Photo Credit Jeff Stroud
I
had never seen the couple in 203. When I was moving in, I noticed a grey tabby
sitting on the fire escape, next to their open window. Someone was trying to
learn Baez’s “Diamonds and Rust” on the guitar. A crystal suncatcher hung from
the sill.
The
pre-war apartment walls were thick plaster but the wall separating my bedroom
from Diamond and Rust’s was thin, evidence of a shoddy seventies remodel. Those
slender walls plus the open airshafts and windows of a hot Brooklyn summer, made
every sound from 203 echo through my bedroom.
Thursday
night, Diamond and Rust were arguing again. Rust (she’s Rust), was upset by a
comment Diamond made about Rust’s job being beneath the earning comps based on
her degree. Oh, really? I sat up in bed. That was rich. He was going to go
there? About the job she’d worked so hard for? Then I was pacing. Did he think his
part time temp gig in an actuary’s office was a career? At least they had
comps for what she did for a living. He didn’t know her life. Not like I did. I
knew what Rust had to put up with to pay their rent while Diamond worked on his
never-ending dissertation. I had heard Rust’s crying calls to her mom about
that asshole Steve in marketing.
I
stopped pacing. It was quiet. Then, the unmistakable sound of rhythmic bedsprings.
She’d apparently forgiven him faster than I had, as usual. Typical. We were all
going to be awake awhile.
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