The Tao of Doing Nothing

The Golden Lotus Apartments smelled of sixty years of history. Specifically, it smelled of ginger, damp wool, roasted duck, and the distinct, musty sorrow of San Francisco fog that had seeped into the drywall and never left.

For Chloe Chen, resident of Apartment 4B, the Golden Lotus was perfect. It was cheap. It was obscure. And most importantly, the landlord was too old to care that she spent ninety percent of her waking life in a horizontal position.

Chloe was currently engaged in her morning ritual: staring at the ceiling and debating if the bladder pressure she felt was critical enough to warrant the journey to the bathroom. She was twenty-six, had a master’s degree in computer science, and had spent four years coding algorithms for a Silicon Valley startup that measured employee productivity down to the keystroke.

She had snapped six months ago. She hadn’t screamed. She hadn’t thrown a chair. She had simply closed her laptop, walked out of the glass-walled office, and decided that she would never, ever hurry again.

* Knock. Knock. Knock.*

The sound was aggressive. It required acknowledgement.

Chloe groaned, rolling over into a nest of blankets that smelled faintly of lavender and stale popcorn. "Go away," she mumbled into her pillow.

* KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.*

"Delivery!" a voice shouted. "Signature required!"

Chloe calculated the effort. Getting up meant putting on pants. Putting on pants meant locating pants. It was a high cost. But if she didn't sign, they would leave a "Sorry We Missed You" sticky note, and she would have to go to the post office. The post office was six blocks away. That was uphill.

The math favored the door.

She dragged herself upright, wrapped her duvet around her shoulders like a regal, cotton cape, and shuffled to the door. She opened it three inches.

A harried courier stood there, sweating in the damp hallway. He held a heavy, black box wrapped in nondescript brown paper.

"Apartment 4A?" he asked, looking at the clipboard, then at the door number, which was currently hanging by a single screw so the 'B' looked suspiciously like an upside-down 'A'.

Chloe looked at the door opposite hers. 4A. That was the new guy. The quiet one who played classical music at 3:00 AM and wore suits to take out the recycling.

She could correct the courier. She could point across the hall. But that would involve explaining, and talking, and extending the interaction.

"Sure," Chloe lied. She scribbled a squiggle that looked vaguely like a bird on his electronic pad.

"Here you go. Careful, it's heavy."

He shoved the box into her arms. It *was* heavy. Dense. Chloe grunted, kicked the door shut with her heel, and waddled back to the living room. She dropped the box onto her coffee table with a thud.

It landed right next to her bowl of dry Fruit Loops.

"Whatever," she whispered.

She collapsed back onto the sofa, pulled the duvet over her head, and immediately fell back asleep.