Pandora's Box

There is a crazy woman living in the apartment above us. I don't mean crazy in the clinical sense of the word (though that may be true was well). Her husband seems sane enough. He works as a bartender at the Hustler strip club. MC and A ran into him there one night and he sent free drinks to their table. So we certainly don't have any gripes with him. In fact, he is quite polite and I'd even say good looking.

My main gripe since they moved in has been that they listen to very loud music at very inopportune times. Before I started working night shifts, they used to wake me up at 3am to the thudding sound of bass. I would don my robe and slippers and climb the flight of stairs, squinting from the bright light of the hallway to politely ask them to turn it down. Routinely, when she was home, she would clomp over to the door in her platforms and nearly slam the door in my face after hearing my complaint. Once she proceeded to scream out to her husband in a nasty, biting tone, "She's worse than I am!"

I always hoped her husband would be there to answer the door. He would listen politely to my request, smile and then agree to turn the music down. After awhile, she stopped answering the door altogether. Somehow she knew it was me. Either the decibal of music she was playing and the hour of night gave it away or the music was so loud that she wasn't able to hear me knocking. I wouldn't have minded her not answering if she would only have turned the bass down on her stereo. Twice I'd had enough and when she failed to answer her door, I called the police. I haven't heard any after-hour dance-a-thons up there since.

We warned A when she was contemplating moving into the apartment across the hall from them about the noise. The shared adjacent wall between their apartments, however, provides a different listening experience than the plaster between floor and ceiling. MC & A hate when her mother-in-law comes to visit. They can nearly hear verbatum screaming matches between the mother-in-law and her. Only when I am in the kitchen can I hear her loudly bitching at her husband. It seems almost constant banter when the two of them are home together.

Last night, I was immediately alarmed when I heard pounding on our ceiling. The irregular pattern of thuds sounded like either a scuffle between prisonmates, filming by the WWF of a Hulk Hogan match, or minimally a nasty dog fight (though they have no pets). I was about to pick up the phone and call the police - out of fear for the husband's life - when suddenly a mass of water came pouring out of our ceiling.

I decided the sounds must have been from a wrestling match between the happily married couple and their radiator and instead called our management company.

MC and A came down to loan us their plasticated table cloth to cover our furniture with as the water continued its descent onto our books, framed photos and onto our abundance of chatchkas.

A: So, did you hear them?
MC: That was some fight they were having!

C: All we heard was some scary banging on the floor.

MC: All we heard through the shouting was "You fucking dick!"

ME: Why doesn't he kick her out? She's crazy.

MC: He has!
A: Yeah, we came home one day and found her crying in the hallway with all of her stuff.

I hate to gossip. But the lives of these neighbors feel like a part of my own life. Now that MC and A live across the hall from them, the clues we get from the noises we hear suddenly come to life - the gaps of information filled in by the dialogue they get through their bedroom wall.

Seems like a sad world, however, to realize that I've called the police for their music but not for that fight. Fortunately, the pounding stopped shortly after the flood came through the ceiling, so the fight didn't last nearly as long as those neverending techno tunes they used to play.