Just to hear her was enough for me. She was as loud as anyone I knew.
She talked loud. I could understand that. I had a friend. He was Italian. So was his family. They were the loudest people I ever heard. You couldn’t talk to any of them on the phone and have your ear up against the receiver. They were just too loud for that. She was like them. Loud. Jolly loud almost. It wasn’t like she yelled just to be heard. Hardly. Or like when you’re pissed off, or soused, and you just gotta give it that extra loud, ‘cause--you know. She was just banging in the ears loud even when she wasn’t trying. I felt kind of bad for her for a second when I heard her before I saw her. She was behind me then and we hadn’t met.
Stanley’s loud too, but not like her. He’s the super in our building.
He’s Polish. He told me that right when I got here the first time and we shook hands. I guess it’s important to him. He’s loud, but you never know what he’s saying. I’m not even sure if he talks in words, so I don’t know how you measure how loud he is. He lent me a book on Krakow once. We’re not mates or anything.
He’s too old for that. A nice enough book though and the pictures. I tried to ask him whether Polish people paint the bricks on the tops of their buildings, or if they just got bricks of all different colors and stuck them together, because it kind of looked that way too. But Stanley didn’t know. He’d just say “Ludza.”
And I’d say, “why’d you say Ludza, Stanley?”
“Ludza. People.”
“Oh, I see.” As if anyone could.
I liked his overalls though. He doesn’t wear them much anymore. Now he goes for a vest with gold stitching. It’s blue and the stitching is gold and he has glasses too with silver frames, but the part that presses his nose so he has to rub it is sort of gold, and I don’t know about this look. It’s off with the glasses when he talks to you, like he’s all serious, but once when I came down to see him he was reading something and he still had them off, so I’m not exactly sure what they’re for. It’s hard to figure with Stanley.
Back when she was always around his look was better. Up with some style.
I always wanted to get a pair of overalls like his. Fetching. But that’s a big statement, a lot of “out there” flash, do you know what I mean? Stanley doesn’t have much flash, usually, but neither did she. They’re both loud though. Or she was. I hardly ever hear her these days. The last time I saw her, I don’t even remember when, I saw her out my window walking. She was carrying coffee in a cardboard tray, two cups. It was cold I remember. It was cloudy and sad with the clouds and she was the only person out walking, I guess because it was going to snow, but maybe it already had, a little, because I remember trying to count the footprints she left so I’d know how many steps long our block was. I was bored and she was there and it seemed normal enough, but it was hard to see her anyway.
I tried to squint and she was still fuzzy. She was fuzzy, too, that first time we met because she was so close which was a lot different. Like right in my face. Not exactly, but real close. I remembered how close she got then when I heard her later, in her place next to mine. We share a wall. It was like she was further away but I knew she was close too. Kind of confusing. When I asked him, Stanley said it was because the walls were so thin. Whatever.
It was important for me to try and think about what she had on so I could get a picture in my head to go with that voice. So loud. A voice with flash. But I couldn’t see it with the clothes she wore. She always had shorts on when I saw her in the halls. And a t-shirt too. She changed that a lot. I don’t think I ever saw the same one on her twice. Even when I got to thinking about how she looked in her place being so loud, on the phone, yelling out the window (lots of people walk on the street outside), singing music to herself that didn’t seem to have any words, I just couldn’t imagine more than her t-shirts.
She hadn’t given me much to go on. It’s just that maybe she should have dressed fancier to bring that much attention, do you know what I mean?
Her hair must have been scratchy because I swear you could even hear that too, when I was in my place and she was in her’s. Like she cut some off and stuck it on a broom to clean the walls. So scratchy, I could almost get to predicting when her hair would rub up against the wall. I knew that. And how her hair shot out too. That first time when I met her there were clumps of it poking out all around her head, out under this hat she had on that looked more like a Frisbee. I think it was green but it might have been closer to blue. But it wasn’t all about the hat. That first time when she backed away there were her eyes too. Maybe it was me. You can’t blame a guy if he notices things. Wild wild eyes. Almost freaked. And big and wet. Cows’ eyes. Not irritated wet like when your allergies are acting up, just wet wet. A good kind. Very ladylike. They wouldn’t work on a guy. And even though I thought they went with that voice, the way everything on her seemed to, I couldn’t picture them when I just heard her and couldn’t see. Even later, another time, when some other voice said something about them and she said thanks, in her place, I heard it through the wall, real loud, I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if he noticed what I noticed too, only I just couldn’t recall exactly. To make a sort of picture of it I mean.
So maybe I’m thinking she had lots of guys. I’m not gonna be green about it. But so many, most of them must just have been good friends. One was good at moving stuff, or at least she tricked him into thinking he was, because a lot at night I heard furniture scraping the floor, and he dragged it enough to shake my wall. He also got it so I knew exactly when he came and when he left. He was a real door slammer. I wasn’t a big fan.
When I did see her, I tried to make a good show. Why not, you know what I mean? I would have been open to it (I like how I put it like that). We had the same kind of Walkman, that yellow kind that you can drop again and again and it still works. Maybe if it even hits a rock. Top of the line. I’m not sure if she had it on when we met. I think she did. There was that hat like I said. But I noticed her Walkman each time in the hall afterwards. (A good thing about a loud person next door is that you can hear them so loud that you know when they’re getting ready to leave, and if you want to you can leave then too but that’s just if you want to say something in person.) I didn’t make a habit of it, but sometimes I asked anyway what she was listening to, especially if I had mine on. You never know, right?
“Heyding,” she would say.
“Oh, how’s he?”
“Don’t you like him?”
“He’s alright, you know what I mean?”
It was always her and her Heyding.
I didn’t like how she’d look after we’d talk like that. It was other things too. Sometimes just when I asked what she’d been up to. I always leaned on the wall when I said something like that. In the hallway. So she’d know I could be cool about it. And she’d ask me back. And then she’d wrinkle up her nose. She had a way with that. And making it seem like we sometimes asked each other too many questions.
I always told my mate Teffle about her. Maybe not always, but enough. I didn’t want him taking it too far. You pronounce his name a little like Whiffle, you know, as in the bat, but with a T . It doesn’t quite rhyme right, but it’s close. Close enough. He asked if I liked her and I said I guess, and when that was done he always said that people like things they can’t get. Teffle always says stuff that you just sort of nod to, like he means well but sometimes he’s off a bit. I always want things more when I think I can get them. I guess Teffle just sees things different.
Teffle was over a lot so he saw her sometimes. You could hear her shut her door when she left to go out, and then you could stand at the peep hole and look out and see, if you wanted to. I guess Teffle did, because first chance he had a look. Of course, I had really built her up, really nice description. Spot on. I nailed the hair part of her. One night before she left, with her still in that is, he walked right up to her door. Easiest thing in the world for him.
“You like her my man, let’s just borrow us some sugar.” Fine with me. Whatever it takes. That’s what I told Teffle. He could be alright. He’d go the distance for a mate. That’s what he always said. Then he’d say that he was my uncle. I let Teffle get away with saying things like that.
And then there they were. He came back with her. It was about a five minute wait. I hadn’t expected her to be with him. Or him like that either really. He didn’t have any sugar with him. And neither did she. He even introduced us again. She smiled, so I gave it back. I had the microwave going for coffee so nothing was too obvious. When Teffle said that I was his man, I didn’t even know how to look. I pretended to see something on the floor. Then I said “fucking hell.” It always helps to swear at something, even if nothing’s there, when you don’t know what to say. She asked what was wrong, and I thought that was obvious, so I said nothing and then she just shook my hand again and left, like she had something to get back to. I didn’t really ask Teffle what that was, because I didn’t really want to know, but I sort of put something out there, and he just said he didn’t think it was that at all. She must have had a casserole on or something like that, you know how they are, and I said “yeah” and we had a beer.
We played pool a lot or we didn’t really that much because when we started to we’d all just get to talking instead. Me and Teffle and the others too. They’d come and go, people whose names you never get down, you just call them buddy, like they were, or big chief, which everyone seems to like. They liked to talk about girls and had no problem saying so. I prefer a bit more class. Ladies. I like that.
Teffle would get it going anyway though, girls, ladies, mothers, wenches. They were all some form of that, he’d say. You’d want to watch Teffle after he had a few. He’d chalk up his stick. When he did it for really long, you knew he was going to say something. He liked to say things to me. Needling a bit.
“Weren’t you wearing those jeans yesterday?”
“It was a laundry day.”
“Doesn’t look like it was much of one.”
“How’s that?”
“They’re dirty as fuck.”
“Maybe I forgot to put them in.”
“See that you don’t next time.”
“Okay Teffle.”
Everyone liked Teffle. He’d bring it.
He’s funny. I sometimes thought she was too. I know that if I was really loud I’d want a good reason for it. Being funny is a good one. And if you are, you want people to know. So maybe you’d be loud a lot. I don’t know about Stanley. Maybe he’s funny in Polish. But maybe she wasn’t. It’s a thin line mates. That’s a Teffle. (You can use his name like that, too. He gets a kick out of it.) But let me tell you this: funniness isn’t weirdness. A lot of people get them mixed up. I had a girlfriend once, one of them, and she really liked watching basketball on television. At first I thought she hated basketball but maybe that was because she didn’t like me watching it with the sound up so loud.
She wasn’t that funny. This one guy she liked, all big and white and clunky, she even told me once that she wanted to lick his arms. That freaked me. She couldn’t leave it though. I would’ve. I wouldn’t even have said it if I thought it. That’d be for getting the sweat off she said. But you know, sera.
None of us really liked her. Teffle said she would be the death of me.
She played mind games he said. I told him that I got rid of her, but she really got rid of me. She met someone else. We weren’t compatible. That was one of her’s. But I liked her look. It wasn’t something you saw everyday, but if you looked enough you could find other girls who sort of had it too. I used to hope, when I heard her all loud and all, that Laura might guess I thought she had it.
It’s not something you just come out and say. At least not to the person who has it. Then you just maybe make it go. That’s not as good and it can be confusing.
People are everywhere, and you gotta keep some of them looking different. And like I said, you don’t want it to get confusing.
The first day might have been the best. I’m not going to lie to you. It was, for certain, okay? Before I heard her too much, and thought too much about hearing her so often. We kept it simple back in the day. When I helped her with moving even before I met her. All of it was good then. Or was about to be.
That’s the best time, when you think you might be open to something (you never know), do you know what I mean? (Oh yes--that’s her name, Laura. I guess I should have pointed that out before. But there you are.) I like a girl with a European name. Someone was supposed to help her move, but he didn’t show, so Stanley got me to give a hand. I don’t know why he was involved in the first place. Maybe he had a relative who knew her family and they asked him to help out because he was going to be home anyway. You can find out anything these days if you want to. Even about Stanley. Of course he’s pretty loud himself, so he probably just blurted it out that he was going to be around and so why not?
Maybe when she came for walking through her apartment that was going to be hers she heard him. And who’s going to refuse an offer like that? I know people who have jumped at less.
He wanked it out that day when she moved in. Mostly hiding in front of the truck, sucking wind even though he wasn’t doing anything. But he couldn’t stop from saying “Ludza,” so I’d say “what’s that Stanley?” and he’d work for a minute or two. He’s pretty old you know. I like him. But that’s not why I’m telling you.
With it being her first day in the building and all, I figured we’d try and make a good first impression. I knew she was a girl. Ha. Sorry. I mean, Stanley said, “how do you say,” then he said something sounding like “girl,” that’s who we were going to be moving, so I caught his gist. Stanley said it was good to be neighborly.
She was late in showing, and we were half-way done. The truck had got there early and we never saw the driver. Weird. But maybe he had other vans to drive that day. It was kind of hot which was a bit off for that time of year.
But wait a day if you don’t like it. That’s an old one. I thought it was kind of rude, her not being there for the start. Like she expected servants. Good thing she looked nice enough, like she felt bad. She said she was “detained.” Stanley was like an actor. He was too quick with that stupid neighborly line of his. “It is, how you say, good to be....” She smiled when he said that. I caught his look. Like he was waiting for her to say something bad. His gut shook a little like he was scared. And when he tried to say something else, he spit by accident. A little, but enough. She didn’t even brush it off her face. Pretended it wasn’t there. And she smiled at him looking all stupid. He could be the foreman she said. And Stanley cracked a grin like his dream had finally come true. I guess he knew that word foreman. A super probably should. It’s his business. And that was her kind of flash, making Stanley to look all like that.
I bet she could do that with anyone. Even if she looked a mess. On a guy that sweat would have been gross. It was all over her. On her forehead. I could count the bubbles of it. And beneath her arms. Big moons of it. And on her shirt too.
Like a river. All that on a guy, I would’ve turned and ran ‘cause it would’ve been like he had something and I wouldn’t want to get it myself. But it wasn’t like that with her.
We went on for awhile and I got bored and started to think. She only carried the really light stuff but if that was the best she could do, at least she made a good show of it. I kind of liked her just for trying. Teffle’s big saying was that you couldn’t go wrong if you asked a girl to have a cup of coffee with you. I tried it once. It went alright. But that was his trick. He said it never failed. And I was bored and thinking. So I asked her when we were about done. We’d only spoken just a little bit, so it wasn’t like we had become friends or anything, so you couldn’t say that we had crossed that line and anything else would be awkward and a mistake. It would have to be ice coffee because with the heat. I was flexible at least. So I asked her if she wanted to and it was nearly dark, but she still said another time. It was very hot. And it was. Only I guess she didn’t know that you could get cold coffee too, but I wasn’t gonna point that out just then. You wait a bit. And since it was a Tuesday then, I figured I’d ask again Thursday. Enough time be casual with it.
But I didn’t see her that day even though I spent hours down in the basement doing laundry. That’s where I usually see everyone in the building. I guess she had lots of clean clothes. I guess you should when you move. You bag it up.
Nothing gets dirty that way. How could it?
But I got her down there. That doesn’t sound good. I mean, I saw her there, it was some time after, doing laundry. Long after that move and long after Teffle had gotten her into my place and even long after I’d gotten used to hearing her, so loud, talking into her phone, or tapping my wall like she was hanging a picture, with someone there to help her out, another guy, I just called Hanger, because I knew his name started with an H, but I could never remember it, so Hanger was good.
I pretended not to notice that she was folding up a bra. But she was. I said, “how’ya?” And if that didn’t start her talking.
“Have we met?”
“We have.”
“Paul.”
“No.”
“Mark.”
“No.”
“Andrew?”
“Closer.”
“Allan.”
“So how you been?”
“You helped me move.”
“Okay.”
“Didn’t you.”
“I did.”
“That was very nice of you. Can you hand me that?”
I gave her the bleach by my arm. There was a table between us. That’s where everyone folded stuff. There was no stopping her.
“How’s Stanley?”
“Fine.”
“He’s from Krakow, huh?”
“Krakow.”
“Have you been?”
“No.”
“I thought he said you were Polish.”
“I’m not.”
“Neither am I.”
It was good to share a joke down there.
I liked how her bangs seemed to tangle into her eyebrows. They were very full. I thought that even as she walked away. With her basket up the stairs. I couldn’t do any of the laundry I’d brought down because she already had some stuff in the washer. Her flip-flops were loud on the metal stairs. Like ping-pong rackets swatting at coins in the air. And thick legs. Not fat. But they almost rubbed against each other when she really went. Still not my type though. That’s the shame of it. A good looking girl. Only I couldn’t see us together. That’s all. It goes like that sometimes, do you know what I mean?
You’re best not trying to make too much of things. That’s what Teffle said at least. He’s straight enough that way.
