Flecks of dust hang motionless in the beam of soft sunlight that enters the room from the tiny window on the wall, and Elizabeth paces. Her footsteps are all too familiar to her downstairs neighbors. They curse the shitty construction and thin floors in their walk-up apartment building, and go back to sleep.

It is 4 am. The sun has just barely risen. Elizabeth likes to say she likes to watch the city wake up, likes to watch its streets breathe to life, which she thinks sounds right. She takes hasty sips of the thin early morning sun.

She walks downstairs. Her feet in their slippers whisper on the stairs and wake her neighbors again. She steps outside, one hand coming up to rest on her forehead like a visor. She slips down the street, her feet padding on the concrete. She breathes in the silence of the city. Elizabeth likes to say she likes to watch the city sleep.

She turns the corner and enters the grocery store. The man at the cashier, eyes blurred with fatigue and ringed in purple, smiles. He knows Elizabeth and her slippers.

The air conditioner blows a cold wind through the empty aisles and bumps rise on Elizabeth’s downy arms. She shivers, a tremor passing through her like a sigh. It is quiet. The buzz of refrigerators accompany the hissing that Elizabeth’s small feet make on the scuffed linoleum floor.

She reaches the freezers and picks out a pint of vanilla without looking. She has no money. Elizabeth hears the door jingle open and shut. She doesn’t see who has entered. She shuffles past Cheerios and popcorn and technicolor orange juice.

She knows that the man at the cashier with bruised eyes will let her go home with the ice cream if he pretends not to see. She knows he has a soft spot for the little girl with the slippers and goosebumps. She knows he is too tired from his night shift and his kids that he doesn’t know because of his night shift. She knows because he told her.

She hears a noise echo through the hushed aisles of the store. Elizabeth doesn’t know the sound but she knows what it means. She knows it means no more ice cream, although she guesses today the vanilla dripping in her sweaty palm is hers.

She hears the door jingle open and shut.

The buzzing of the fridges fills her ears. She steps around the man with the purple eyes in her slippers and she walks home as the sun breaks over the buildings and enters her apartment on the 3rd floor as her mother awakens to get Elizabeth ready for school.

She spoons soft cream with her fingers into her mouth and tastes the sugar mingling with tears for a man who she did not know.