A man came to me the other night. I’m home on Saturday. It’s one o’clock in the morning. I’m in no hurry, I haven’t come back from anywhere, I’m getting ready to go to bed. Silence and peace.
Suddenly, a loud conversation on the landing breaks into this idyll. I think it’s on my floor. What’s there, at my door. I’m listening… hmm, a pleasant male timbre. Suddenly, I distinctly hear the clatter of a key against a lock. My door! In two strides, I’m in the hallway and I’m peering through the peephole.
Man. A tall man in a hood is trying to get a key into the lock. He keeps jabbering into his phone with one hand and picking at the lock with the other. I’m watching through the peephole. Definitely not a thief, otherwise he would have been quiet. He’ll realize he made a mistake and leave. I’m waiting. But the comrade persistently continues to get the key into the lock, over and over again. And he’s talking indistinctly to his phone. Having decided that he has already tried hard enough, he confidently takes hold of the handle. And voila – the door swings open.
The mise en scene. I’m in a bathrobe and standing in the doorway in complete shock, not having time to take a step back from surprise. How did he open the door? He stares at me, wide-eyed. We are enveloped in a luxurious alcoholic ambergris exuded by a stranger. He puts his cell phone in his pocket and speaks softly.: “I’m off.” And indeed, he walks unsteadily down the stairs into the night, not having time to say goodbye.
Closing the door with three locks, I suddenly felt like the heroine of a song.: “The wind blows through the windows at night, / Open it, open it. / I thought deeply, / But I waited for you until dawn. / I loved you without knowing you, / On the fourth floor / I’m still walking through the rooms / Alone in a negligee…”
***
The infobusiness has stood and will stand on challenges and triggers – surprise or die. Proper, sweet, and pleasant people in all respects have no chance of selling themselves. Therefore, any blogger is constantly looking for different ideas to keep his subscribers on their toes.
So my upstairs neighbor, who once opened the door to my apartment, entered this slippery slope. On live TV, he shaved the bald spot on his head, leaving a fluffy crown of overgrown hair around the circumference. Judging by the comments, it triggered many, which means that the coverage of stories jumped up. And of course, he was drunk, in a sober state it is impossible to disfigure himself so enchantingly.
I have excellent earplugs for this case. When I saw the stream from the barbershop, I immediately went to the pharmacy to get earplugs for my son, who had previously flatly refused to use them. But something told me that it wasn’t this time.…
The celebration that broke out in the neighboring bars in the morning has moved to the apartment from above, when ordinary mortals are already getting ready for bed. The obligatory revelry program – jumping in spacesuits from cupboards, rolling iron cans on the floor, dragging chairs on tiles and playing at maximum speed – was complemented this time by karaoke and choral singing. The sound amplification equipment upstairs is decent, so the neighbors also got the opportunity to sing along with the guests. The repertoire was for every taste: rap, rock, Soviet pop and folk drinking with horses in the fields and throwing overboard.
Since I was mentally prepared, I just stayed in the stream until 23.00. After all, the buzzing has been going on for the second day, and they must get tired sometime? But no, the party was only gaining momentum, and the decibels were also growing. Perhaps we would have limited ourselves to watching the series with headphones, but my son needed to get up very early for training. So around midnight, I called my neighbor, but no one answered the phone. After waiting a bit, I wrote a message – in pure English. But, apparently, the evening passed without phones. My son went to test earplugs, and I decided to take exceptional measures and called the police for help. I’ve already found out experimentally that an alcoholic fuse can last until morning.
A patrol arrived 10 minutes later. I heard the police knocking on the door for a long time, as the music faded away, I heard negotiations and general laughter on the landing. Through the peephole, I saw laughing policemen coming down the stairs in a great mood. A few minutes later, the celebration continued, but much quieter, so that we could fall asleep in earplugs.
Towards noon, I received a message.
“Did you call the cops?”
– Yes.
“They laughed so much at my hairstyle.”
And he started a new day with a clean slate by deleting the scandalous video from the social network.
There was no apology. The neighbor’s good manners are reserved exclusively for young maidens. In his worldview, women my age belong to the category of furniture and/or deaf retired women who need neither silence nor respect.
***
At eight in the morning, the doorbell rang insistently. I jumped out of my sleep, rushed through the whole apartment, and crept soundlessly to the door. Yesterday, there was an advertisement in the entrance asking for access to the apartments. Yeah, now.
Through the peephole, I saw a neighbor from above. He was wearing a knitted woolen sweatshirt with a zipper, tightly buttoned up to his chin, and… in underpants. Slippers on her feet. Cute, but cheeky. After looking at myself in the mirror, I decided not to open it. While I was thinking about whether to say I was asleep or still raise my voice, the neighbor rang a couple of times and slowly, with dignity, holding the vertical, retreated up the stairs.
Very, very strange, I thought. “Why ring the doorbell when there are messengers?”
And at the same moment, the phone vibrated – there was an incoming video call from a neighbor. I still wasn’t ready for such close communication and dropped it.
“Did you ring the doorbell?” I typed the message. At the same time I thought: “Why am I asking this? I know it was him.”
“No, I’m not,” he replied matter–of-factly.
Next came a picture of two hamburgers with a comment: “I’m making breakfast.”
An invitation? I critically examined my image, and I was not pleased with what I saw – an unfamiliar, disheveled and sleepy woman was looking out of the mirror. But there were, there were times when I looked like a fresh rose at any time of the day. Anyway, I don’t have breakfast that early, I thought further. Although… why not make an exception?
“Is there salt? – the neighbor interrupted my memories. “Will I come in?”
“Why don’t you go to Marya Petrovna’s?” – I just had time to think, as the neighbor rang the doorbell again.
I put on a robe and, pouring salt into a tiny outlet, opened the door a crack. There was a whiff of alcohol. The neighbor was still in his underpants and sweatshirt, and he was smiling at me like he was auditioning for a toothpaste commercial right now. I silently handed over the salt and slammed the door.
The alcoholic’s sleep is brief and disturbing. And later in the evening, a sequel followed, but with a different, sober neighborly subpersonality.
“Where does this gypsy nonsense come from?” a neighbor wrote in a familiar boorish manner after waking up from a hangover. The message was followed by a photo of a salt outlet.
“Turkish nonsense, but Himalayan salt,” I replied.
“Your salt is definitely enchanted, I know you. She whispered, guessed, spat, and gave it to me. I don’t want to keep her at home. Even the cat is afraid of her. Will I bring it?”
And a minute later, he silently inserted a salt outlet into the door and, without saying “thank you,” promptly departed for new exploits. If you use masks with horns on social media or fly on a broomstick in stories, you can be understood literally.
