so feel free to reach out if you have any questions related to these topics. More than happy to chat with!
Here are some pieces I enjoyed recently:
- The Need For Roots by Simone Weil
- The third [chair](https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/third-chair) by Henrik Karlsson
- The history of [album art](https://matthewstrom.com/writing/album-art/), by Matt Ström-Awn
- Rearchitecting Hugging Face Uploads and [Downloads](https://huggingface.co/blog/rearchitecting-uploads-and-downloads), by the Xnet team (part of HuggingFace)
\[^sign\]
