The Secret Lives of Neighbors - Apartment 7

“This,” I heard my neighbor across the hall announce loudly from inside his apartment, “is what I use for my zits.”

I paused, turning the key very slowly in the lock of my front door.

“Zits are p-i-m-p-l-e-s,” he continued. “I squeeze them, and they ooze lots of pus.”

He pronounced “ooze” in a very drawn-out fashion, adding an unnecessary dramatic element to a word that conjures a vivid enough image on its own. How very, I thought, disturbing…

I recalled that I had seen this neighbor departing the building earlier today, with two tall, slender young men trailing behind him. Thinking back further, I now remembered that the few occasions that I had seen people visiting my neighbor, they had always looked very much like these two young men and – more importantly – spoke in a broken, rudimentary English accentuated by some sort of Russian or Slavic accent.

Hmmm. While I had previously felt some sympathy for my fellow apartment dweller, his lack of regular friends was now starting to make quite a bit of sense. What sort of bizarre conversation topics did he introduce to his guests? Even more puzzling, what was he talking about? I tried to visualize some sort of apparatus that one would use on an oozing pimple, but my mind drew a blank.

This particular neighbor is a bit odd in other ways, as well. For one thing, I cannot figure out what sort of hours he keeps. It seems that he comes and goes according to a rhythm that only he understands. When he is home, I can generally hear the television through his apartment door as I pass through the hallway. I’ve come to the conclusion that he either listens to his TV at a ridiculously high volume, or he’s positioned the television directly in front of his door. I’ve also determined that his favorite genre of film is – most decidedly – the hero-takes-all action flick. On occasion, I hear him shout encouragement to the film’s lead, providing much-needed support to the fictional character.

Even more interesting than my neighbor, however, is his roommate - a feline named Percy. Percy is a large orange tabby tomcat with a loud personality and an even louder voice. I hear this voice regularly, in the form of various sorts of meows, as Percy makes his wants and needs known to the world. One of Percy’s wants (that he very much believes to be a “need”) is to be free to roam the neighborhood. This is a bad idea for any cat, but an especially bad idea for a cat that lives on the second floor.

Last summer, I opened the door to the backyard one morning and found Percy sitting on the stoop. As the door opened, he let out a long and prolonged meow of protest (clearly having found whatever wait he had endured to be completely unacceptable) and paraded past me with his tail in the air. I followed as he led me to his owner’s apartment door, and obligingly knocked when he let out another feline wail. After some time, and repeated knocking, the door opened to reveal a very sleepy-looking cat owner. Percy, quite finished with me, deserted my side and sauntered past his dad, meowing loudly the entire way. My neighbor, meanwhile, mumbled a quick “thank-you” and closed the door, both of us quite ready to end the encounter.

As the summer progressed, I learned that Percy had taken to jumping off of the balcony, and that his owner – while he had initially taken extensive measures to prevent this – had given up the battle. If the chicken wire lining the entire balcony wasn’t going to contain Percy, then my neighbor felt that nothing would. (I, myself, can’t help but question the wisdom of letting the cat out on the balcony in the first place…)

Things seem to getting worse as times goes on. Already this year, I’ve been startled and/or awoken by one of two disturbing noises on a regular basis. The more natural – but still jarring – sound is the high-volume yowl that Percy employs as his “I want back in the apartment right now” signal. This can go on for quite some time, as often Percy’s owner is not in his own apartment to hear these plaintive cries. As if that weren’t bad enough, his owner has his own call for Percy – a ridiculously loud whistle that practically rattles my apartment. It sounds like a cross between a “wolf whistle” and a steam engine, and tends to be repeated multiple times, occasionally interspersed with calls of “P-E-R-C-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y.”

Sometimes I visualize the daily life that these two companions lead, Percy talking all day long about topics important only to himself, while my neighbor narrates his own activities to Percy, a habit that - as today proved - can lead only to problems. Since this morning, my imagination has begun drawing even clearer pictures of what life must be like behind door number seven.

"This," I imagine my neighbor explaining to Percy, leaning closer, "Is a nose-hair trimmer. It can also trim ears. Ear hair traps W-A-X. Wax is gross and yellow, and smells bad."

In my imaginary vision, my neighbor places an unusually emphatic stress on the words "smells" and "bad," driving the point home to the disdainfully meowing tabby who - with a final protesting wail - turns toward the balcony door.