“HELLO” says a booming voice behind me. I jump, on full alert. Adrenaline rushes through my veins. Who the F*** is in our kitchen? Without a thought, in a move rehearsed a thousand times at the dojo, I turn around into a fighting stance, ready to strike the intruder.
No one. I stand alone in the kitchen, both fists locked and loaded.
“HOW YOU DOIN’?” says the voice, then it erupts in a wall-shaking laugh. An all-too familiar laugh. Banji, the downstairs neighbor. On the phone.
There is no intruder in the flat. Deep breath. My fingertips are tingling. Fitbit measures my heart pumping at 150 beats per minute. Another deep breath. Ah, the perks of living in a classic San Francisco Edwardian duplex with zero insulation between the floors.
In this apartment we heard everything, not only inside the building but outside as well. In fact, most of the sounds came from the street through single-pane windows so loosely framed that the wind moved our curtains – no ghosts needed. We heard cars, motorcycles, house doors and gates, passersby talking on their cell phones, drunken partygoers staggering home at obscene hours, fire trucks roaring out of the neighborhood fire station with blaring horns, buses revving their engines to climb up the hill, garbage trucks shaking recycle bins full of clinking glass at the crack of dawn, and of course the occasional homeless person or crackhead yelling at an invisible foe until the police cuffed them away kicking and screaming.
Looking back, our tenancy in this flat adds up to seven years of sleep deprivation. At the beginning we told ourselves we just needed to readjust to city life. When a loud noise woke us up in the middle of the night, Mai and I would joke about “City Living at Its Finest”, a slogan from a San Francisco apartment rental ad. And before we realized, it became the new normal.
“We lived here for fifteen years and we never heard the person in the downstairs unit,” the landlady had responded to my enquiry about potential noise issues before we rented the flat.
I guess she had scored the perfect tenant in the lower unit: one who never spoke, coughed, sneezed, walked, closed a door, took a shower, or flushed the toilet in fifteen years.
During the first 3 years, we lucked out: our downstairs neighbor Babetta was a journalist and lived a quiet life. She had been renting the lower flat for twenty years and her presence beneath our feet was rarely audible. Except that one time when… Hum. Well. Never mind. We normally didn’t hear much coming from downstairs.
Then one day came Banji. Kind, charming, well-mannered, ever-smiling, white-teethed, good-natured, amicable, boisterous, rambunctious, thunderous, unbearable, bass-voiced, wall-rattling, ear-splitting Banji.
Ironically, Banji was not supposed to live here.
When our friend Babetta left – or rather when she was asked to leave – the owners planned for their newlywed son Jacob and his wife to take over the flat. “Owner move-in” is a trick allowing landlords to evict someone without breaking San Francisco’s tenant protection laws, with an extra perk for helicopter parents: an invisible ball and chain that keeps their progeny close by — affordable rent in the most expensive city in America.
The day Jacob the prodigal son arrived, at the wheel of a moving truck, he brought a friend to help him unload. I came down to the street to introduce myself.
“Hi, my name is Cedric. Jacob’s upstairs neighbor. Nice to meet you.”
“Hi, I’m Banji. Nice to meet you.”
“Where do you live?” I asked. Exchanging pleasantries about neighborhoods is a good way to engage in chit-chat in San Francisco.
Banji gave me a puzzled look and paused. Awkward silence.
“I’m Jacob’s roommate,” he finally responded.
Unbeknownst to me, Jacob’s wife was going to finish her studies out of state before relocating to San Francisco with her hubby. In a financially wise move that surely made his parents proud, the prodigal son had taken a roommate. An old friend of the family. My nightmare-to-be, Banji.
It’s 3am. I’m wide awake, listening to Banji’s drunken conversation with a giggling girl he brought back for a nightcap. High on alcohol and pheromones, ears numbed by the deafening bass of nightclub loudspeakers, he sounds a lot worse than usual. Earplugs only muffle the words. I know I’m not going to sleep until he shuts up. What if the girl ends up in his bed?
I’ve heard enough. I’ve had enough.
I step out of bed, put some clothes on, walk down the stairs as gently as I can, exit our apartment, and close the door carefully behind me – our kids are slumbering away. In one side step I am now facing the lower flat’s entrance door. I take a deep inhale, heart pumping. The lovebirds’ conversation can be heard through the front door, although not as clearly as from our bedroom.
Knock, knock, knock. The voices stop immediately. No one moves.
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK. Footsteps. The door slowly creaks open.
“I’m so sorry,” says Banji with a radiant and apologetic smile I know all too well. “We’ll be…”
“No,” I cut him off firmly. “Sorry is not good enough, Banji. You’re always so sorry, you always forgot that there are people – us – living right above you, and you always promise to be quiet. But this keeps happening.”
He’s gasping for air, goldfish style. Speechless.
“The truth is that you don’t care, Banji. I don’t want any more apologies from you. Talk is cheap. I want actions. Starting right now. Am I clear?”
He’s deflated. I’m in rapture.
“Yes,” Banji says in a sober and quiet tone that seems completely out of character. “I’m really sorry,” he repeats before closing the door. This time he means it.
I walk back to bed, savor the newfound silence, my little victory, the feeling of having spoken my truth. And the satisfaction of having ruined Banji’s date.
After the adrenalin rush passes, I fall into a deep dreamless sleep.
I never saw or heard Banji again.
~Cedric, May 2020
(Banji adventures 2015-2016)
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