The Spot: Stories

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Upstairs he stops for a moment, just to let the tension build, and then he begins again, softer at first, going east to west and then east again, heading toward the Fifth Avenue side of the building, pausing to get his bearings, to look out at the view, I imagine, before heading west, pausing overhead to taunt me before going back into motion for a few minutes, setting the pace with a pendulous movement, following the delineation of the apartment walls — his the same as mine, his exactly the same — and then there is another pause, and I lean back and study the ceiling and hear, far off, the sound of knocking in his kitchen, and then eventually — maybe five minutes, maybe more — he comes back and begins persistent and steady, without the usual aggression, as if he has forgotten me, set me aside, put away his desire for vengeance, offering a reprieve from the nature of his knocking. Maybe a five-minute reprieve, more or less, because it is impossible to guess how long these silent moments might be when they open up overhead, knowing, as I wait, that the knocking will begin again; if not in the form of his tapping heel, then some other kind of knock: perhaps the sound of the hammer he uses to pound the nails (He’s a big nail pounder. He’ll hang pictures at all hours), or the rubbery thud of his printer at work (He’s a big printer, scrolling out documents in the wee hours of the morning, at dusk and at dawn), or the thump of his mattress hitting the slats, accompanied by the wheeze of springs (the wheeze not officially a knocking, most certainly, acting as a kind of arabesque, a grace note to the mattress knocks that arrive after some easeful swaying in his bed).

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