Stay

The courtyard hits you before your eyes do. I pushed through the buzzing door into Prenzlauer Berg and found walls covered in activist slogans and scrawls, bikes piled against the building like the aftermath of something, strollers wedged between graffitied mailboxes. The whole place looked exactly like the kind of building you dismiss before you even get inside.

Then a young mother with her kid answered the door. Both of them somehow looked put-together in this falling-apart building. Come in, she said. I was tired enough to obey. And I was actually surprised—the apartment was beautiful. High ceilings, original plasterwork, good light. A few other people were circulating through it the way you do at a showing, checking things they didn’t care about, testing the floorboards.

The kid planted herself in her bedroom doorway and didn’t let anyone past. Don’t take my toys, she kept yelling, half threat, half song. Dead serious about her stuff. I’m not sure I would have behaved myself if I’d been alone with her—there was something both furious and ridiculous about her conviction. I wanted the apartment. So tired that wanting to climb into that bed with her seemed like a good enough reason. Maybe it was the only reason.

I thanked her for the tour, said I’d call Tuesday, and headed back down to the courtyard. By the time I got back outside, it didn’t look the same. The graffiti had logic to it now. The whole place had character, the kind you don’t get in clean, managed buildings. Prenzlauer Berg. Maybe it was exactly where I belonged.