I HAVE EXCEPTIONAL hearing in my left ear and enjoy sitting against my sixth-floor apartment door, listening to the activities going on in the hall. It’s amazing how much people give away on their way from the elevator to their apartment. Sometimes people step out of their apartment for “privacy,” a fact I find hilarious. From my doorside seat, I hear the fights, the secret phone conversations, and the everyday normalcy that gives away so much about a person.
Simon was, for a long time, “the Redheaded Smoker.” I keep a notebook next to the door, in the cardboard box. In it, I have a page dedicated to every resident on our floor, including me. There are fifteen “Sixers,” as I like to refer to us, and when Simon moved in, “the Brown-Haired Smoker” is what I wrote on the top of the page.
He moved in with a girl who, as best I could tell from my peephole, was one step above trailer trash. They were arguing, carrying black trash bags full of crap, and her voice interrupted his twice between the elevator and their door. I started a page for her and titled it “Trailer Trash Tonya.” I later found out her name was Beth, and she worked at Applebee’s. Two weeks after moving in, they got in a fight, she moved out, and I threw away her page. From the words of their parting, she would not be coming back.
Simon’s current girlfriend is Vicodin. In return for my containment, I keep his girlfriend coming. From his level of dependence, Vicodin is one demanding bitch, reducing him to a sniveling, whiny submissive in the days leading to the first of the month, when his next order arrives. Simon understands that if he ever unlocks me, ever releases me before morning, his prescriptions will stop and his addiction will go hungry. He doesn’t realize he might die at my hand.