I noticed something yesterday about the angry dude who lives upstairs. This is a guy who used to be chatty and congenial but who one day decided to turn the owner of this building and some of his neighbors into his enemies. He went door to door asking everyone if they were satisfied with how the owner of the building handled things like fixing busted pipes and other maintenance requests. This person seemed to be headed to housing court, intending to sue the owner for incompetence or negligence, I don’t know which, what, or even why.
I remember this person seemed frustrated with my response to his questions. I said I had no problem with the owner. That might not be 100% true but for all the outright fear he has put into me and for all the illegal demands he has made of me over the years it’s not like I wish harm on the guy or want to live in anger or in a combative environment of open suspicion and conflict.
Frustrated or not with my responses to his questions what this person upstairs really wanted was for me to be evicted or to have my piano confiscated. He asked people if my piano playing bothered them, saying that he thought musical instruments in apartments should be illegal. He must have been disappointed to find that not only do the other residents here not have a problem with it but they actually like to hear my playing. So much for that little protest. It’s disconcerting for me to know there were whispers going around that I should be evicted, but it’s not going to happen so I don’t care.
What I noticed yesterday about the angry dude upstairs is that his wife is gone. I wouldn’t know what happened but it must be years now since she left. I only spoke to her once that I can remember. That was after I got mugged and I was telling neighbors about it in the spirit of neighborly warning that such things were happening around here. She was with this man at the time and they seemed genuinely interested and sympathetic to my anxiety about the incident. I never talked to her again but he and I chatted a few times here or there over the years, with him memorably cornering me at a supermarket instructing me not to vote for George W. Bush.
Today there is none of that. Having made his case that I should be kicked out and that the building owner is negligent he now lives the life of one who stares at the floor when passing others in the hallway. That is an unblessed way to live but it’s what he chose and it appears he is sticking with it to the bitter end, whatever that might be.
I just looked him up and find that he sued the Commission of Labor last year over his ineligibility to receive unemployment benefits. I don’t know what type of work he did before applying for unemployment but suing over something like that sounds like a lost cause. I remember noticing a long time ago that he had a website, and I think he had advertised himself as a web developer or consultant of some sort. These days I see him heading out with his briefcase in the late afternoon, suggesting he works a night shift somewhere.
I bet he would be surprised to know I am in here, behind a single closed door, typing all these words about him. I am using a mechanical keyboard, a noisy device that makes typing sound like a stampede. Anyone passing by outside should be able to hear it, but can they hear what I am typing? Do the letters get passed into the air and underneath the locked door?
To call the woman his wife is making the assumption that they were actually married. I never knew her name and can barely remember his but I would think their relationship is on public record somewhere. When I had paid access to Ancestry there was a strange feature that let you type in a street address and get a virtual dossier on everyone who ever lived there, right down to individual apartments. I did not learn anything about this apartment that I did not already know, save for exact names of the people who lived her before me. One was a Japanese woman who lived here for two years before moving back to Japan. The other was a son of the building owner who I think was here for 10 or 12 years. I found interesting bits about others who lived, including how an older gentleman had a patent on something that would have been used by jewelers.
I may have encountered records concerning this angry person and his former wife/roommate but such details would be lost on me now.
Further search results show that this person speaks many languages and teaches adult students up to age 50. He also appears on one of the many fake websites that claim to know how much money people make and what their reputation is. Both these aforementioned sites have boxes where you can leave reviews. I should copy and paste this whole story into one of those forms.
Now I find that he is or was associated with an established translation company, and an unhappy customer has posted an entire e-mail exchange which would charitably be described as earnest.
I’m going to wrap up this research into the angry neighbor with the observation that he lives in the small studio apartment upstairs. I assume he has always been in that unit and that he and his wife shared it. I consider myself lucky to have never had to share such a small space with another person, though I know that as a human being I would find ways to make it work. But man, that’s a small space for two people. The studio next door to me was formerly occupied by at least three people, maybe four including a woman who seemed to be a babysitter for the infant child. That’s a tight squeeze.
Here is something quite strange. I found a site that claims to list everyone who lives or has lived at a given address. I thought Ancestry had that feature locked up. Listings for this address look generally accurate as far as I can tell save for one oddity. It claims my mother lived here. I can’t imagine how that could be on record anywhere, since it never happened. She stayed here for one week many years ago but I think that was it. I know you can be forever associated with an address if you ever received postal mail there. That did not happen here, I don’t think, but it did happen to me. The address of my uncle’s house in Atlanta will forever be on my record because of it.
My mother showing up as having lived here is not completely unimaginable, of course. It’s not like random person I might have had one conversation with 15 years ago is said to have lived here. But still, kinda weird.
I like to think it matters, that the lives lived in this space could intermingle in time’s eternal continuum. That wish extends to everything, every person, every place. I wish the past did not just rise up but that it remained established and relevant. There is probably a name for this, a synesthesia of time and space.
