Their bedsits shared a common wall, and in the old house there was a common hall, and at the end of the hall, a closet with a coin-operated shower, and next to the closet, a bathroom where the window was always left open and each of them had to bring their own toilet paper roll. Sometimes he used old newspaper instead and clogged the plumbing.
   
In two years, she never saw his face. Once, as she opened the front door, she caught the tail of a black trench coat disappearing into his bedsit. He slammed the door.


She began seeing a man, and the man had unkind things to say about her neighbor. "What is he like, some kind of creep?" "Does he listen for you leaving, does he have his ear at the door?" He didn't need his ear at the door. She could hear it when he coughed, which he did fitfully and in a way that made her throat ache. She imagined her neighbor might hear her boyfriend talking and shushed him.


By her second winter in the heatless building, she knew the tricks. She kept two space heaters, one next to the sofa and one next to the bed. Before she got in bed, she draped the duvet over the heater and let it warm. She brushed her teeth at the kitchen sink and watched the duvet for signs of fire. She didn't drink water before bed because the long hall at night was freezing, and she was unwilling to pass her neighbor's door in the dark.

In bed, if she lay very still, she could hear his radio, the gentle sounds of a late-night request show. When her boyfriend stayed over, he complained of the noise. "Inconsiderate is what it is," he said, and pinned her with his muscled arm.


She knew her neighbor smoked from the butts left in the bathroom and on the stoop. She worried that his cough might be worsening. Once when she was alone, the cough became so thunderous that she worried his heart might stop or he might choke, and she nearly went out into the hall and stood outside his door, was ready to knock and call, "Are you all right in there?" But then it stopped.


The laughing began on a night her boyfriend was over, a night of rain after a day of rain, when the whole city smelled like drenched cement. At first she thought he had company. It was female laughter, but she quickly realized it wasn't real. She knew real laughter.

"It's playing on a loop," she said. "Listen. The high laugh, then the low one, then quick ones all in a row. And now it starts again."

They listened. "Porn," her boyfriend said. He was surly from being caught in the rain in a hoodless jacket.

"It's not, though. It never gets sexy." The laughter hit a high pitch and then waned, but then it just began again. "Maybe he's just that lonely."

They watched TV and ate grilled cheese sandwiches she made on the hotplate. Her boyfriend drank a six-pack and washed it down with a shot of Jameson from the bottle she kept on the mantel.

When they turned off the TV, the laughter was still there. They tried to fool around, but the laughter made her boyfriend uncomfortable.

"Racket," he said.

"Let's just try to sleep," she said.

Her boyfriend braved the dark distance to the bathroom and returned furious. "He's got takeout containers all over the bathroom floor. It's unhygienic and he shouldn't be subjecting you to it. That's not even where he should be throwing out his trash in the first place."

As he spoke, the laughter became louder.

"Keep your voice down," she said.

"Why, so he can hear his porn?" This her boyfriend yelled at the wall.

The laughter grew louder still, and even more uncanny.

"It's frightening me." She gathered the duvet around her. Frightening wasn't it exactly, but it seemed like the best way to explain it to her boyfriend. She didn't want it to stop; she wanted it to have never happened.

Her boyfriend banged on the wall. "Hey! Keep it down!"

Her neighbor banged back, which angered her boyfriend further, and before she knew it he was out in the hall, pounding on her neighbor's door, yelling for him to come out and to fight and to be a man.

The door opened. Her boyfriend's voice dropped to a low hiss. She strained to hear the words exchanged.

And then the laughter stopped. All was still.

Her boyfriend came back in and softly shut the door behind him. His face was red and his breathing quick. It reminded her of the club the night they met, his sweaty forehead and the pulse she could feel through his neck as they danced. She had an urge to pull him toward her and touch him.

But her boyfriend did not want to be touched. "Let's just go to sleep," he said, and turned away from her, toward the shared wall, toward the quiet. 

Shayne Terry lives in Brooklyn.

Read her postcard.

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