Three beats. Three m's. Three bends.

It started as a hum—low, guttural, vibrating through the shared plaster like a second heartbeat. Then the drums. Not a stereo. Not a TV. Actual hide-and-skin drums, the kind that make your sternum ache.

I pressed my ear to the cold wall. "Sammm," I whispered, because that was the only name on the mailbox downstairs, written in black marker with three deliberate m's. Sammm.

Sammm opened it wearing a frayed blanket over one shoulder and nothing else. He was younger than I'd expected—mid-twenties, maybe—but his eyes had the heavy-lidded patience of someone who'd watched continents split. Behind him, his apartment was empty except for a circle of salt, a clay pot of something smoking, and a single photograph taped to the wall: a black-and-white aerial shot of a river delta, its channels branching like veins.