“As a matter of fact, ma’am, he’s not in jail. He’s been released on bail under certain conditions, and part of my job is supervising him.”
Her face freezes for a moment. “How can you let him go like that? After what he did here, and what he did to her?”
“I share your concerns. He’s facing a number of serious charges in court, but at the moment he hasn’t been proven guilty, so he can’t be held in jail.”
“Prove what? I saw it all. The judge can talk to me. I heard the proof that night, and I listened to it for months before that.” She glances again at the curtained windows of unit 5. Then she gestures at him to follow, leads him along the walk in front and up the steps to where her own door stands ajar. She leaves her garden clogs on the landing.
Once standing on the inside mat, he can see her floors are spotless, so he’s faced with taking his own shoes off, and he’s not sure about this meeting she’s called. “I really should get going.”
“I’m making coffee, a cup for you,” she says in a persuasive manner, so he slips his shoes off and takes the chair she pulls out for him. Her name is Fay Kubova, she offers. Her husband’s name is Juri, and he’s lying prone in an armchair in the next room, lying very still but apparently breathing.
“This has always been a quiet complex, stable tenants, usually older people, some retired. They never have problems with their rent, never any noise. Until that couple moved in.” She points at the wall her unit shares with number 5. “I spoke with her the very first weekend. Their party kept me awake until three, and I was over there knocking on the door at nine. Finally, she opened it, standing there barely dressed, and I gave her a piece of my mind. At least she had the decency to apologize, even when it wasn’t her fault. Because she couldn’t stop that… that monster. It happened again and again.”
According to Fay, she would have never rented the place to the young couple in the first place, or else they would have been evicted after a month, had it not been for the fact that Juri knew that Todd Nolin had played in the NHL. This gave him status in Juri’s eyes. The old man has followed the game since defecting to Canada nearly forty years ago. He roots for the Czechs, his countrymen, whatever team they play for.
“And he’s mostly deaf,” she points out, looking briefly at her inert husband in the other room. “So the noise never bothers him the way it does me. And it was getting worse, even on weeknights. So I got fed up, and I gave them a written warning two weeks ago.”
“Sounds like they’ve caused you some grief,” Peter says.
“Grief? Yes, he’s caused grief, all right, mostly for that poor girl,” Fay fumes, plunking a mug of dark coffee in front of him. She sets out sugar and cream. Then she sits down, fixes her eyes on him, leans across the table, and tells Peter what happened.
Juri was watching the hockey game, sipping his third beer against the doctor’s orders, oblivious to anything else.
Next door they were watching the game, as well. Several vehicles were crowded into the parking lot. Male voices and laughter, cheers and jeers boomed through the kitchen wall, and Fay wasn’t happy about it. She finished the dishes, tidied up the kitchen, and considered marching over to complain.
“They’re having another party next door,” she informed Juri, moving over the carpet into his line of vision far enough to get his attention.
“What?”
“There’s a party next door,” she repeated, raising her voice over the announcer’s commentary blaring from their own television. “Between this, and them, I can hardly hear myself think!”
“It’s the playoffs!” Juri hollered as if she were standing twenty yards away. He craned his neck, not in anger but with the simple need to see the corner of the television screen her skirt was obscuring. The streak of a rubber puck. Clearly, he thought his answer explained everything — the weather, the economy, the ungodly noise next door.
Fay bustled around a bit, madder by the minute, then finally got her garden overshirt out of the closet and stepped outside. The evening was warm and pungent with the scents of greening lawns, spruce and pine, all the vegetation, roots, and leaves awakening.
She walked around the yard, checking the coiled yellow yard hoses, picking up the odd piece of litter. Traffic on the street was more aggressive than on an average night. Everyone was in a hurry to get somewhere, like a hockey game party. She gathered a couple of tools from the aluminum garden shed, then criss-crossed the lawn in a vengeful campaign against any and all weeds. From inside the apartments she could still hear the roar of the televisions, and raucous cheers from number 5.
Herbicides weren’t something Fay had much experience with. On that point she’d stood her ground against Juri, who had been inclined to spray with just about anything short of green paint to achieve a flawless lawn. But last summer he had done little at all in the yard. Now she could already see where the dandelions had seeded, and she imagined their lengthening white roots. Some were more than she could oust with her hand shovel.
Dusk crept up on the neighbourhood and Fay’s yard. Finally, there came a great roar from within unit 5, signalling the end of the hockey game. Soon after, young men appeared on the front steps, each with a beer in hand, laughing and yelling at one another in foul language. When she spotted Todd Nolin, Fay straightened and stared across the lawn until he noticed her. He avoided eye contact and made some remark to his buddies, which scored a great laugh. Not long after that they all piled into their vehicles and disappeared, much to Fay’s relief. She supposed young Marina was inside cleaning up after the louts.
Fay put her tools away and climbed the steps into her own apartment. There she found Juri asleep in his easy chair. Fay shut off the television. She roused him gently and supported him as he made his way to the bathroom to rinse his dentures and prepare for bed.
“Who won?” she asked, then regretted the question.
He mumbled irritably, and she guessed he didn’t know, that he’d fallen asleep before the game’s end. This would trouble Juri greatly, and Fay did her best to prevent such embarrassment for him.
After he was settled in, she returned to the kitchen, plugged in the kettle, prepared the coffee maker for the morning, and set out the box of wheat biscuits. Once the water boiled, she fixed her nightly cup of Ovaltine, a thirty-year habit. Fay took her drink into the living room and was seated in her chair just in time for the ten o’clock news. She trusted the anchorman, admired how his voice portrayed all the grief and disaster he was given to cover. Sometimes she wondered what he did when the program concluded, and if he ever had a problem sleeping. As for Fay, she made her way to the bathroom, where she changed and washed, applied facial cream, and then went to bed.
She awakened later with a start, fumbled for her glasses, saw that it was almost 3:00 a.m. A horrendous crash and roar was coming from the next apartment. She rolled out of bed, grabbed her housecoat, and hustled downstairs.
Something smashed against the wall, something fell and was dragged or kicked aside. For a moment the voices were muted by struggle, then a short, vicious oath, then a wail. Then words and fragments blasted through the wall.
“They’re laughing at me! Laughing, you slut! You want a good laugh, here —”
“Oh, dear God,” Fay whispered, pacing back and forth from her kitchen to the walk-in closet at the end of the hall, trying to track whatever was going on. The girl screamed.
“Fucking little bitch…”
“Todd! Pleeease!”
Another crash, and a scramble of feet and objects overturned. A prolonged wail, a series of cries, and pounding steps indicated that the girl was running upstairs. Fay turned and followed up her own stairwell, heard the man’s steps thunder upward past her.
“Where do you think you’re going?” a man’s voice roared.
Fay tilted her ear to the wall at the top of the stairs,