Was it breaking and entering if you had the key and the apartment belonged to a friend? Rifke stood watching Pocho in the dim hallway of Hubert’s building. Pocho had been crouched in front of Hubert’s door for what felt like forever.

“You said you had the right key,” Rifke said, quietly. “So what’s taking so long?”

“Maybe the cops fucked up the lock when they busted in, or something.” Pocho rubbed the key between his fingers, then he blew gently into the lock and licked the key. Rifke looked at him with her eyebrows raised.

“Lubrication,” he told her. “This is what locksmiths do.”

He was full of shit. He was no locksmith - picking locks was more Pocho’s style.

“Just hurry.” The corridor was stuffy and smelled like tuna casserole. Rifke felt very tired.

It had taken all her strength to get out of bed that morning. For the seventh day in a row she woke up alone, the fact of Hubert’s death seeping into her groggy morning consciousness. Another half-awake dash to the bathroom where she hovered over the sink dry heaving. But today was different. She’d choked down a slice of dry toast and gone to meet Pocho out front Hubert’s building.

She had been half a block away from the apartment when she realized she’d left her phone at home. She was waiting for a call back from the nurse practitioner at the clinic, telling her when she could reschedule what the doctor had euphemistically called “the termination.”

She’d known she wanted an abortion almost immediately after learning she was pregnant two weeks ago. I just want to get it over with, she’d said to the girl at the front desk. She had been supposed to go in on a Monday, but then, the Friday before that, Hubert had died. When Monday came around, she’d missed the appointment, telling herself she’d overslept but knowing that she’d neglected to turn on her alarm clock the night before.

Rifke was keen to get into the apartment. She had taken her easy, quiet relationship with Hubert for granted and now he was gone. Even now, a week after Pocho spread the news of Hubert’s murder at their neighborhood bar, it still felt raw.

The apartment had only just been cleared for reentry. Pocho had to find clothes to give the funeral home, for when they were able to claim Hubert from the morgue.

She didn’t trust Pocho to go to Hubert’s by himself so she’d invited herself along. Of course, Riv, Pocho had said. He did it to get a rise out of her. Riv, he’d want you to come with me. The way he’d said it made her want to hit him. Poch. Poacher of friends, she thought. Like Pocho was allowing her to go with him. As though he had more claim on Hubert, and on grief, than she did. She wanted to tell Pocho she was pregnant. I’ll show you who has more claim on Hubert, Poch.

A ribbon of yellow POLICE tape hung down from the door. Pocho brushed it out of the way and tried the key again.

“Got it!” Pocho exclaimed, his voice ricocheting down the corridor. He pushed open the door and they hurried inside. Rifke closed the door and locked it. She even put on the chain. She didn’t care if it was a paranoid thing to do. Maybe if Hubert had been more vigilant about his safety they wouldn’t be here right now, packing his belongings and choosing his funeral suit.

They lingered by the door for a moment. Rifke stared down at her feet. She’d worn her brown boots, they were nothing special but Hubert had liked them, thought they made her look tough. She could use some of that toughness now. She wasn’t ready to look out into the room. If there was a chalk outline on the floor, or blood, she didn’t think she could handle it.

But Pocho walked in and didn’t say anything so Rifke slowly raised her head and looked around. A week’s worth of mail lay strewn about on the floor. Rifke shuffled all the mail into a pile and tucked it under her arm.

Pocho had already begun poking around in the living room.

It seemed he was going to use the need to search for Hubert’s funeral clothes as an excuse to rummage through his stuff and take whatever he wanted. Rifke yearned to find anything that could point her toward Hubert’s family, the family the San Francisco Police Department denied he had.

Pocho had told Rifke this at their local bar the previous night.

“Of course he had family,” Rifke said. “They lived in Boston.” She sipped her Coke and wondered why Pocho would lie to her about this.

Pocho, so sure of his information, shook his head. “That’s what I thought too. But that’s not what they told me.”

Rifke looked around the apartment. She’d always liked it. Hardwood floors. Decent furniture. A couple of modern-looking lamps were positioned in the living room to throw light all over the room.

The living room was fairly clean but she could tell that it had been searched. Rifke pictured uniformed police officers in the apartment, rifling through Hubert’s things. The couch cushions were upended and there were papers scattered across the floor. Books on the bookshelf were out of the color-coordinated order Hubert had kept them in. Some of them had been moved and then crammed back in, backwards.

How many people had been in the apartment? How many strange hands had touched the green throw pillow she used to wedge behind her back, now discarded on the floor, the unwashed mug on the coffee table? Pocho sat down on the couch after rearranging the cushions.

“He would freak out if he saw the state of this place,” Pocho said, rubbing his head. “Fucking cops.”

“Yeah. He was always cleaning up at my place. Dishes, vacuuming… I had to force him to sit and relax.”

Rifke smiled thinking about Hubert’s near-obsessive need to clean and organize. Even when they went out for drinks he’d ferry empty glasses and bottles back to the bar all night, and not just for the free drinks the bartenders flowed his way.

The apartment smelled stale but Hubert’s scent lingered in the air. His coconut hair conditioner. Bay Rum soap. The Haitian style rice and beans he’d taught Rifke how to cook.

Had the police found anything? Then she shivered, wondered if Hubert’s killer had been the person to ransack the apartment and not the cops. She went into the kitchen. Coffee and sugar were spilled on the counter. The cabinets were all ajar. You would hate this, Rifke thought.

Rifke stood in front of the bedroom door. It was the only room in the apartment with the door still closed. She took a deep breath and grasped the doorknob. She felt the smooth, cold brass warming in her hand as she stood there.

She didn’t want to go in the room alone.

“Poch,” she called, her voice wobbly. “Can you come here a sec?”

He was standing next to her a moment later. “You find something?”

“Not yet.”

She grabbed hold of the doorknob again and this time, with Pocho so close he was breathing against her neck, she opened the door.

The door swung open faster than Rifke expected. They were hit with a smell that knocked her back through the doorway. Hubert’s death smelled like a cross between a public toilet and metallic, dried blood. She gagged. She breathed through her nose and felt a little better. She looked at Pocho.

“You okay?”

He nodded. “I’ll be fine.” He pinched his nose shut. Hubert’s bed had been stripped but there was a deep brown stain on the bare mattress. Rifke grabbed hold of Pocho’s arm.

What the fuck had happened to Hubert? Had he been stabbed while he slept? Shot? Had he let his killer into the apartment? It felt so foreign, something to read about in the paper. She didn’t know how she was supposed to cope. It had been strange enough to ask for bereavement leave at work. My boyfriend was killed, she’d told her boss, and then tried to remember if she’d ever even called Hubert her boyfriend before. And then she’d stood there while her boss offered condolences and misquoted the employee handbook, and told her to take a cab home and expense it.

The floor of the bedroom was a mess of clothes and books. Rifke needed to sit down but there were no chairs in the room, just the bed. She couldn’t sit there. Instead Rifke sat on the floor with her back against the wall. Hubert’s favorite red sweater lay a few feet away from her, its sleeve stretched across the floor as though reaching for her.

She grabbed the sweater and pulled it onto her lap. It had been a Christmas gift from his grandmother a couple years ago, Hubert told Rifke when she complimented how perfect the stitching looked. A million times nicer than the hat Rifke had knit him over the summer. She remembered the way the sweater stretched over Hubert’s broad shoulders, exposing the white t-shirt he wore beneath it.

“I can’t stay in here,” Pocho said. “Can you?” he looked at Rifke, his brown eyes watery, his face pale.

Rifke shook her head. “No, but we have to find something for him to wear, remember?” she stood up. Pocho moved past her and stepped carefully around the debris on the floor to the closet.

“Did Hubert have a place where he kept things like a datebook or a diary?” She didn’t know many people who kept address books any more, but it was worth a shot to look.

“Dude never had a diary,” Pocho scoffed.

“You know what I mean, Poch.”

Hubert’s big family back in Boston needed to know what had happened to him. They would be her baby’s family, too, she thought, even though she’d been trying to avoid thinking about the knot of cells anchoring themselves inside of her as anything as real as a baby.

The last time she’d seen Hubert, she’d almost told him. He’d stopped by her place late at night, just a few hours before he died, according to the police. They made soup and grilled cheese sandwiches in the kitchen.

“How are you doing?” Hubert asked, leaning against the counter watching her cook.

“I’ve been a little under the weather the past couple of days but I finally feel more or less normal.” She stared at the frying pan, watching the buttery sandwiches toast golden. If he asked her, she would tell him the truth. If he pressured her to have the kid she didn’t know how she’d react, but she didn’t think it would end well. She gripped the handle of the pan tightly.

“That’s good. I hope it wasn’t my cooking that made you ill.” He’d prepared a Haitian feast for her earlier in the week, banishing Rifke from the kitchen while he cooked.

She relaxed. He has no idea. Better that way. Rifke pried the sandwiches up with a spatula.

“No, it was nothing like that,” she said. “I can honestly say I’ve never eaten a better plate of goat.”

Hubert laughed. “My mother will be glad to hear that.”

When he left her apartment he’d kissed her goodnight, his hands brushed her abdomen and lingered there for a moment. As she watched him head for the elevator she wondered if he’d suspected anything.

“Do you know when the funeral will be?” Rifke asked Pocho. Pocho was still going through Hubert’s closet.

“No idea. They did the autopsy today but I haven’t heard anything about when I can send somebody for him.”

Oh god, an autopsy. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Hubert’s terra-cotta-brown skin now grey and ashy, cold on a long metal table. Cut open and exposed. All of this was new to Rifke. There was so much that had to be done.

Rifke picked up Hubert’s blue backpack. It had been kicked into the corner near his dresser. In the front pocket she found two small, ratty looking books rubber-banded together.

She unwrapped the rubber band and opened the first book. It was the kind of small address book available at Walgreen’s, right down to the leatherette cover. She leafed through it. There were names and phone numbers scribbled inside. She found the ‘S’ page, hoping to find a laundry list of Sully relations she could contact. Nothing.

Why had she even expected to find anything? She knew her parents’ address by heart. Hubert had memorized his family’s information, too. Rifke closed the book. She would go through it again at home and see if she could find anything that would lead her to Hubert’s family.

The other book was a Moleskine journal. The yellow pages inside were covered in precise, perfect cursive. The diary Hubert had never kept, according to Pocho. She put the books in her tote bag.

“Find anything?” Pocho asked.

“I’m not sure. But I have his address book, so that’s a start.”

“Who uses an address book anymore? I keep everything important in my phone.”

Hubert’s phone. Rifke looked in the backpack again. It wasn’t there.

“Poch, can you call his number?” Pocho drew his phone from his pocket and dialed. A moment later they heard the muffled sound of Hubert’s phone coming from below the bed.

Rifke knelt down and peered under the bed. Amid dust bunnies and forgotten coins, she found Hubert’s phone. It was the same model as hers, they’d picked them out together. Rifke thought about her phone, lying on the corner of her desk. Had she gotten the call yet? Hubert’s phone vibrated with each ring. Rifke grabbed it. “Got it,” she said.

“Good,” Pocho put his phone away and carried a pile of clothes into the living room. Rifke was about to go back into the other room when she remembered Hubert’s pocket watch.

He had never been without the antique watch. Rifke recalled how Hubert would sometimes hold the watch in his hand and rub the engraving on the back of it, his great-grandfather’s name. It had been so important to Hubert. If he had a child, he’d pass it down to him or her. The thought flashed quickly through her mind, gone before she could linger on it. Rifke had to find the watch. But where to look?

Hubert usually kept the watch in the right pocket of his pants. When he stayed over at her place he always set it down carefully on the night table before bed. Rifke felt around below Hubert’s nightstand and found the watch beneath it. She shoved it into her pocket for safekeeping. Rifke gave Hubert’s room a final check. She couldn’t spend another minute in there. She closed the door.

In the living room Pocho was packing stuff he’d salvaged from around the apartment into several duffel bags. The bags were monogrammed “HJS”. A grey suit in a clear plastic garment bag lay draped over the arm of the sofa. The last outfit Hubert would ever wear. Rifke wondered if Pocho had remembered to pack a pair of shoes for him, too.

Pocho crammed a stack of CDs into another bag, followed by a small portable boom box. Into the last bag Pocho put some towels and bedclothes and some magazines.

“Almost done,” Pocho said. “Time to go shopping.”

He sounded so flip, Rifke thought. She hated him for it. Did Pocho have any respect for Hubert at all? He’d seemed as distraught as she was just a few minutes earlier. But now he was doing what he always did – greedily putting himself first. Pocho opened and closed the kitchen cabinets, taking unopened cans of food and boxes of spaghetti, beer and liquor.

Rifke watched Pocho pack the food into a grocery bag. He looked untroubled, single-minded. She’d never considered Pocho a friend but this past week she had at least seen him as an uneasy ally. Now she wasn’t so sure.

When Pocho came back, he held a heavy-looking shopping bag. He looked as though he’d just gone to Safeway.

“Let’s go,” she told Pocho.

“You aren’t going to take anything?”

She looked around the living room. She didn’t know which of Hubert’s things had held a special meaning to him. She had the watch and his journal, but was there anything else? Rifke thought she might cry again. She focused her attention on the pile of colorful sneakers by the front door. She’d only ever seen Hubert wear the blue ones with the white reflective stripes on the side.

Pocho went over to one of the bookshelves and took a thick binder off the bottom shelf. He handed it to Rifke. She opened the binder and saw that it was overstuffed with plastic sleeves full of photos. She sat down on the arm of the couch and leafed through the first few pages. Even in the most out-of-focus, faded photos she could pick out Hubert. She closed the binder and held it against her chest. She knew Pocho was waiting for her to say something. She blinked.

“Thanks, Poch.”

“Welcome. Can I get some copies of some of those? Not the kid ones, that would be weird, but there are some good ones in the back.”

Rifke tried to picture Hubert and Pocho sitting on the couch, flipping through the photo album. No. It was more likely that Pocho had just found the binder while she was in the other room.

“Sure, I’ll make some copies.”

Pocho managed to shoulder two of the duffels. He carried the food in one hand, Hubert’s keys and a lamp in the other. He motioned for Rifke to grab the other duffel bag.

“Don’t forget the suit,” she said. The garment bag was still on the couch.

“Oh yeah.” He didn’t move to get it. “Can you carry that? I don’t have enough hands.”

Rifke carefully folded the garment bag over her arm and they left.

They walked down Bryant Street, away from Hubert’s apartment. Probably the last time she’d ever see it.

Pocho lived midway between Rifke and Hubert. His shabby building leaned up against a fence that separated it from an elementary school playing field. Rifke dropped the duffel she’d been carrying on the stairs. “See you,” she said. She waited a moment, thinking that there had to be more to say, but there wasn’t anything else. She handed him the suit.

He nodded. “I’ll let you know about the funeral and stuff.”

At home Rifke sat on the couch holding Hubert’s pocket watch. It still kept the right time. When she held it up to her ear she could hear its tick, tick, tick.

She scrolled through the address book on Hubert’s phone, but there were no listings for his mom or dad, or anyone who might be family. She found her number in the phone, listed simply as Riv. She liked the intimacy of it, just her nickname. His physical address book held no answers, and the Moleskine journal turned out to be mostly written in Kreyol.

Hubert’s phone had been on the couch next to her. It vibrated and rang, the ringtone growing louder and louder. Rifke stared at it, not sure what to do. Everyone in San Francisco knew Hubert was dead – if it wasn’t a telemarketer it had to be someone important. Maybe it was his family. She answered it. “Hello?”

The person on the other end of the phone said something she couldn’t understand. French, maybe? No, it was Kreyol. “I’m sorry,” Rifke said. “This is Hubert’s phone but I don’t speak Kreyol.”

Just then she heard her own phone ringing in the next room.

“Are you still there?” Rifke asked, straining to listen to Hubert’s caller, as her phone kept ringing on her desk.

“Yes,” said an older woman, in slightly accented English. “Yes, I am here.” She paused. “I am Martine Sully, Hubert’s maman. But who is this?”

Rifke said, “Can you hold on a minute?”

She held Hubert’s phone against her chest and went in to her room. She picked up her phone and turned it off.

She brought Hubert’s phone back up to her ear. “I’m back,” she said. “This is Rifke Sofer, a friend of Hubert’s. There are some things I need to tell you.”