It was a normal Tuesday night, not long past dinnertime, when the man-next-door slammed the woman-next-door’s head through the wall. Into the wall… into the drywall? None of it had been clear to Daphne, washing dishes and bopping her head to music in her own kitchen, dressed for bed in her oversized and paint-splattered Disneyworld T-Shirt and basketball shorts, shuffling to the beat in a worn pair of “practical” brown slippers. Through her earbuds, the crash had been muffled but close, reverberating through a shared wall between the two apartments. Wiping soap bubbles off her fingers and onto her shorts, she’d plucked an earbud out and turned the water off, staring into the blank face of the wall.
Daphne had met the couple next door only once that she could remember, and had only the foggiest idea what they might look like. She thought they might be in their mid-thirties but, of course, that’s what she tended to assume about most couples whose ages she didn’t know. If they had any children, Daphne had never heard them. They did have at least one large dog, because she’d heard it harumphing its way aggressively down the hallway on its way in and out of the building.
The wall told Daphne nothing. Their shouting was muffled by blaring music and their crashing about. A door slammed and someone hustled away down the hall, and it must have been the woman-next-door because the man-next-door responded by jerking open the door to the hall and bellowing out, “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
But he didn’t follow her.
The music next door got louder but, otherwise, things quieted down, and Daphne, figuring that was that, popped her earbud back in and returned to her dishes.
Daphne had a partner, Terry, who lived across town and spent only the occasional night at her place. They had met through work and were taking things slow, an arrangement right to Daphne’s liking. She enjoyed her evenings alone curled up on the couch, with whatever she’d decided to make for herself and a good movie, the subtitles on and the sound turned up loud in her headphones. She liked her solo holiday traditions, her takeout Christmas dinner and her tinsel tree, her annual card for friends and family, featuring herself and her cats re-enacting scenes from her favorite movies, in costume.
Terry was patient with Daphne, even-tempered and understanding. Not like the man-next-door, whose loud and unexpected outbursts made Daphne’s heart rate jump and her skin itch. The man-next-door gave her flashbacks. Forced her to remember things she didn’t like to remember. Reminded her of Mark. Like that time he’d thrown out all her birth control pills, the condoms, the lot of it, ranting the whole way through about how they “didn’t need that shit anymore.” Daphne had gotten an STI, a pregnancy scare, then an abortion, before a woman at the clinic helped her get an IUD.
Dishes done, Daphne curled up on the couch with her cats, turned the sound up and picked out one of those old rom-coms she’d seen a hundred times before. Stayed up late, so she wouldn’t have to hear the man-next-door as she was trying to fall asleep.
~
Daphne could not imagine why the officer would be annoyed with her, especially at this hour, but he looked annoyed already when she opened the door, sweater thrown on over her pyjama top. It was not even 7am. Her alarm wouldn’t go off for another hour, and here she was squinting sleepily up at a stern-faced man with a notepad and a gun on his belt, looking altogether too kitted out to be knocking on doors in a quiet apartment building at this hour of the morning. Her heart raced in her chest. She tried not to stare at his equipment belt. His gun.
This was how she found out the woman was in the hospital.
“Did you notice anything suspicious? Hear anything?”
“Yes. I mean… No more than usual. They’re loud neighbors, you know, and…”
When they’d married, Mark had worked security at a bank downtown. It was only later, five years and several calls to their house later, that he’d become a cop. Daphne had never understood that, how he’d been able to become an officer after the domestic incident calls and the wellness checks, and that time she’d spent the night down at the station. He’d kept his patrol car parked out front after that and, like magic, the calls stopped. Or, at least, if there were calls, they no longer came to the door. In some ways, that was better. Things had always gotten worse for Daphne after the police showed up.
His bark had always been worse than his bite. He barked and barked. But he hadn’t hit her, not really, just wore her down, with all his shouting and going on and breaking things; her things… her heirloom teacups, her favorite heels, her hairbrush, the bathroom mirror. Once, he’d thrown her dog across the room, broke the poor creature’s leg. He liked to brag that he’d never hit a woman. What a joke. He never hit her, sure, only gripped her arms until they bruised, shook her until her head hit the wall. Later, Daphne would imagine that was how it had happened with the woman-next-door.
She didn’t say any of that to the officer.
In the years since the couple-next-door had moved in, Daphne had spent countless evenings listening to them fight, trying to imagine what the woman-next-door might be like, what she might want. Once, when it was quiet, Daphne had worked up the courage to stop by, armed with a few kind thoughts and a sad little plate of cookies. If the woman-next-door was anything like she had been… but no one answered the door, and Daphne hadn’t felt brave enough to try it again.
What did the woman-next-door want? She was quiet. Quieter than the man-next-door. The kind of person who took her shoes off at the door and kept the volume low, settled the dog down when it got rowdy. Her worst habit seemed to be vacuuming and running the dryer and the dishwasher at odd hours, sometimes in the middle of the night. Did she have friends she could stay with? Family? Or would it be a shelter?
The first time Daphne tried to leave she’d taken a duffel bag of clothes, keepsakes, her dog and rode a bus into the city. At a mall, she’d used a payphone to dial the shelter. It was a warm June afternoon, Mark was at work, and Daphne had on a pretty but modest summer dress, the kind of dress both Mark and her mother liked to see her in. She’d called the number, only to find out they didn’t have any spaces that night, and even if they did, she couldn’t bring her dog with her. Daphne asked if there were any shelters that would let her bring her dog. “I don’t believe so ma’am” said the woman on the phone. Daphne hoped the woman-next-door wasn’t too attached to her dog.
She couldn’t say any of that to the officer, either.
The officer let out a long, impatient breath. Looked away down the hall. “You said this wasn’t unusual. Have there been similar incidents in the past? Anything you’ve overheard.”
“Yes,” Daphne said, “They’re noisy. Always banging about. And they fight. But couples always do fight, don’t they?”
The officer raised an eyebrow, made a note on his pad. “Not like that they don’t.”
“Well, I wouldn’t really know,” Daphne said, “My hearing isn’t great and I keep my windows closed…” She wanted to help the woman-next-door. If she could only figure out how best to do it. She didn’t want to say nothing had happened. What if the woman-next-door wanted to take the man-next door to court? “I had my headphones in, but I heard something hit the wall, through the headphones… so it must have been a big noise. Maybe something was thrown?” She looked at the officer for confirmation.
“Did it sound like a head hitting the wall to you?”
“I guess it could have been,” Daphne said. “I can’t say I really know what that sounds like…” Not from the outside, anyway. Daphne hadn’t gone to a shelter, in the end, and the dog died before she could get away. Of natural causes, not Mark. She’d borrowed money to rent a car, driven it halfway across the country, to stay with a friend of her sister’s. The first call was from her mother, telling her to “stop being silly” and “go home.” Most of the family stopped calling, after the divorce. Daphne had tried not to care, moved out to the coast, got a new job, took a couple of certificate courses, bought a couple of cats. “It could have been, for sure.”
“Why didn’t you give us a call?”
Daphne blinked at the officer. “I…”
“Next time,” the officer said, “call us. Anything suspicious you see could be useful in an investigation.” His tone was clipped and matter-of-fact. He was in a hurry. He handed her a card with his number on it. “You think of anything else you want to say, you call this number.”
~
It was too early to be up, too late to go back to bed. Daphne’s old drip-coffeemaker gurgled away on the counter. She could hear the officer down the hall, still knocking on doors. Reassured herself: he wouldn’t be coming back.
Daphne had called the police on purpose just once in her life, on behalf of a roommate, the year she’d been at college. They weren’t close friends, as friends go, but because they shared a room in the dorm, the two of them often came and went together. Which is how Daphne got to know about her roommate’s stalker, a reedy boy from a rich family who liked to follow her out of class and across campus. One night, after dark, he’d caught up with her. Daphne had seen the evidence herself. It was all over her roommate’s blouse and in her hair. She called the police.
For weeks after that, it had been meeting after meeting, with campus security, the department head, the dean, the boy’s parents, the police. They sat side by side in uncomfortable chairs and answered uncomfortable questions. There were hospital visits and missed classes. Word of a scandal leaked out and people began to stare. Horrible rumors spread around campus. The roommate dropped out of school.
One day, sitting alone at the police station, in a cold hard chair, Daphne was approached by an officer. “Hey,” he said, pulling up a seat, taking a familiar tone, “what really happened? Why don’t you tell me again, maybe you’ll remember something else. Help us get to the bottom of this.” Daphne hadn’t known any better, not yet. So she told the story again, the way she’d told it dozens of times before. But this time, maybe she’d gotten something wrong, or maybe she’d gotten something wrong before then, with all the questions, because soon after they started talking about how the stories didn’t match up. Though Daphne had tried her best; she really had.
The coffeemaker stopped and Daphne fetched a cup, stirred in milk and sugar, rinsed the spoon. There was no noise from the apartment next door. Daphne wondered if that meant the man-next-door had been taken away, or just gone to work. She put the milk back in the fridge, pushed her headphones into her ears and turned the music up. The cats were curled up and dozing in her usual seat on the couch. Pausing by the counter, she picked up the officer’s card and turned it over in her hand. She looked at his number, his name, his title, his fancy department crest.
Then she dropped it in the trash.
*
Emily Strempler (she/her) is a queer, German-Canadian, ex-fundamentalist writer of inconvenient fiction. She lives and writes in the famous tourist destination and infamous party town of Banff, Alberta, inside beautiful Banff National Park. Her work can be found in numerous publications, including The Bitchin’ Kitsch, CLOVES Literary, and Luna Station Quarterly.
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