Slice of Cheap, Wheat Life

I'm outside, smoking, thinking of gods and monsters while our neighbors walk past me on the stairs.

There's a skinny black man with a cardboard box spilling out of his arms. I get up to let him past and he sets it down on the concrete. He says, "Nah, that's cool. I'm goin' back for more stuff."

I nod. —Whatever man. Don't wanna ash on your stuff.

I step aside as he moves back to the parking lot. Upstairs a window opens and the sound of a TV at full blast fills our non-courtyard. Stirring strings of music, unheard since my childhood, float down and I know the TV is playing a trailer for that new Superman movie.

There's a low, scraping sound. The sound I hear through our ceiling. For the thousandth time I wonder what the fuck they're doing up there.

Then a girl comes down the stairs. Skinnier than the man, and lighter. She's got coffee for skin and black satin for hair and I try not to look too hard. I don't want her to see me checking out her teeth for signs of the dreaded Meth Mouth.

She speaks to the black man, who's got another box in his arms. She tells him where to put it and I know its *her*. That it's her voice I've heard screaming out of open windows in the night. That she's the one who's kept me awake and broken the flow of words with her inarticulate imploring.

I try to think of the most personable way I can tell her, "Hey, you know you're voice carries, right?"

I crush my smoke into the dirt and gather myself. She and the black man are walking up the sidewalk. She's talking at him and not offering any help in carrying his load. Not even looking at the cardboard box of assorted household crap he's already placed beneath our spruce tree.

As they're approaching the stairs the girl is on my side. I think back to my canvasser training. I make eye contact. I stick out my hand. I've got a smile on my face and a snarky comment in my mouth, waiting to get out. I stick out my hand.

And she walks right past me. Doesn't even break stride. My presence doesn't even make a dent in her world as she tells the black man exactly where he can set up his armful of stuff and that he'd better hurry. They (whoever they are) are moving furniture up there and the need his hands.

The cardboard box is still there, underneath our tree, when the door to Number Eight slams shut.

"Bitch," I say. Louder than I wanted to, with the windows open and all. The sound of a new Jimmy Olsen telling a new Perry White to look, up in the sky, seems to drown it out. No one cracks open Number Eight to peer down and wonder who would dare to besmirch our neighbor's name.

No one does and I go back inside. Back to my gods and monsters.