It was never a problem for me, hearing someone else fuck. You know, I’ve had roommates. It’s natural. I don’t view it as an imposition. I remember being in college, we all lived in this tiny little house, and it was part of the background noise, like the dishwasher or the coffee machine. Oh, Tim’s fucking Alice. The sound is coming through the vents. I guess you’re usually hearing the woman, but you’re thinking about the man. You hear Alice, but you’re thinking about Tim. That’s something he’s doing. It’s a gauge of his ability. You’re not hearing the slap of skin, but the woman’s reaction to it. I’ve heard they fake it, but I don’t want to think about that. It’s always real to me. I once got laid because someone had talked to someone who talked to someone who had heard me having sex, and it was loud. Call that a Yelp review, hahaha. I’m not a voyeur, I should say. I wasn’t creeping around the house trying to hear my friends make love. But, you know, you hear it, and if it sounds like something lovely is going on, you get a sense of pride, like when a friend of yours makes Dean’s List or sets a school pole vaulting record. Let me tell you something. On the day we graduated, we went wild. We stole a golf cart and crashed it through Butter’s fence. We went streaking, that sort of thing. At some point around 3 we all crawled back to our beds. I was lying there on my Ikea frame, room spinning but not too bad. And suddenly Lindsey comes over. She was Mikey’s paramour freshman year. Maybe they never even fucked, I can’t remember. She was the one who got away. And yet I can hear her voice in the kitchen, soft and slurred. And I hear his, and their footsteps going up the stairs, to the room above my own. And pretty quick they’re going at it. Now, Mikey lived right above me, so whenever he had a girl over I heard it. And in point of fact I’ll tell you what I heard was no one’s idea of impressive. It sounded like the two of them were moving a bookshelf across the floor. A half minute of exaggerated struggle and that was it. Someone gets up to get a cup of water. But this time, the bed was squeaking for minutes before either of them made a sound. And when they did, it was harmonious. A baritone and a soprano, working together, each filling in the silence made by the other, then coming together. It went on for a while like this. And lying there, newly a man in a certain way, I felt my dick pressing up into the covers. I wasn’t ashamed when I took hold of myself. It was an act of solidarity, I felt. The three of us were going together and the rest of the house was silent and warm. It was lovely, I won’t ruin it by telling you the rest, what you want to hear.
***
I don’t know why I told you that. That story’s not anything like this one. I mean in the broad strokes, maybe, but really it was totally different. This happened at my old apartment, remember? It was the studio I had that great deal on, in that cute little building that it turned out was owned by the mob. I told you about all that, remember? Anyway, before I moved in, the ceiling had caved in, so the whole thing had been replaced. When I moved in, they told me the new ceiling was tougher and totally soundproof. This, naturally, was the opposite of the truth. I could hear everything that was happening above me. Now, not that much was happening above me. Nick lived up there, Nick Pelecanos. He must have been in his mid-30s, maybe older, not younger. He had a big beard he was clearly giving attention to and was starting to go bald, the effect was to make him look virile, though I wouldn’t really have called him attractive. He worked a nine-to-five, and, as you remember, I was working nights at the bar. So I didn’t really know him. He was pretty much alone, I think. He’d never have people over. No friends and, at least that I can recall, no lovers. Maybe he did his living elsewhere, I don’t know.
I’d get back from the bar around 2 on the nights I worked, 5 or 6 on the weekend nights. Of course, it wouldn’t be a shock if I was half cut. And so one night I’m coming back, I light a candle, I wash my face and I get into bed. And from above I hear that familiar duet. Nick has someone over! That’s not my boy, you understand. But all the same I’m happy. God bless, Nick. I hear her first, breathy moans, kind of classy. Like the way women moan on soul records. Then Nick comes in, grunting like he wasn’t having fun at all. I don’t hear the sounds of sex, just her contralto voice and his exertion. But they’re loud, particularly her. This was the weird thing, it wasn’t that they were making a lot of noise; it was that the noise seemed to be coming from close by, as if they weren’t upstairs but instead in the room with me, just out of sight. There was the moan that seemed to travel her whole body before ending with a trilling of the tongue, moans that mean a contracting and loosening of the body. And then she started to speak. She said: “Come with me.” Very hot. But she said it over and over, and after a while I started feeling she had a different meaning than what I had assumed. I started to think she was beckoning him somewhere, she was some sort of catcher in the rye, but I didn’t know where. And all the time he was panting and growling like it was a fight, and they were still doing that when I fell asleep, trying to imagine her, what she might look like, trying and failing to create a source for the voice.
As it happened, I ran into Nick the next day as he was coming home. There were bags under his eyes and a little smile was on his face.
“How’s it going, man?” I said.
“It’s going alright,” he said. “No, not too bad.”
“Good on you,” I said. I wanted to keep the conversation going. “Not thinking of moving?”
“No,” he said. “You know, I have the only un-renovated room in the building. Someone told me it used to be some gangster that lived there, he didn’t let them change anything when they renovated in the 90s. What a forward thinker! You can’t find a room like this anywhere in Manhattan now.”
“That’s great,” I said. “I’m thinking I’m gonna renew as well.”
“Do it,” he said. “This is a very special building.”
I didn’t think about this again until a week later. Same scenario, it’s late, my calves are aching. But this time it’s as soon as I walk into the apartment that I hear them. There’s Nick and the mystery woman, and there’s another voice too, more high-pitched and siren-y. They’re deep into it by the time I get there, all three vocalizing at the same time. I skip the shower and lie down in bed, on top of the sheets, and listen.
And what do I think? It’s not a selfless Christian joy in someone else’s success, that’s for sure. Here’s what I think: him? With his hairline? Two girls? And you’re alone tonight? Is that fair? When was the last time you had a threesome? It’s been a while, hasn’t it? And then I heard the refrain: “Come with me.” And the contralto voice was from right next to me, like she was under my sheets. “Come with me.” I reached my fingers out towards the ceiling, cold sweat burrowing out of hot skin. “Come with me.” Yes, the gasping of the three of them, slight pops and sucking sounds, giggles and Nick’s sounds of exertion. I could picture them, him pinning down both girls, them pressed beneath him, room for two under one, Nick going into one then the other, four wide eyes watching his face, wondering what he would do to them next. I saw their shaved legs gliding on top of each other, their feet rubbing together. I wondered if he was wearing a condom. The new one, she was a blondie type, I thought, but I still couldn’t imagine a face for the mystery lover. The voice was almost behind me now, and she wasn’t talking to Nick at all: she was talking to me! I was getting hard thinking about her calling out: “Come to me. Come to me.” Yes, I want to. Please. I felt myself falling then, tumbling, growing smaller, the pleasant vertigo of a sleep that comes on quickly, a delicious exhaustion.
I dreamt of the mystery woman, still faceless, and I woke up haunted. The strange thing about being haunted is it makes you more like a ghost yourself. I, too, was a ghost now, haunting the apartment, hoping to see her. I loitered outside, chain smoking on the stoop just to see who came in and out. I ran into Nick that way. He had dropped a bit of weight lately, now he had those cheekbones that women wanted back in 2026. So that’s how he does it, huh?
“What’s up, Nick?”
“Hey,” he replied, not looking over at me.
“How’ve you been, man?” I said. “Looking good.”
“Thanks,” he said, letting the door slam closed behind him. Whatever. It wasn’t really him I cared about anyway.
When it happened again, I knew it would all night. At work, on the subway, I could feel it. I almost thought I could hear the mystery woman as I was walking down the avenue, fingering my keys on the stoop. Yes, I really could hear them as I took the stairs. There she was, and Nick, and blondie from before. And… there were others! Five or six women, even, I could pick them out individually, and I felt I could see them, all except the mystery woman. It was six girls, I was taking off my clothes and I could see twelve breasts. I could smell their breath. I was in the bed and I saw them all kneeling in front of Nick like hostages - no, they were kneeling in front of me. Someone was running her fingernails through my chest hair, dragging them down towards my crotch. I put myself in someone’s mouth, then someone else’s. I could feel tongues leaving spit on my skin and I was sinking into a woman, lovely with curly hair that wrapped around my fingers and felt spongy in my fist while another kissed her, a tall woman with shins that kicked against my thighs. Then I heard the words, directly inside my head: “Come to me.” I’m here, I mouthed, here I am. She was behind my, her nipples running against my back, I wanted to see her so badly but I didn’t dare turn, I simply thrusted, I worked, I did my job, grunts were coming out of me without my volition. Now there was a woman on all fours, a round firm ass, something to hold and manipulate, an object, a pussy and an asshole looking up at me. The girls kept swirling, then there was a girl with three arms and five legs and two cunts, both of her mouths moving up to kiss me. “Come to me. Come to me.” I’m right here, here I am. There I was. All those mouths and I was spending myself, gasping, throwing my hips up as I erupted, my legs twitching as I came back to my bed, the voices upstairs now tailing off. Immediately, I washed up and left my room. I stayed out in front of the apartment from dawn until dusk, waiting for the women to leave. I was confident I would be able to pick out my mystery woman, I would know. But no one came, not even Nick. People came and went, but the orgy and its participants stayed put. Finally admitting defeat, I fixed myself a small dinner and went to bed.
The next day, I was awakened by an ambulance’s siren. Someone was in Nick’s apartment besides Nick, stomping around. I pulled on yesterday’s clothes and took the stairs. I made it to his room just before the EMS team did and was greeted by the cops.
Now, Nick’s apartment, like mine, had a loft, and from that he had hanged himself, so his body was visible through the doorway in profile. He had the uncanny slouch of the suicide, with the shoulders looser than seems possible for a human body; and from each wrist, there was a thin red string falling perfectly straight to the wooden floor, where it made a crimson shadow beneath him. He hovered there, twisting slightly back and forth, like someone shaking their head no over and over. From the hall, the strain of the man against the rope and the rope against the wood could be heard, a hellish instrument with one string that could only play one song.
I was shocked by how spare the apartment was. There were no rugs, no art or posters on the walls, from what I could tell no books either. There was no couch. I couldn’t see the kitchen but I imagined it was similarly spartan. What was strangest of all: he didn’t have a bed. He had been sleeping on a Japanese futon right on the floor. There was just one slightly yellowed pillow at the bed’s head.
The medical team pushed past me. One medic cut him down and began performing chest compressions. Another started to bandage his slashed wrists. “But he’s dead,” I thought. “He’s empty.” Then I thought: “they’re not doing it for him. They’re doing it for themselves, like a nervous compulsion. This way it’s still just work, still just a job.” I had no such recourse, and so I turned away from the room and went outside to smoke. Soon Nick, resting on the gurney, wrapped in a winding-sheet, followed me out.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” one of the EMTs said to me. “Did you know him?”
“Not really,” I said. “How did you know to come here?”
“It was a wellness check. The guy’s work called it in, isn’t that sad? Not a girlfriend, not family, his boss. I hate to think about it.”
“I think he had a girlfriend,” I started.
“Did that look to you like an apartment that had ever had a female visitor? No, I see this type from time to time. It can be a hoarder situation or a prison cell like that, but there are some apartments that other people are not meant to ever see. You can feel it as soon as you walk in.”
“But there was a girl over yesterday,” I insisted.
“Listen, as far as the cops knew, no one had seen him in five days. If there was a girl, that gives a whiff of foul play.”
“No…”
“Would you be willing to say he had a girlfriend under oath?”
“No…”
“Exactly. All right then. I know it’s shocking, but these things happen. Every building has a story like this.”
“Have you ever heard of it happening… twice?”
The EMT looked at me. “Go back to bed,” he advised. “That’s what I’d do if I were you.”
So I did. A week later, someone new was living upstairs. For safety’s sake, I was celibate for the next year. Regardless, I knew there wouldn’t be much of a point.
