Little as Stressful

There’s little as stressful as moving. You’ll know from experience, as I do. Roots tie you down, but they also give you hold; between places, it’s like freefalling. Next to orgasm and sickness, it is the closest thing to death a living man can know. For women that’d be giving birth, I guess. Extremes. They make the world stop in its tracks.

“And this?”

“Over there, too.” I point. “Everything in that corner, like I said,” I say again. “I’ll clean the other side of the room, then clean the stuff and put it where I want it.”

One of the movers frowns as he struggles to hold up his side of the rack. “But this is real heavy.” “That’s okay, I’ll work it out.” Just do what I pay you for.

This is my seventh time moving places. Seven--a holy number. Don’t all religions agree on that? My seventh time of packing everything I own into bulky brown boxes tearing at their cardboard seams. Of asking myself: where’s all this stuff coming from? When did I get any of this? Why do I own three different copies of the same book, what’s with this pair of shoes I don’t remember ever wearing, who gave me this ugly key fob and why have I held onto it? Packing for moving, that’s when you begin to wonder: how many lives have I lived? And were they really so empty, that this should be what came from them? Is this all I am?

And then I pack it up, carry it somewhere else, arrange it there in new order, lose it to a new chaos, to forget all about most of it once again. Da capo, ad infinitum. Forget about the things, about the questions. About the lives, about the past.

“How’s it going?”

“Mum, I really can’t talk right now.” I shouldn’t have picked up the phone. “It’s going fine, it’ll all be done by tonight.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to see your new place!”

“Yesterday you said you’ll miss the old one--no, to the left, with the other stuff!”

“What was that?”

“Nothing, I was talking to the guys. I said, you said you miss my old place.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not looking forward to the new one!”

“Mum, I’m not sure when I’ll have time for--”

“I know, I know, you’re busy. Sorry! We’ll talk later, I’ll call you.”

There’s little as stressful as moving, but I have to do it. It is time. I overstayed my welcome at the last place. Do you know how I mean? They can grow tired of you. The walls, the windows, that space next to the wardrobe you always pass over when you hoover up. The kitchen sink, the bathroom mirror, the spider in the corner of the hallway ceiling. There comes a point, in every flat, when they don’t want you anymore, don’t want your face and your hands and your breath, and you feel cold and strange and alienated on the floors that used to feel like home. There comes a time when you think, I could be happier somewhere else, and once that thought is in your head, there’s no stopping it. You have to choose: stay, or be happy. I choose happiness, every time. I just never find it. Jeez, that came out wrong. Didn’t mean to be so dramatic. Everything’s fine.

“Yes, in the bedroom, exactly. Yes, all of it. I’ll sort it out later.”

“You sure there’s enough room?”

“Just stack it. Seriously, I’ll deal with it later.” Since when is hired help so eager to be helpful? “Just do what I pay you for.” Oops. Said it out loud this time.

There’s a weird heavy vibe between us when I finally pay them. I feel like they’ve become rather disenchanted with me, but fuck me, how am I a bad guy for telling them to do what I tell them to do? I give them an extra fifty to clear the air, but they take it like it’s a matter of course, and I regret the choice the moment the bill leaves my hand. The older of the two wishes me good luck. The slightly less old dude leaves in sullen silence, and closes the door behind him.

And so here I am. Home sweet home. It’s a storage unit as of now, but that’ll be remedied quickly. That’s what I keep telling myself, every step of the way: this will be remedied quickly. It’s a blatant lie every time, at every goddamn turning, but it’s an important lie. No one could embark on the quest for a new flat without assuring themselves, this next one will be it. You couldn’t get through packing up without thinking, this’ll be over soon. Even with hired movers, the transport from here to there and the journey up all those stairs, with all your stuff in your arms and on your back and on your shoulders, is nothing but a pain in the ass without the mantra: after this box we’re almost done. And then there’s the furnishing, and the unpacking …

Dear me. There’s still the furnishing, and the unpacking.

I like to think that I’ve perfected the art of furnishing and unpacking, seeing as I did it six times already. But I believed the same thing when I’d done it five times before, and earlier, when I was doing it for the fifth time. I also believed it before my third move, during which I came to understand that you could never do this perfectly, so that for my fourth move I was locked in a crisis of faith. That one went rather smoothly though, to my surprise, restoring my trust in my ability. “Stop this,” I tell myself, “get to getting.” I’m prone to dawdling when I dwell on the past; prone to dwelling on the past when I dawdle. I need to get a move on, so I move into the bedroom, look for my new vac, discover its box sandwiched between other boxes all the way on the other side of the room, behind a sea of more boxes. I sigh. And begin to move boxes.

When I unstack those at the back and grab the one containing my vac, I hear the world shudder.

I stand, hesitant, looking at the blank wall I uncovered. Did it vibrate? Is it vibrating? “Oh, please no,” I moan to myself. I hate thin walls. Old houses are supposed to be real solid. It’s one reason why I chose this place. I don’t want my rooms shaking with a neighbour’s washing machine …

But it’s not shaking. The wall isn’t, the air isn’t, the world isn’t. Perhaps I imagined it. Perhaps I’m rougher with the boxes than I know, and myself set the wall to rattling.

But you heard it shudder. No, I did not. You did. You heard it go … v-v-v-v-v-vhraaoOO--

Oohhmm, goes the vacuum, and if it’s the loudest one I’ve ever owned, it’s also the most powerful, so I’m only complaining a little. Mopping the floors is quieter work, but by the end of it I sweat like a racehorse. I open all the windows to let in all the air. The street isn’t too noisy. The sky isn’t too far.

When the floors are dry, I put a blanket down. Careful so as not to harm the wood, I shift and raise and edge my couch on top of the blanket, and then push and pull it where I want it. Despite the padding, the couch’s feet produce a rather nasty sound as they grate against the floorboards. I slow down, work more tenderly, and check for traces left in the wood, but thankfully there are none. I continue more carefully yet with the bookshelves. Despite my best effort, they grate and scrape even louder, scratching fiendishly like nails on a blackboard. Still no nicks though, no dents and no notches, and … and wait a second. Halting as I move the second rack to the alcove beside the window, I realise: it isn’t my own scratching I’m hearing.

As I move, someone’s moving with me. Up above? Below? Next door? I can’t be certain. But when I push, someone else pushes. When I drop a corner, somewhere something else drops. It’s almost simultaneous. That’s strange.

“Hello?”

I’m not sure why I did that. To test for echo, I suppose. There is no echo. Of course there isn’t. This is a flat, not a deep dark cave. And somewhere up above, down below, right next door, someone else is moving into theirs. Similar tasks, similar rhythms. It’s to be expected. I can’t be the only one who’s moving. People move all the time. It’s part of the deal. To live is to stir.

Four hours of shoving and wiping and straining later, the furniture is where it belongs, and I am completely wrecked--it’s been a while since last I handled heavy stuff, and I’m not as young as I used to be. So I decide to give it a rest for the day. And get completely wrecked. My arms and legs are sore, not to mention my head, and all I want to do is drink too much, watch House of Cards, and fall asleep. The TV’s in place (where I come from, that’s furniture), the bed’s all done and built, and the other mover and shaker in the house has been giving it a rest for a while now, too, so nothing stands in the way of an evening well wasted. When I sit down with the bottle and fill my first glass, I wonder: am I a drunk? I turn on the TV. Dumb question. Who cares, right? Isn’t everyone?

I wake up to the sounds of demolition and despair. I wake up on my couch, and I wake up with a headache. I’m not sure it’s the alcohol speaking. There’s banging and clashing and ZZZZZZRing, and voices going, “Oh no!” and “Goddamn!” and “Careful!” and such, and other voices just wailing in a foreign language or two. Apparently the world has begun to fall apart while I was sleeping it off, and now all around people are serenading their lamentations at what is left. Or maybe there’s a construction site nearby.

There’s a construction site nearby. Next door, as a matter of fact. After finding out the hard way, which still rings in my ears and bones, I ascertain the assumption by peeping through my spyhole into the hallway outside. What I see is plain. Thick-armed men in stout overalls, and stout men in thickly armed overalls, walking in and out of next door’s door, hauling crowbars and drills and ladders and snake coils of cables. Operations are on, and on and on: sledgehammer blows and drill machine drilling, which has my walls vibrating again. The shouting’s the loudest somehow, though, and isn’t that nice and homey. Like I never left the family.

I instruct myself not to dwell on it--not on the past, not on the present. I have work to do myself. Maybe next door’s extravaganza will help get me in the mood. But as I set up the washing machine and arrange books in the bookcases and fill in the blanks in my wardrobe, I can’t help but fret over my landlord’s neglect. He could have warned me. Should have warned me. Should have told me that for the first couple of days, I won’t find peace and quiet in my new abode. I basically moved into a construction site; I feel like a tenant has a right to know something like this in advance. As I stock up my kitchen with utensils and take stock of the regrettable lack of supplies, and install a fresh toilet seat, and jot down what faults and defects I find on my rounds, I can’t help but hear the screeching, and the roaring, and the banging, and the shouting that is to be my ambience. What are they doing over there, anyway? They scratch inside my walls, and knock inside my head.

“I’m calling to tell you about the faults I’ve found, like we discussed. Or would you prefer an e-mail?”

“Please hold a moment.”

They rumble round my bathroom, and shake the parlour in its foundations.

“Hello?”

“Yes, hello. I’m calling about the things I noticed in my new apartment, like you asked me? Defects that are not listed in the inventory you gave me.”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“The oven’s not working, it keeps shutting down when I turn up the heat.” (Boom, bang.) “There’s two corners where my phone seems to lose signal every time.” (Boom, BUFF, “Watcha!”) “There’s a chip of glass missing in one of the windows, just a tiny scratch, but I guess it’ll have to be replaced or the whole thing’ll shatter, and--”

“Which window?”

“The one in the--”

“Would you mind sending us an e-mail with your list? We need to go over all this with the owner.”

“With the--I thought you--yeah. Yeah, I’ll write you an e-mail.”

“That’s great, we’re looking forward to it. Anything else we can help you with?”

“Yes, actually.” The shouting intensifies, and shrill drills kill the morning. “There seems to be--”

“By the way, I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet.” Hammers bang right in my face, with only a sliver of wall between, and a buzzsaw sings its threnody. “The flat next to yours is being renovated right now. It shouldn’t take too long, but it will take a while. If there are certain hours when you’d prefer if they didn’t do loud heavy work, please let us know, and we’ll see what we can arrange with the site manager.”

“Well, I’m in home office right now. Will be for a while yet, probably, so …”

“Gotcha, sure thing. Just send me your office hours in that mail of yours.”

I compose a missive so concise yet comprehensive it would have made Hemingway proud, so clear and to the point Kafka must be turning in his grave. I add my office hours as a PS, then remove them. Add them again, hesitate, and delete the paragraph. Rewrite it, and stare at it. Do I want to be that kind of person? The kind that tells an entire team to stop their work because it bothers me? Wouldn’t it make more sense to let them go at it as often and loudly as they need? The more they labour, the sooner it’ll be done.

The buzzsaw adds its voice to the cacophony once more, and I realise: I am that kind of person. Send.

I have this Monday off--moving day--so at least today’s work next door won’t clash with today’s work. I hang up my pictures and load the washer while pipes are blown and floors torn out. My fridge is empty but for vodka, juice, and a jar of pickles, so around noon I decide to go for groceries, though I kind of dread an encounter with the builders. I don’t want them to know whose days they’re ruining, and I don’t want to know the faces of those that are ruining my days. Checking through the spyhole I see that the hallway is empty for once--what a chance to seize.

When I step out my door, a man steps out of the other. He has a lazy eye and lots of hairs sprouting from his nostrils. I nod politely. He grins and nods in return. There’s a glint in his good eye that says that he knows very well what I’ve been thinking. Knows very well whose days he’s ruining. But that, of course, is nonsense.

Shopping for groceries can be almost as stressful as moving. There’s people idling at the racks, goggling at canned soups and plastic-wrapped breads. There’s carts left abandoned in the middle of the aisles. There’s those so old they forget what they came to buy before, when, and after they have already found it, who linger in the store forever like in some low-budget fluorescent limbo. There’s huge creatures, like from a masseuse’s Lovecraftian nightmare, taking up the space of three, and there’s families. Goddamn, there’s always families. I feel for the parents forced to bring their children to the store, because they’re too young for kindergarten or because school’s out that day or whatever other tragedy has for them turned this obnoxious chore into a family outing, but more than that I feel for myself, who has to withstand the little ones’ wailing and braying and sudden manifestation underneath one’s legs or in front of one’s cart, when I’ve had the good sense not to have one of those things to begin with. Try sketching out the week’s meal plan in your head when every time you reach for an item, you have to worry that lurking behind it might be a sugar-blasted kid ready to try its milk teeth on the first hand that’s not offering candy. Or whatever it is that kids do.

But as another child almost dies running headfirst into the path of my wheels, and its enormous mother screams in its general direction to stop and be quiet, and as a geezer pondering the pros and cons of two different kinds of butter looks up from his task to stare at me for no apparent reason as I pass him by, and as some young woman stops in her tracks and makes a U-turn without looking first and crashes her cart right into mine, I reflect that there’s a remarkable difference between shopping for groceries and moving into a new place, apart from all the obvious, superficial differences. Out here in the wilderness, the city jungle, the public, being annoyed and disturbed and interrupted and fazed by human garbage is something you expect, have to expect, and are easily willing to put up with. Back home, even a new home, the thing one wants--craves--and, really, presupposes--is peace. Peace and quiet. And if someone leaves the window open, even just a crack, and the pungent tang of garbage wafts inside …

I climb the stairs with my shopping--carrying stuff, ever carrying stuff--hoping there won’t be another workman outside my door; and come face to face with another one of the workmen, right outside my door. Literally, hunkering in my doorway. He just stands there and looks at me, and smiles. His dimples are craters, his nose scarred and blotted with spots.

I stand stiff, waiting. “Hello,” I say, for nothing more useful comes to mind.

“Hello,” he says, for all the world as though we’d met here on appointment. He leans his head back to look up at the lintel, like a Magus pondering where best to chalk the blessing.

“I …” I begin, and catch his attention, but don’t know how best to proceed. I point, bags swinging. “Can I--?”

“Oh, yes.” He steps a smudge to the left; out of the way, but not quite away from my door. “Please. Sorry.”

I shuffle past him. I’m not sure if I should smile or thank him or call the police, glance at him sideways or look away or altogether pretend like he’s not there. Before I know it, I’m in my flat, and he’s on the other side of the door. I take a beat. Peek through the spyhole.

He’s still there, his back to the door. I suppose I can count myself lucky he’s not staring back in at me.

As I stow away my shopping and prepare the kitchen for the preparation of my lunch, I cannot shake it lose. That feeling of finding a stranger waiting for me in my doorway. It sticks to me like a film of cold, dirty water. It’s a stiffness in my back, a coat of nails around my heart. Twice I go back to spy; he’s gone the first time around, but I can’t help but check again. When I sit down to my spaghetti, I still haven’t recovered my chill. That chill in my bones is the opposite of chill. And by the time I leave my meal unfinished, I have made up my mind. I might have to tolerate the work they’re doing, but I do not have to accept any other invasive eccentricities.

“Yes, hi, good afternoon. I’m calling about the construction site next door--”

“Please hold one moment.”

I will not allow anything to make me feel threatened in my new home.

“Hello?”

“Hi, I’m calling about the construction site next door--”

“Hello?”

Pause. “Yes, hello. Hello?”

“Speaking!”

“Hi. I’m calling about next door. The construction site.”

“Ah, yes! We’ve received your mail, thank you. We’ve forwarded your hours to the manager. They’ll try and keep the noise to a minimum.”

“Uhm, thank you, that’s--great. But there’s something else, actually. I--their work--it doesn’t have anything to do with my flat, does it? They don’t need to--to come in here, do they?”

“Your flat? Uhm--not that I know of, not off the top of my head, no.”

“Okay. Because--when I came home today, one of the workers was--well, he was standing in front of my door, you see …”

“Standing in front of your door?”

“Yes. Standing in front of my door. Or, in my door. Right inside my door.”

“Inside your door?”

“Yes.”

“The door was open?”

“No. No, of course not, I locked it.”

“So … he was standing in front of your door?”

“I … yes.”

“Alright. Uhm …”

I blush. There’s no one here to see it, but that doesn’t make it any better. I should not be blushing. I’m in the right here. “Look,” I begin, and dread where I’m heading, because heated statements that begin with look usually don’t lead anywhere good--heated statements that begin with look are usually ramblings. “He wasn’t just standing there for a moment to shift something from one shoulder to the other, or tie his shoelaces, or for any other feasible reason at all. He was standing right in front of my door, blocking my way, looking at me like it was the most normal thing in the world, and I don’t want that. You can’t just stand outside a stranger’s door for no reason. If he needed a break, he could have stood outside the site’s door, or gone down the steps and out on the street. That’s all I’m saying.”

There’s silence on the line. My face glows hotter yet, and a lump grows in my throat to replace the words that have poured out of me like vomit after a binge. He thinks I’m insane. Insane or a fucking bigot. An insane fucking bigot.

“Alright, I hear you!” Sounding sincere. Too sincere. “I get that, I totally get that, you’re right of course. I’ll have a word with the manager, yeah? Tell him to tell his men to respect the privacy of the other tenants.”

Cool relief flushes out the heat at so reasonable a proposal. The other tenants, he said. Not the guy next door. The other tenants. “That’s great, thanks.”

“Of course, whatever you need. Is that all?”

Even if it weren’t, I don’t think I’d volunteer any other issues. I feel exhausted, and after I hang up I go for a much-needed shower. Why I should much-need a shower at just past noon, when I’ve barely done anything at all today, I can’t really say. But it feels that way. Like no matter how much machine oil and sawdust and plaster and paint and plain old dirt they smear themselves with over there on the other side of that wall, I’ll be the filthiest one in the house. I make sure not to look down myself too much, clean my skin by feel alone, and I cover myself in a towel as soon as I step out of the shower. I’m a stress eater. I’ve been having loads of stress, and it’s beginning to show.

They’re at it again when I put on my clothes, and they’re at it still six hours later when I undress and take another shower, this time for an early turn-in with my current read and a glass of Glenfiddich. My bedding is old, years and years; I’ve been meaning to replace it for, oh, years and years. It’s too warm and kind of coarse, like an itchy sweater; and like a favourite itchy sweater, I’ve been keeping it around, dragging it from place to place. Stupid. I lie on my uncomfortable bed and stare up at the ceiling. A lightbulb hangs suspended like a dead bat, uncovered and unhappy. It’s too close, the entire ceiling is, like low-hanging branches; standing on my toes, I can reach out and touch it with the tip of my fingers. It’s a washed-out white, greyish yellow from years of neglect. People don’t clean their ceilings. I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling and reflect on that, on how ceilings never get cleaned, until I can’t stand it anymore and decide to try and focus on my book. But I can’t focus: they seem to be far from done next door, and the words switch places before my eyes. Is this what I bought by sharing my office hours? Noise all the rest of the day? If they keep going into the night, I’ll have to call my landlord again tomorrow, and won’t that be a doozy of embarrassment.

But by the time I turn the page, the sounds suddenly stop. Blissful silence spreads like vapour, silence so sudden and complete that my ears ring with it, with the memory of the clangour which occupied their canals a moment ago. I shudder, and literally exhale with relief; shudder, and give focussing another shot.

Except that the ringing doesn’t go away. It’s still there, high-pitched and heinous, when I’ve reread the same paragraph for the third time, not catching its meaning at all. And it seems I’m not done shuddering, either, for my book is shaking along with my hands.

What is that incessant tone in my ears? What--

Voommm. Something heavy fell over. My first thought is of the construction site, of course, but the thought doesn’t seem right. Above. It came from above.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tp, tp, p, p … and then again, coming back: p, tp, tp, tp, tap, tap, tap, tap. Steps, those are steps. Walking across my ceiling. Walking through my head.

“Please, no.” But saying it serves as much good as thinking it might have. Voices join the steps, and the heavy thing is shifted and lifted back off the ground--sounds like something brushing, rasping against wood, and like the clonk of metal on metal, or glass, or rock. There’s faint laughter, brief and squeaky, followed by another round of tap-tap-tapping.

The neighbours. The workers, the neighbours, the world. Privacy of the other tenants, my ass.

This calls for something heavier than fine Scotch. What it calls for, really, is flight, or a hallway fight, or maybe a gas mask and some poisonous fumes. But I can’t move again, can I? And I don’t want to bother. Please, don’t let this become a bother.

No, what it calls for is sleeping pills. Pills, and maybe another shot from the bottle after all.

I lie back down woozy. The noise is incessant--voices, steps, that ringing--but the high is insistent. The high becomes a low. I drown in it.

I dream of vile things. I toss in my bed, in my dream. I’m in my new bedroom with the noise and the heat of the city, and I toss and I turn for I can’t sleep, in my dream. I’m limp from the pills and the booze but I twitch and I kick and I shiver, for you can’t be poisoned limp, in a dream.

And we’re not alone, the noise, the heat, and I, not all night long. There’s someone standing bent over my bed, checking, double-checking to see if I’m--asleep? alive? He smiles and whispers something, but not to me. He’s gone and back again, still whispering. And I know him, the way you know everyone you meet in a dream. But I also know him. I met him on my doorstep.

There’s work to be done. Is that what he whispered? Is that what he said? There’s work to be done, but I can’t do it, for I am asleep, and this is a dream.

There’s something else. Noise upstairs, noise next door, noise in my ear, but something else, too. Vrrr. What is it? Vrrohm. The bed shakes with it. Vrraoooooohm. I shake with it.

I wake up crying.

I’m back at work today. My desk is ready, my computer is ready, the coffee is ready. Not sure if I am. The builders are. They’re working hard. So much for sending them my office hours. So much for compromise.

“Where are you?” asks my colleague twenty seconds into our phone conference. “What’s that racket?” I tell her. “That’s some marvellous shit. Call the police.”

“They’re not doing anything illegal.”

“They work construction, them being here is probably illegal.”

“That’s a disgusting thing to say. Can we go back to work now?”

“No, because I can barely hear you.”

“Fuck you, then.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said no use, then. Let’s reschedule to the pm, okay? Two-ish?”

She agrees, and I hang up, and my throat throbs with my heartbeat. Did she hear what I said? Why would I say that? Out loud and all.

The machinery next door stops suddenly, entirely, and after a minute of near-total silence I toy with the idea to call my colleague and reschedule back to right now. I hate her racist guts, though, and I’d much rather never talk to her again. Better enjoy the silence while it lasts, and get some work done.

I’m composing a reply to an idiot customer’s e-mail when there’s a knock on my door. I pause, frowning. I’m not expecting anything, no package, no visitor. They knock again, rap, rap, rap. Strange how clear it carries to my desk, through front hall and kitchen and everything. Distant but clear. Rap, rap. More urgent now. Guess I better go and see.

I check through the spyhole. The hallway is empty. And--rp, rp. Softer now. Barely audible.

I return to my desk. Sit, wait, listen.

Rap, rap, rap! It’s in the wall, right next to my face. I should have known. Of course it’d be the construction site. But it sounded so much like a knock on the door. I could have sworn …

Didn’t I follow the sound out of the room, to the front hall?

Around noon I take a break; go get a glass of water, stand in the kitchen and gather myself; breathe in deeply, and try to let it go--whatever it is. I have no specifics in mind. There’s just this strong sense that I really, really need to let it go. It all. Something or other. I breathe out, hoping it’ll be gone with the stale old air.

And then my head explodes. BRRRRRRRRR, the world goes, shattering bone, sending shards of skull and shreds of brain flying. My vision blacks out for a second, or maybe the lot of me does, but when the sound fades I find myself still on my feet and with my head intact. But I dropped the glass. It’s in pieces on the floor, and my socks soak up water.

That’s enough now. Whatever that sound was, it was enough, too much. It sounded of disaster, of catastrophe. It sounded like a cataclysmic accident, hundreds of people dead. I hope they are. I really do. Whatever else it was or sounded like, it is the final straw. Seething, I rush out of my flat and down the hall to hell. The door is open. I stride in, too angry to care whether I’m allowed to or not. A musty, bare, closet-sized space receives me, walls stripped naked, floorboards torn out, cables and pipework exposed. A dusty bulb hangs from the ceiling, shedding flimsy light. I cross the joke of a front hall in two strides, find myself in a room equally desolate, equally ramshackle, equally hollow. Cardboard and plastic covers the floors, the walls show insulation and brickwork and brown patches that raise the hairs on the back of my neck. It’s a mess. This is not a construction site, it’s a reason to commission construction. And those brown patches are something else I definitely should have been informed about. Those brown patches spell death.

A man in a dirty white coverall stands by one of the windows, back turned to me. Other than that, the room is deserted. No workers, no machinery, no tools. How is that possible?

“Excuse me!”

The man turns his head slowly. His lips, nicotine yellow, smile a polite question at me. He has stooping shoulders, an ugly crater in his cheek, and the dopey eyes of an old dog.

“Excuse--”

“What d’ye think?”

His voice is coals crackling and spitting sausages left in the fire too long.

“What?”

“What d’ye think?” he asks again. He spreads his arms and indicates the room at large, shithole that it is. “Look!”

I don’t move, not my eyes and not my feet. Running might be a good idea, but I’m frozen to the spot. What is this? Who is this guy?

He lowers his arms, takes a step closer. I gasp, withdraw. He frowns, ten thousand narrow dry riverbeds digging through his forehead. His smile falters like a dying slug. Not yellow, I see now; darkly brownish. A brown much like the stuff on the walls.

“I’m from next door,” I say stupidly, way too fast, sputtering.

And the old-dog eyes glow happily. The smile returns, broader than before. “Ah!” A cough as much as an exclamation. “Ah, I see. Mah, oh mah, welcome.” He raises his arms. “What do ye think?”

I think this man’s insane. “O--of the place?” I ask instead of backing out, proving to be the insaner of us two. He nods eager encouragement. “It--it looks nowhere near finished.”

He roars laughter. “Well, ’course it ain’t.”

I’m stiff as a board. My head hurts with the attempt to make sense of this. “I came over because of the sound. There was a very loud sound right now.”

“Ah, yes--yes, why, of course, some loud noises is to be expectit in our line o’ work. Sorry ’bout that.”

“Were you alone in here?”

“’Course not. Couldn’t’a did all this by meself, could I?”

Nothing seems to have been done in the room, ever. “Are you the site manager?”

“Me? Ah, no, no.”

“Is he here?”

“No. Not today. Man, by the way--” He edges closer, shuffling steps much like the drunken lurch of boozed-up hobos. This is when I should start running. I remain, petrified, even when he puts a hand on my shoulder. He stinks of paint and ether. His hand is a bear’s paw, wide, warm, and heavy. “I’ve been meanin’ ter apologise. I understand this must’a been rough on you, what with the noise’n’all. But I promise, it’ll be over soon, an’ it’s all worth it in the end, innit.”

I swallow drily. “Is it?”

He looks abashed. “’Course it is! Or will be. Y’see--” And he beams at me so cordially, I can only conclude that he must be mistaking me for somebody else; beams at me like we’ve been friends for ages, and been through more sites together than bears remembering.

And he tells me, brown teeth sliding: “We’re in the business of forever homes.”

And I tell him: “I have to get back to work.”

The next morning, when I go out to grab fresh bread for breakfast, I run into both the dude with the nose hair and the one with the scarred nose. They both nod and smile at me as at a well-liked acquaintance. When I return, a man I’ve never seen before, a man with a scabby forehead and arms that are too long for his stubby body, exclaims, “Ah!” in what appears to be pleased surprise, asks me how I’m doing and tells me that they’re making good progress. “’T’ll be done befo’ ye know’t,” he promises before I can flee into my flat.

The bread has a doughy texture and dull taste, and the take-away coffee is watery. The sun rises beyond the houses on the other side of the street, and I see none of it. My phone rings, and it’s my mum, and I don’t pick up, and next door trees fall and cars crash and bells chime and sirens clang. Men laugh. I smell garbage. I stink a bit myself. I might have forgotten to wash.

“Are you alright? You sound a bit on edge,” says mother.

I thought I hadn’t picked up the phone? “No. I mean, yeah. I am. Alright. A bit agitated. Rough time at work.”

“Do you remember to take breaks? It’s very important to take a break every now and then, everyone says so.”

“I know that, mum.”

“Well, why don’t you take breaks, then?”

“I do, I--I have to go. I have to get to work.” That’s a lie, I have half an hour yet. I put on coffee, go to the bathroom. I stand in front of the mirror, look, and listen. The ringing is there, still there. It’s faint, but oh so close. It’s right there next to my ear. It’s inside. It’s everywhere. I turn on the water, turn on the shower, burning hot. I wash my hands, I clean out my ears. I wash my hands again. I undress and step into the shower. It’s already running. That’s right, I turned it on a minute ago.

I close my eyes and let it wash over me. Let it wash everything off. Wash out the ringing. Drown out the noise.

A towel wrapped around my midriff, hair soaking wet and damp skin splotched red, I go turn on my computer and my work phone. That’s when, with a final POW, they burst right through my wall.

The cloud of debris spreads rapidly. Pieces of brick and plaster crumble like afterthoughts. The hole is large enough to reach through; as if to prove that it is so, a hand stretches its knobbly fingers into my living room. It probes the side of the hole, and actually knocks off more pieces of wall, extending the damage.

“That’s unfortunate,” a man’s voice grants grudgingly. The hand disappears, and a head comes poking through instead. I haven’t seen this one before. When his eyes fall on me, he grins, nods, and says, “Sorry ’bout that.”

The dust settles. I stand clutching my phone, unable to speak, unable to move. The towel unwarps itself from my hips, lands on the floor with a weightless thud. The man’s eyes widen at the sudden appearance of my private parts.

“Uhm--would ye mind put’n sum’thin’ on?” he asks, apparently appalled. Not looking away, though. Not removing his head from the hole in my wall.

That day I finally meet the site manager, a vast, dark, surprisingly young but rather fatherly man, clad in wool and denim and looking rueful as a sinner in the confessional. His apologies are profuse and verbose, his hand-waving wild and his hand-folding plentiful. He calls my landlord and has him join the conversation on speaker, but that backfires when they talk each other into an angry frenzy, each blaming the other for the mishap. After, nothing would do but that each and every one of the builders shake my hand and express their sorrow to my face. The one with the nose hair makes a warbling joke to lighten the mood, but I don’t understand him. The one I met on my doorstep glares at me like it’s all my fault. Old dog-eyes clinches my shoulder and tells me it will all be well again soon.

I let it all happen in a sort of trance.

Later, I sit at the far end of my living room and stare, mesmerised, at the hole in my wall.

“Hello.” I don’t sound like myself. I sound like an answering machine. “I’m calling about the hole in my wall?”

“Yes, one moment …” Click, clack. “Yes, hello?”

“Hi. It’s about the hole in my wall? I was wondering what you were going to do about it.”

“Ah, yes, of course. Uhm, well--I thought we discussed it this morning? Repairs will probably take--”

“Yeah, I don’t mean the repairs. I mean, what are you going to do about it, right now. Do I sit out a month’s rent? Two?”

“Well, I--”

“Do you pay for a hotel?”

“Really, now--”

“You’re gonna hire someone else to undo the damage those people did, won’t you?”

“I’m not sure that--”

“What are you sure about, then? What are you going to do? What is going to happen?”

Silence on the line. Maybe he’s holding the phone away from his mouth. Maybe he’s taking a moment to think, or maybe he’s rolling his eyes at his secretary. He comes back with a deep, distressed exhale of hot air. “Listen, it’s getting late. Why don’t we sleep on it, and tomorrow, if there are still open questions, or things to be decided, they will all be answered and settled. It’s been a hard few hours for all of us. The men are at another site tomorrow morning, and won’t be back until the afternoon, because at eleven tomorrow the actual damage will be assessed--you should be home for that, by the way--and I’ll be there for that, too, and we can talk about everything then. Right?”

“They blew a hole into my wall.”

“Well, it’s not like you were exactly happy with the flat before that either, were you now? Goodnight.”

A drink will soothe my nerves. I take it beside the hole, in pensive pecks and sips. I look at the hole, through it, marvelling. It’s shapeless, and even bigger than I thought. It’s vast, like a hippo’s yawning maw. It’s toothy, coarse and crude. It’s threatening to expand: cracks grow out from it like the roots of a tree. It’s dark on the other side. A deep, dark cave.

Upstairs, the neighbours step to and fro, and giggle and gurgle and cackle. It sounds like they’re laughing at me.

“I have to get out of here,” I tell the hole in my wall. “I have to move.”

The ringing in my ears is louder than ever.

Sirens blare in the night.

There’s a party somewhere close. And voices raised in a fight. And a gaping hole in my wall.

I fall asleep bathed in noise, staring up at the bulging belly of the greying ceiling over my bed. Soon there’ll be a stalactite depending from its navel. Maybe it’ll fall, tearing from the upstairs tremors, and spear me right through the middle. That might stop the ringing. I don’t hear it in my dreams.

When I open my eyes in the morning, the ceiling is gone.

At least that’s what I think at first. I blink the sleep from my lids, look again. The ceiling isn’t gone, it’s just white. Clear, bright, freshly painted. Vaulted, too. White and vaulted.

I peel the blanket from my body. The blanket’s soft, my body … hard. Lean and hard. I put a hand on my chest and it feels like a rock, cool and smooth. I look down myself and don’t see myself. Where have I gone?

Where am I?

I rise from the bed. I don’t seem to be much closer to the ceiling than I was lying down. I stand on my toes, reach up. My hand falls back to my side. The ceiling’s dazzling new coat remains untouched, unblemished. It isn’t just fresh painting. It’s a fresh ceiling, high over my head.

Vhrrr …

Fancy spots shed light so white it hurts the eyes where the shade-less lightbulb hung before, dangling nondescript and sad. Curtains blue as night-sky mysteries cover up two windows where there was only one, chipped and dirty. Jaw gaping, I approach the curtains, hand outstretched as though to pull them back. Instead I leave them, leave the bedroom, to go and see the rest.

Vhrrr …

Every room’s alike: white walls, white light, drawn drapes. The kitchen’s vast, fully equipped; the fridge colossal, filled with my favourites. The bathroom mirror flatters, and the tiles are spittle-clean. It is me in that mirror; it is. Through winding halls I stalk, quite careful, shaking vestiges of sleep.

Vhrrr …

My desk has become a centrepiece in a huge wood-panelled space. A fireplace of natural-looking rock rises like half a mountain to one side. No smoke clogs the air despite the giddy flame eating the coals. It’s warm in here, and bright as well, as bright as the rest of the place.

Vhrrr …

I tiptoe through rooms and corridors, and gaze into the white. I peek into the cupboards and I listen for a sound outside. But no hammering, no shouting, no shoving and--nothing at all. I make a cup of coffee and collect my straying thoughts. Maybe I should take a bath. I do have a bathtub, after all. I wonder what time it is.

And all throughout, the ringing in my ears.

And as from afar, a slight vibration, a shaking of the world.

But you get used to everything, don’t you? You’ll know from experience, as I do. It always takes a while, but it’s almost always worth it. And nothing’s ever perfect, is it? At some point I’ll have to restock my fridge, and deal with the wooden boards behind the curtains, and the lack of lock and handle on my door. I’ll have to find out why my phone isn’t working, and how to rekindle the fire, and what to do when the ceiling lights run dry. It’d be nice to see a face again sometime, some face, even a stranger’s in the aisle. But alone is good for now.

Once a week, I hoover up.

VhraaooooOOHHH--