Two of the guys on his team had just returned from China, so they were all told to work from home, in a self-imposed quarantine, for two weeks. Scott spent the first three days in his boxers. He slept in, had a beer with lunch. The apartment got too much shade during the day. It was depressing. He was having trouble staying motivated without anyone else to compete with.
He’d been dating the woman in the apartment above his for almost two months. They’d slept together a couple of times, but she still hadn’t introduced him to her kids. She got a neighbor to watch them if she wanted to go out with Scott.
She was a dental hygienist. Aubrey. She had long brown hair and brown eyes, and she wore tight blue scrubs to work. Sometimes he saw her on the way to her car.
On the news, the virus was running rampant. Scott’s company sent everyone a message saying to work from home until further notice. The schools closed. He’d heard Aubrey’s kids upstairs from time to time, of course, but now they were overhead 24 hours a day.
Scott texted her. Im trying to work
So am I, she texted back, after 45 minutes.
He walked over to the window. The blinds were closed. He lifted a slat and looked outside. Her car was gone. The damn kids sounded like they were stampeding up there. You sound like a herd of elephants, his mother used to say. Go outside. You’re giving me a headache.
Aubrey got home late, wearing the blue scrubs, carrying a big bag of groceries in one arm and a bag of fast food in the other hand. He waited until he heard her finish putting things away and walk back to her bedroom to change.
U up? he texted, meaning it as a joke, but she didn’t reply.
He tried music, earplugs. All day, the kids were bouncing tennis balls and blasting the TV. He didn’t know if the neighbor lady was keeping an eye on them or they were just up there by themselves. They were what, 8 and 10? Or younger, maybe. He couldn’t really remember.
Scott gritted his teeth. He had a deadline. He took a shower and put on a clean shirt. Pants didn’t matter for a conference call.
Aubrey came home in the middle of the afternoon.
Youre home early
She’s closing the office, Aubrey texted back, with a sad-faced emoji.
Except for emergencies
But she’ll want Lisa for those.
Scott texted: Wanna come over?
I can’t.
He didn’t know what the kids were doing up there. Killing each other, it sounded like. Lemme know if u change yr mind
But she didn’t. A few days later, he saw her carrying a laundry basket out to her car. He put down his laptop and texted her. Where r u going?
Laundromat, she typed back. Tersely, it seemed to him. She squinted in the approximate direction of his window and threw the basket into the back seat of her car.
Whats wrong w/ yr washer
Broken
Call the office, he suggested.
I DID
She spun her car out of the parking space and sped away.
Scott had a washer/dryer combo, too, and he would’ve let her use them, but she hadn’t asked.
The kids were up there doing something again. Jumping from the couch to the coffee table, maybe. He could hear the shriek, then the loud thump, over and over again.
He watched a UPS driver walking around outside, delivering packages. He watched a line of tiny black ants march along the other side of the windowsill.
Aubrey began leaving the apartment less and less frequently. The salons had been closed for a while. Her hair color was fading, and even from a distance, he could see how fried it looked. Dry, frizzy.
While she was gone, he banged a broom handle on the ceiling. The little monsters seemed to interpret the knocking as an invitation to play some sort of game. They began jumping, echoing back the rhythm Scott had used. He became frustrated, banged harder. Bits of plaster scattered all around him.
The weather turned overcast again. Every day for a week, it rained.
The kids seemed to settle down a bit in the evenings, but during the day, never.
Scott was falling behind with his work.
He called the front office to file an anonymous complaint. Even as he dialed the phone, though, he knew that it was probably “anonymous”; he couldn’t imagine that the apartment complex didn’t have phones with Caller ID. “I’m sorry to do this,” he told the girl in the office, but it was a lie.
“Don’t worry,” the girl said. “You’re not the first person who’s reported her.”
Overnight, someone keyed Aubrey’s car. From the window, he couldn’t see what had been scratched into it, but he could hear her freaking out all the way from his apartment.
The girl from the front office called to ask him if he was responsible for the damage. Scott was indignant. Indignantly, he denied it. After they hung up, he paced around the living room, stewing. Upstairs, he could hear a series of sharp little barks. Had Aubrey gotten them a dog? Or were the kids pretending to be dogs?
The last time he had texted her, he had asked, Dont they ever go to their dads?
That was when she stopped responding.
All day and night, it seemed, the kids were barking. He called the office again, but they said there was nothing else they could do.
A few days later, he opened the door for a delivery and found a sign taped next to his doorbell. PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB the sign said in chunky upper-case letters. Underneath was a crude drawing, presumably of him, but even when he took it inside and turned it in all different directions, he still wasn’t sure what it depicted.
Scott was laid off via video call.
A few weeks later, Aubrey moved out. He’d heard a lot of commotion upstairs—packing, it seemed now, in retrospect. She backed a U-Haul up to the sidewalk, and the kids helped her carry out boxes.
That night, he lay on the couch in the dark and drank a beer. The apartment above his would be vacant for at least a few days. It could have felt like a victory, but it didn’t.
Quiet. That’s all it was then. So very quiet.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leah Browning is the author of six chapbooks including Orchard City, a collection of short fiction published by Hyacinth Girl Press in 2017. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Belle Ombre, South 85 Journal, Mojave River Review, Four Way Review, The Forge Literary Magazine, The Threepenny Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, Watershed Review, Superstition Review, The Homestead Review, Newfound, Clementine Unbound, Belletrist Magazine, Poetry South, The Stillwater Review, and elsewhere. Browning’s work has also appeared on materials from Broadsided Press and Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf, with audio and video recordings in The Poetry Storehouse, and in anthologies including The Doll Collection from Terrapin Books and Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence from White Pine Press.