Chapter 1
“Welcome to the building,” Cintra said.
It sounded a little presumptuous. She was a newcomer herself, having arrived three weeks ago. The new neighbors must have moved in last week, judging by when a smiley-face doormat made its appearance in front of apartment 3D. In a city that thrived on neighborly indifference, there was something a little off-putting about a grinning doormat.
In Brooklyn, neighbors tended to ignore each other. But this was the New Cintra. Might as well add a dash of suburban-esque cheeriness to her New Self by welcoming the couple. At least, she presumed they were a couple.
“Thank you. We’re happy to be here.” The woman smiled, then turned and pointed a small black square at their door. The thing in her hand (remote controlled door lock?) went bluup.
Now the man looked at Cintra. He had round, dark eyes, like woodland ponds that hid their unexpected depths. They flared at her with a hateful intensity.
Geez, what was his problem?
Cintra let the couple pass by her down the stairs. The woman was petite and fleshy, with an ashy-blonde braid twisted between her shoulders. Her skin was vampire pale, as if she hadn’t been outside all summer, or any summer. By contrast, the man looked as if he loved the sun, or the sun loved him. A few steps above them, Cintra noted the top of the man’s shaved head was two shades lighter than the back of his sunburn-tinged neck. Must be a hat wearer.
In their forties, she guessed. Good. Cintra’s hearing was sharp, her sleep surface-light. Sedate, well-behaved, middle-aged neighbors with a smiley-face doormat would be ideal.
On the first floor, she veered off to the mailboxes. The new neighbors’ footsteps tapped lightly behind her down the porcelain tile to the lobby, which was patterned with Art Deco-style fans and cubes. Still no mail for her. The few pieces inside the metal box were addressed to her roommate, Pedro, or to Occupant Apt. 3C. Perhaps her change of address form had vanished into the abyss of her old neighborhood’s dysfunctional post office.
She’d ask her husband to bring her mail tomorrow. But who knew if he would. He was not yet convinced of New Cintra, and asking her to move out wasn’t his only way of showing it. There was his passive aggressiveness as well. Taking several hours to return communications. Telling her he was “too busy” to join her in therapy. Yes, she wouldn’t put it past Elliot to “forget” to bring her mail tomorrow. But she couldn’t blame him.
She was lucky he hadn’t insisted on a divorce that very night.
Chapter 2
“I saw the neighbors today,” said Pedro from the kitchen as he poured a glass of red wine. The waft of ripe tomatoes in the air let Cintra know he was cooking.
“I did too. Coming out in the morning.” She plunked her tote bag on the granite kitchen island that separated the kitchen from the living room.
“Wine?” he asked.
Shaking her head, she reached into the fridge for cranberry juice. She didn’t want to get into the habit of drinking alcohol after work. She had enough problems.
“I guess the mystery is solved,” he said.
Pedro was invested in the identity of the new neighbors. After all, it was his sublet. Apartment 3C had pre-war details, arched doorways, an open kitchen, two bathrooms with original black and white tiles, double windows, and was located two blocks from Prospect Park, the borough’s five-hundred-twenty-six acres of wild, green refuge. A horse barn that served the park was so close that certain breezes delivered the musky smell of horse dung through the open windows.
The building was five stories of red brick with winged lions leering down from a stone archway over the front walk. A DANGER sign on the sidewalk hailed a mini-excavation of unknown intent, but the dig’s tremoring whurrs and pongs didn’t reach apartment 3C, in the back. Cintra was only here until she could sort out her marriage. Elliot had asked for a six-month trial separation, but she was fiercely hoping that time could be shortened once she proved herself.
“At least they look normal,” Pedro said of the neighbors. “You never know in this town.”
“They seemed in their forties. Probably not partiers.” Recalling the female neighbor’s spritely greeting, Cintra was oddly eager to defend her. “She was nice. But the guy glared at me.”
“Glared?” A dubious smile slid over Pedro’s face. Cintra knew the look. Are you sure you mean GLARED, Cin? Are you sure you aren’t EXAGGERATING?
“Maybe not glared,” she clarified. “He seemed grumpy, though.”
“Not everyone’s a morning person,” Pedro offered. “He’s decent looking.” He wiggled his black brows under a tassel of short dreadlocks, indicating he thought the neighbor was more than “decent.”
Cintra thought back to the man’s looks. Sly-dark eyes round as nickels, sun-bronzed skin with a bone-white shaved head. He’d be more attractive without that surly look. She’d strongly felt his glower was personal, as if she’d wronged him in some way. Impossible, of course. She’d never met him before.
Anyway, no man seemed attractive these days. She was too consumed with thoughts of her husband and the possibility that she’d lost him. They’d married when she was twenty-four and he was twenty-five, an early marriage for New Yorkers. At thirty-eight, she couldn’t imagine being with anyone else.
“Maybe we should try to get to know them,” she told Pedro. “That way, if there’s any noise issues, we can ask them to pipe down and they might actually listen.”
Pedro had mentioned that his previous neighbors had played thumping music late at night, and their copious marijuana usage had seeped through the walls despite their pre-war thickness. He shrugged noncommittally at her suggestion, turning his attention to whatever was simmering on the stove, probably pasta sauce.
Maybe she should do it. Try to make friends with the neighbors. Why was there an unwritten rule that city folk didn’t get to know their neighbors? It would be nice to have some nearby friends. Besides, she sensed her friends didn’t want to be around her much anymore. She hadn’t heard from Poppy, her closest female friend, in a few months. Out of everyone, Pedro was the most understanding of her problem—perhaps because he made his living spinning stories on stage. They’d met at a state college two decades ago, where both were active in the theater department. Pedro had been The Star who snagged every lead role. Cintra, at five-feet-eight-inches, was usually cast as Someone Tall.
Pedro had been offered the apartment 3C sublet by a fan, an opera singer named Callie, who’d seen him in an off-Broadway show, a musical version of Taxi Driver. Yes, his big solo number was “You Talkin’ To Me?”
“Maybe I’ll do it,” she said as she peeked over Pedro’s arm at the—so it was—pasta sauce. “Try to make friends with them.”
He added a double pinch of a spice he bought from a Jamaican store—his “secret ingredient”—to the sauce. “You want to have friends who won’t know?” he asked.
She backed away from him as if the stove had scorched her. “No! I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“Cin,” he sighed. “You asked me to help you practice, to call you on stuff. So I am.”
He was right. Dr. Grace had said it would be good if she had an “accountability partner.” Pedro fit the bill. For one, he was here. For two, he was the least judgmental person she knew.
“All right. It would be nice to have friends who don’t know about me. Good?”
“You get an A-plus,” he said, putting a wooden spoon with a dab of sauce on it up to her mouth. She tasted and gave a thumbs up.
“And you?” she asked, gingerly placing her palm on his back. “How you feeling these days?”
“I’m stupendous,” he said, as a flare of blue flame hugged a pot of water.
He didn’t sound stupendous. The only reason Cintra was here—besides Elliot kicking her out—was that Pedro had also kicked out his boyfriend of six years, Liam. Pedro hadn’t wanted to discuss it much. She only knew that after he and Liam had moved into the sublet, Pedro had discovered his boyfriend cheating. Discovered it through a trail of X-rated and, he swore, nauseatingly juvenile text messages.
Cintra felt guilty at her gratitude that she had a nice place to live, but only because of Pedro’s breakup. Renting a place by herself would have been a financial strain as she was still paying her share of rent in her and Elliot’s apartment. She’d agreed that was fair, given that the separation was because of her.
“If you want to talk,” she told Pedro, but he only smiled wanly.
* * *
Around midnight, something woke Cintra up out of a deep dream. At first, she thought she was hearing whatever had been in her dream, a long, low whine—a perverse sound, almost otherworldly. Groping towards consciousness, she became dimly aware the sound was outside. A stray cat in heat? No, the sound was inside. Pedro playing music or listening to the TV this late?
Pushing away sleep, she lay trying to pinpoint the location of the sound. It was eerie, low but keen. All at once, she realized the noise was coming through the wall behind her headboard, coming from apartment 3D. A dog whimpering to be let out?
Her hearing was too sharp for city living. Any old sound could jar her out of sleep. She fumbled in the dark to open a bedside drawer that contained a small plastic jar of foam ear plugs. Not finding it, she sat up and reached for the small lamp on the paneled headboard.
The sound was a little louder. Sex? Ugh.
She hoped this wouldn’t be her new nightly reality, having to listen to strangers having sex. Irritating, especially as she herself hadn’t had sex in—what? Four months? She buried the thought, as it would lead to one big, repulsive thought, and she’d be awake all night, writhing with shame.
Light on, bare feet planted on the parquet wood floor, she swept her palm around the contents of the drawer. Finding the earplugs, she was about to twist a pair deep into her ear canals when the sound stopped.
Her skin cooled and a conviction came over her: the sound wasn’t sex or the whimpers of a dog. It was the sound of someone crying.
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