I live on the eleventh floor, the second door on the right from the grey elevator. The door is red. When I say it’s red, it is not coral red, which has too much yellow in it. It is not crimson, the color messed up with too much blue. It is definitely not scarlet, which disgusts me so much because of its orange brightness. It’s red. In the hexadecimal number system, it is labeled as FF0000, which means a full range of red value, with zero value of green and blue. In other words, only red, no mixture, nothing else. You shouldn’t have wondered that I am so obsessed with the color red. In fact, I am not obsessed with it at all. I just want to clarify the fact. My door is red.

The reason I mention the red door is because there are no other red doors in this apartment building. Perhaps there are some in other buildings on this side of the city, but I have to investigate it before I give you my final report. I am confident to tell you this fact: my door is the only red door in this building. Last Wednesday afternoon I passed each door on each floor in the building, and wrote down the color of each door. I got into the elevator at three o’clock from the eleventh floor to the top floor, the fifteenth. After I finished investigating all four doors on one floor, I walked down the staircase to the next floor below. It took me almost two hours to finish.

At six o’clock, I had been sitting down for an hour on the brown leather couch in the lobby opposite from the concierge on the ground floor. After too much contraction on my leg muscles, my legs seem gradually detaching from my body. It’s strange that I didn’t feel that much pain when I walked, though. I was fascinated with the idea why the process of detaching was so painful. It was as if needles thrusting through between the bones at the bottom of my hip, and trying to sever my legs right on that spot. But the pain came from the fact that there would be never a true separation. A real cut-off was just a wishful thought to get rid of the pain. I believe there must be a reason for the pain being there to remind me the existence of my legs. So I sat there for that good hour and my legs took their time to re-attach back to my body. I looked at my notebook. It surprised me a little that my door is the only red door. But I was also surprised that when I passed my red door, I didn’t have a slight of thought that it was my door.    

I am not obsessed with color of doors, either. The reason I started this investigation helps me to familiarize this new building I just moved in two weeks ago. I have made acquaintances with three people so far. One is the concierge man. His name is Samuel. He pushed the go-up bottom of the elevator for me when I carried too many books in my arms the day I moved in. When I went into the elevator, I turned around and said: “Thank you, Samuel.” He showed a little surprised. Did I try to surprise him? I didn’t think that when I did at the time. I saw his name tag and I thanked him because he helped me. When I sat down after my investigation last Wednesday, he was dozing off behind his desk with his right cheek resting in his right hand. His face is always pale. I have never seen a man with such thin bloodless lips. He would have been the only right person wearing red lipstick, just for the sake of identifying where his lips are. I might say he is good to me, or at least he tried. He told me something about Mrs. Denson, my “small” landlady. She lives in the apartment right under me on the tenth floor.

        “Mr. Travis, please don’t worry. I would let you know every time when Mrs. Denson goes into your apartment when you are not there.” Samuel told me one day.

        “What? She went into my apartment?”

        “No, not yet since you moved in, but she has been going into her tenants’ apartments from time to time. I saw her on my monitor.”

        “What did they do about it?” I asked.

        “Well, some didn’t mind, especially those bachelors with only three pennies in their pockets, Mr. Kemp for instance. He thought it was nice to have a visitor sometimes, even though she was the only visitor and she visited him when he wasn’t there.”

        “didn’t mind?”

        “Yeah, he couldn’t pay the rent, so he was kicked out. Others could afford to pay her, but they couldn’t stand with the intrusion. They moved out in the end.”

        “We do have law here, don’t we?”

        “Well, I don’t know how she did it. They and the police couldn’t find any trace to prove it.”

        “How about the monitor? Wasn’t there a record?”

        “Yeah, I swear I saw her, but the taps didn’t show anything. It was very weird.”

I didn’t know if I should believe Samuel or myself. I phoned Mrs. Denson when I saw the rental ad. She seemed quite liberal. When I decided to rent the apartment, she touched my right hand with her skinny tiny hand and told me that I could do anything I want with the apartment. It was even written in the contract: “Mr. Richard Travis is entitled to conduct the apartment in any fashion without any further responsibility.” I have thought about what Samuel have told me, would that have meant Mrs. Denson has the right of doing anything freely in my apartment? It sounded ridiculous. Besides, I hadn’t found any evidence of her uninvited visit, and Samuel hadn’t even seen her stop at my door once. But I decided and painted my door red on that weekend after I moved in.

Sarah walked toward me and gave me a smile when I was walking in the red section in the paint shop at the corner three blocks away from my apartment building. I didn’t know who she was, but I smiled back anyway. She didn’t walk passing me. She stopped in front of me.

“Hi, my name is Sarah. I am your neighbor next door.”

“Hi…hi…I am Rich, nice meeting you.” I was so glad there are always words following by certain words that you just say without thinking.

        Sarah is blond, tall, and very beautiful. She is the type of girl I am always intimidated with. It seems that they are always followed by the sunshine. They are always smiling. They talk to me. Sarah talked and talked with a tireless smile on her face when we walked back to the building together. My head went blank little by little. It became so empty that it started itching.