On Saturday I wake up to coughing. I'm light-headed and it feels like my sinuses have been sodomized. I think Peter's house of squalor is poisoning me. There could be a biohazard brewing over there.
I decide to knock on my other neighbors' door, the people who live on the other side of Peter. I have never really talked to them. It’s this hippie couple, the guy has a Bible-times beard and his wife is hugely pregnant. I think their names are Shunta and Kaila or Shamus and Coral, I forget.
Regardless, I go over there and Shunta or Shamus answers. He's got no shirt on and his hands are covered in brown goop. He's either rolling up barley balls or making clay figurines of the band members from Phish.
We exchange pleasantries in the doorway. He keeps his hand on the door in case he needs to slam it in my face. He waits for me to ask to borrow something. I think for a second about just walking away, about waving and smiling and just forgetting the whole thing. But I’m tired of giving in.
"I came over here because...I wanted to ask if the smell from 302 bothers you. It's this fishy, dead smell, it comes through my walls."
"I guess so."
I wonder if that is because this little hippie clan is concocting too many strange odors of their own to notice a foreign one. I wonder if I am completely insane and all of this is one long, stinky hallucination.
"But I will tell you this..." He glances around quickly and turns his voice down to a whisper, "I think that guy who lives there..."
"Peter?"
"Yes. I think he abuses his dog. I can hear him yell at the animal and I'm not sure, but I think he beats it."
Picturing Peter drunk off his ass beating the hell out of his mutt is not difficult.
"Aren't we not supposed to have dogs anyway?"
"No, we're not," he concurs.
"Someone should report him."
"Someone should."
We look at each other for a silent half-minute before we say goodbye. Shumas has to go back to his pottery. I have to go back to my couch.
Just thinking of telling management that my neighbor is a stinky, dog-beating, drunk makes me sick. He would know it was me and try to break in through my window. He would think I was in on some conspiracy to get him evicted. He'd assume I was going around with the same raging band of schemers that want to burn him alive. I do not want to know the depth of his thirst for revenge. I do not want to awaken the psychosis that is being dammed by a thin layer of civility. I do not want to be the one to say something, I want it just to happen, to be over when I wake up tomorrow. I want to come home and see that some nice, sane college girl and her kitties have moved in and replaced him. I envision that an earthquake swallows up 302 and we must all move on. I pray for God to take back his misfit child.
When I try to sleep that night, I hear it. I'm wearing my gray boxers with the covers pulled up to my neck and it is unmistakable. Under the blaring of the BBC broadcast is the yelping of a dog. In the background of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an animal's pain clearly and audibly. German diplomats head to Croatia and someone is cold-cocking a canine. A typhoon is approaching Japan. A puppy is getting bitch-slapped. How I did not notice this before is astounding. I must have assumed it was part of the programming.
I go to Peter's and knock before I have a chance to talk myself out of it. When he opens the door, sweaty and red-faced, I realize I have no idea what I am going to say. I am also dressed only in my underwear.
"What?" he yelps.
"Are you beating a dog?"
I surprise even myself with that response.
He looks at me with a nasty grimace. His eyes move from my face down to my feet as if he's sizing me up. He's going to take a stick to me next, isn't he?
"You have no idea what it is like to live with him."
"With a dog?"
"He's so needy and pathetic. I'm trying to teach him about the real world, give him some strength because when I found him he was nothing. If you cut these animals too much slack, it comes back to haunt you. They're snapping at you in your sleep, they are waiting for you to trip and once you’re on the floor they will rip the skin off of your face."
His glare now is one that precedes a stabbing. His dementia is now a beacon shining from his open mouth. And I can smell the pungent odor of rum on his tongue. He is insane and intoxicated, paranoid and in close proximity to me. That is a mix I want no part of. My knees are wobbling. Sweat trickles down the back of my calves.
I dart for my own apartment without explanation. Peter grumbles with his mouth closed before slamming the door. I turn all my locks and check them and check them again. I can’t sleep that night. I spend an hour sitting on the floor with my naked back flush against the door.
