The Apartment

We had rotten apartment luck.

When we were moving our meager possessions into our single-bedroom apartment when we got married, our neighbor across the hall came home. She looked like a librarian. In her mid-30's, average size with brown hair and large glasses--pretty. She saw us look at her and she rushed inside and closed the door before we could say hello. I never had a really good look at her, and we never had a real conversation with her in the year that she lived there.

We kidded each other that she was in the witness protection program, but maybe...

The people below us looked like teenagers that had just moved out of their parents' home--they fought with each other all the time, peeled out in the parking lot. One time the girl threw a hair dryer at the guy one while he was peeling out in the parking lot. It was kind of entertaining.

I remember waking up to "Walking in Memphis" playing over their clock radio on a Sunday morning--things like that didn't bother me back then--I liked the song.

One night, I heard shouting and ran to my window--just enough time to see a guy running as fast as he could--and then another guy run up behind him, hold a pistol level at him and fire two shots (missing). I didn't even call the police, as I recall. Over the next coupla weeks I discretely looked for the spent bullets or a splash of lead on the bricks in the background but never found them.

Another year or so passed.

At some point we started naming our neighbors--it started with "Ape Man", the guy who moved in downstairs. I could write a whole story about that guy--one of the worst neighbors ever--he was stinky and gross--Six and a half feet tall with foot-long, uncombed, thick blonde hair sprouting out like a fountain from the top of his head. He had a small pickup that was originally maroon, but now primer-colored and always had a fresh set of beer cans scattered in the back. He wrecked his truck about once a month. One time I was watching tv and heard brakes screeching and a huge metallic crash, then walked outside to see ol' Ape Man staggering up to his door, so drunk that his head was loosely rolling around on his neck. The thing that made him a bad neighbor, though, is that he played The Rolling Stones super loud on his stereo--all the time. We knocked on his door but he wouldn't answer. We called the apartment manager and he denied everything. We called the cops on Ape Man 22 times.

If I could draw a cartoon, I would draw this idea that hit me while I was in Organic Chemistry lab that year--our experiment was to make an ester that smelled like bannana--bannana oil--and there was a warning in the lab notes that it would incite bees to attack you--it was a phermone that attracted them. I wanted to pour it from our balcony onto Ape Man's head--my cartoon would show him fighting a swarm of bees from his moppy head, much like King Kong swatting airplanes. I did sneak a vial out and pour it on his patio, which was less satisfying...

"Buffalo Gal" was our next downstairs neighbor. As in the song "Buffalo Gal won't you come out tonight?" Poor thing...But at least her taste in music was better...

At 3:00 AM one morning, I had to chase off a damn mockingbird which had nested outside our window and was chirping all night. I grabbed a handful of pennies and threw them into the tree until the chirping stopped. And thank God it finally did.

Two years passed.

Then there was the dog. A new family moved in next to Buffalo Gal--and they brought their small dog with a piercing bark. And that damn little thing barked and barked and barked all night, every night. We gave the family a little leeway, wondering if their dog just needed a little time to get settled. A few weeks passed, and every night we were treated to a harsh barking all night. If this was me, I would never do this to my new neighbors--we couldn't believe that the family didn't bring the dog inside. We went to the patio and the dog seemed to be left on it's own--they weren't cleaning up after him properly and it smelled.

We were fed up with this inconsiderate behavior, so my wife tried a last-ditch effort before calling animal control: she wrote a note to these people. It said:

"How can you let your dog bark and bark every night--Don't you realize how inconsiderate that is? Please do something!"

She folded up the note and dropped it on their porch and they brought the dog inside--and at last, incredulous that it took such desperate measures, we got some sleep.

Then, a couple of weeks later, I saw these neighbors--using Sign Language.