The Pursuit Of Silence Darlene Cah |
I was living in my new co-op apartment just one week when the note came. Slipped surreptitiously under my door, it read, "Please stop walking so heavy," signed,
"Your downstairs neighbor, 5G." I wasn't a stomper or a heel dragger, so I replied, courteously, that I don't even wear shoes in my apartment.
I had moved to Queens to escape the increasingly carnival-like atmosphere of Manhattan's East Village, where I had lived in a one-room, ground-floor apartment among the multi-pierced masses. Sid Vicious blaring through the ceiling at 3 a.m. brought me to a startling realization: my Rock 'n' Roll days were over. Many a night I pounded the ceiling with a broomstick, to no avail. So I performed the first responsible adult act of my life. I bought real estate. I was the proud owner of a spacious two-room apartment in Elmhurst. As far as I knew none of my new neighbors had spiked hair. One Saturday afternoon, after the note incident, I was getting ready to go horseback riding, when there was a knock at my door. "Who is it?" I asked, not opening the door, not even with the chain latch. New York Apartment Living 101. "It's your neighbor, 5G," a woman's voice replied. My pen pal. I could explain in person how much I loved my glossy hardwood floors. A big neighborly smile on my face, I opened the door but 5G looked me up and down with contempt. My smile melted. I was about to be condemned to wall-to-wall carpeting. There, I stood, in my black, polished riding boots caught red-footed in the criminal act of walking while shod. Weeks later, the tables turned. I, the accused stomper became the stompee. The new tenant in 7G liked to jump off furniture at 2 a.m. and blast dance music at 6 a.m. I wasn't even 35 and I wanted to live in a retirement community. I pledged that in my next move, I would not have an upstairs neighbor. Now I live on the top floor of a two-story garden apartment. No one above me but the roof and the sky. Or so I thought. The other night I woke suddenly to the sound of footsteps over my head. Was I having flashbacks of the furniture jumper? Did one of my elderly neighbors dabble in roofing? It seems there is a family living above me, after all. A family of squirrels. With my luck they listen to Alvin and the Chipmunks at 2 a.m.
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