That Racket

The noise was sort of a rattling, with a bit of tapping thrown in, and a thump every now and again. It wasn’t always there, but it never went away for long.

Ollie started to slam his teacup on the counter, but he stopped himself, because it was a rather old teacup, and probably wouldn’t stand up to the strain. “There’s that racket again!” he said to himself, stalking over to his chair with his tea. “What does he do down there? Bowl with tin cans?”

He sat his teacup and saucer on the little end-table and then turned the television on, stabbing at the volume button until it was loud enough to drown out the noise, and annoyed that he had to do so. He sulked for a few minutes, then gave up. Something was going to have to be done.

Leaving his tea half-drunk on the table, he got his coat and stalked out the door. He went down the staircase (which seemed to add a few steps every time he trudged up or down) a level and then scanned the numbers on the doors until he came to 115, the apartment directly below his. He knocked on the door.

As he waited, he realized that this probably wasn’t the best idea. Didn’t people usually write letters for things like this? Anonymous letters, at that, just in case the noise-maker turned out to be some six-foot-seven guy with teardrop tattoos and anger management issues, or a switchblade-armed kid with lots of friends who wouldn’t mind breaking into someone’s apartment and—

The door opened just as Ollie was thinking he’d best run off down the hall, but he saw right away there was no need for that: no tattoos. No switchblade kid. The door-opener was, in fact, a man around Ollie’s age, with the same white hair (but it covered his whole head, rather than just his ears) and even similar clothes (though Ollie noted that his own sweater appeared to be a cheap knock-off of this fellow’s).

“Good evening,” Ollie began. “I’m Ollie—”

“Peter. How can I help you?”

“I live in the apartment above yours. I was just wondering…can you hear a noise?”

“Besides you, right now?”

“Well, yes,” answered Ollie, now a bit irked. Maybe this was going to get difficult afterall. “A rattling sound? Loud enough to be heard through a ceiling?”

Peter tapped his chin for a moment. Finally he asked, “Do you hear it now?”

Ollie listened, but the noise was gone. “No.”

“Maybe it’s in the pipes,” said Peter, nodding at his own remark. “I’ll keep an ear out.”

Seeing that this wasn’t going to be a useful conversation, but wanting to prevent it from becoming unpleasant, Ollie thanked him and left, vexed. He went back to his room. Just as he started debating whether to microwave his tea or go through the trouble of making another cup, the noise began again. Louder, this time.

He started to march toward the door, and it stopped. “Oh,” Ollie said. “So it’s like that.”

He elected to make another cup of tea. He put the kettle on again and made sure to switch the range fan on; usually he wouldn’t use it for such a short job because it whirred annoyingly, but it wouldn’t do to have all that steam drift up and collect on the ceiling, now, would it?

Once he’d made his tea, he went back to his chair and put the TV on. “News… archeologists…ah, a nice nature documentary! Wow, those birds of paradise really do make some wild sounds, don’t they?” he asked himself, turning the volume up further.

He sat and watched for a little while, but the damage was done. The evening had been spoiled. Ollie went to bed early, but couldn’t sleep a wink. The noise wasn’t very loud, but it didn’t have to be loud; it was bad enough that it was there.

The next morning saw Ollie tip-toe cautiously out of his bedroom with hope on his face, listening for something that wasn’t there…

And then all of a sudden, it was again. He sighed. “He’s just trying to provoke me,” Ollie said. “If I ignore him, he’ll eventually get sick of it, and then he’ll stop. But in the meantime, I don’t have to sit here all day and listen to this.” He made himself breakfast (oatmeal, which had the grace to be quiet) and then got ready for work.

Actually, work wasn’t the right word. First of all, Ollie was retired; secondly, he saw his daily routine more as a sport than a job: he frequented thrift stores and second-hand shops, searching for items like vases or pieces of silver that could be sold for a modest profit at one of the local antique stores. Yesterday he’d come across a set of cranberry glass cruets with all their original stoppers for five dollars that he knew the proprietor of the local antique store would value at twenty-five. So now Ollie wrapped the cruets in paper towels, put them back in their box, got his coat and set out the door. He had just gotten outside when someone shouted, “Good morning, neighbor!”

Ollie whipped his head around fast enough to make his neck twinge: it was Peter, sitting on one of the benches with a mug in his hand. “Beautiful day, isn’t it? Care for a cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks; I’m a bit busy this morning,” Ollie replied, in a miraculously civil tone. He turned and walked as briskly as he could down the sidewalk.

Fifteen minutes later he was looking in the bay window of the antique store. Sprawled on the floor of the window display was an electric train set. A coal-black O-gauge steam engine barreled down the track, dragging half a dozen cars with squeaking wheels in its wake. The train’s whistle screamed as it clacked to a halt below a miniature log loader, and a crane dropped a log onto one of the cars with an impressively loud thud.

Ordinarily, Ollie never haggled over what he was offered; the point was to get enough to buy a pack of sugar cookies, not play ‘antiques dealer’. Today, though, he was on the warpath.

He did not sell the cruets. He traded them, and got the deal of his life.

That afternoon, Ollie was sitting on the floor (against his better judgement) in the middle of loops of metal track and wiring, watching the steam engine go blazing past him. The train was loud; the sound it made was akin to that of a thousand metal ball-bearings being dropped from a height onto a corrugated tin roof. There was also a lovely ruckus when the log-car was emptied and all the logs were placed back in the setter by the ancient crane. Then there was the matter of the whistle and bell, which could be turned up quite loud. And there was the occasional ZAP as the old transformers had an electrical disagreement. “Let’s see him top this,” Ollie said, getting up (with a creak). 

He let the train run for an hour, then turned it off and listened carefully: no noise from downstairs. He nodded firmly. “He’s got the message, then.”

But just as Ollie was putting the eight o’clock news on, things went awry again: the familiar rattling had been replaced by a much louder chugging, with a whining undertone, like some badly struggling machine.

“Right!” Ollie said. He leapt up and marched down to 115. The noise stopped the instant he knocked on the door.

Peter answered the door, smiling brightly. “Ollie! Guess what: I’ve just gotten a new sewing machine! I’m trying to make myself a jacket, but denim’s awfully thick, so it’s pretty slow going. Do you want to see?”

“Oh, isn’t that nice,” Ollie said finally, deciding not to get angry, not yet. Somehow, he felt that to show anger was to lose the game, for that’s exactly what this had become. “No, that’s alright. I was just going. Thought I’d stop by, is all.”

“I’d better get back to it, then,” Peter replied, shutting the door, still grinning. “Goodnight!”

Ollie did not have a good night. He did eventually fall asleep, but his dreams were haunted by rattling that sounded like laughter.

The following morning, on his way to the thrift store, Ollie wondered what could beat a sewing machine. He had no regard for how much he himself would be bothered. The important thing was that Peter would be annoyed. He scanned the shelves desperately: wind chimes were no good; they’d have to go outside. That cuckoo clock, maybe? No, even if it were loud enough, it would only go off once every hour. 

But what if he had a dozen clocks? Or two dozen? There was an idea! They didn’t have to be cuckoo clocks. There were plenty of alarm- and radio-clocks scattered around this store, and there were a few other places that would have them, as well. He’d have to get batteries, but they weren’t expensive. Even if they were, it’d be worth it.

The first alarm went off at twelve-oh-two in the afternoon. Ollie smiled as the vintage- style clock walked itself off the end-table, landed on its feet, and kept on going. The next alarm was scheduled to start four minutes later; the one after that, ten. He’d thought it best to keep the alarms random.

Eight alarms (only a quarter of his arsenal) later, Ollie heard his downstairs neighbor’s door open. He listened carefully, expecting to hear stomping up the steps, but instead, the footsteps receded. Ollie ran to the window; minutes later, Peter appeared, walking away from the building.

“Hah! I’ve driven him out!” Ollie whispered. He decided to go down there with a book and wait at one of the benches for Peter to come back. He’d give a friendly wave, and perhaps there’d be some hint of annoyance on Peter’s face. The very idea made him chuckle.

But just as Ollie reached the door, he saw that Peter was already coming back, and there was a group tagging along behind him: they looked to be teenagers, all carrying guitars, and one was towing a wagon full of large boxes. “Hi, Ollie!” Peter said brightly. “I don’t believe you’ve met my nephew, and his friends? These are

Malcolm—”

“Bass,” said Malcolm, offering a handshake.

“John—”

“Bass.”

“And Damon—”

“Also bass, but I’m gonna learn guitar someday.”

“I’m Ollie; nice to meet you,” Ollie managed. “I guess you’re a band?”

“Yeah,” answered Malcolm. “We’re called Confustication. We’re not allowed to practice in the park anymore, so Uncle Peter said he’d let us use his apartment.”

Ollie said, in as genuine a manner as he could muster, how nice that was; and then he went back up to his apartment. From the floorboards came the cacophony of bass guitars doing battle with their owners (a sound which was not so much heard as felt, especially by the walls, from which plaster dust drifted down), along with oft-heard shouts of “Hang on, that’s not right,” and “What song are you playing?” Ollie sat on his bed and stared at the ceiling, wondering how hard it would be to get a motorcycle up five flights of stairs.

At some point Ollie must have finally managed to fall asleep properly, because he woke with a start sometime after dark. He pulled out his phone to check the time, and saw that he had gotten a message from the building’s chatgroup:

Dear Tenant of Turnstile Apartments,

We have received a number of complaints regarding noise in your apartment from almost everyone else in the building. Please review our noise policies and understand that if this issue persists, we will have no choice but to evict you.

Please contact us with any questions.

Sincerely, Turnstile Apartments

Ollie tossed his phone on the bedside table and sighed. Then he got up and walked down to 115.

Yet again, he ran into Peter, whose grin was gone. “Did you do this, or did they send you one, too?” he asked, showing Ollie his phone, which bore an identical message.

“I had nothing to do with it,” Ollie answered. “I give up. I’ve come over here to tell you that you win. I’m not getting thrown out into the street over this.”

Peter put his phone back in his pocket, shaking his head. “You don’t need to give up; I quit. I don’t know what got into me. I mean, you came over, very polite, asking about that noise – it’s the heater, by the way; it’s

broken – and I turned it into some little mind game. I must seem like some sort of psycho! I really do apologize.”

Ollie chuckled in spite of himself. “Well, I’m sorry, too,” he said finally. “And you want psycho? I ended up with a train set on the floor—”

“Hah! I knew I recognized that sound!” exclaimed Peter. “I had one when I was seven. It had a log-loader, and everything; oh, man, it was awesome.”

“Yeah, this one’s an antique – no offense, of course; I’m one to talk – it’s still set up, if you want to come in and see it. I could make tea, or coffee…?”

Peter nodded. “Tea sounds excellent.”

The train clacked happily along the rails as the two men watched on, occasionally reaching for another sugar cookie out of the box on the table. Eventually, Peter nodded at it and said, “How much, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“The listed price was two hundred fifty. Not bad,” Ollie answered. “But I was able to trade. I had a box of glassware that I knew that tightwad in the store would tell me was worth twenty-five, and then he’d turn around and manage to get three hundred for it. Usually, I never worried about getting a good price – it’s just a game I play, you know; I might make enough to buy a book or something – but I knew the train would make a real racket, so I told him he’d been cheating me for years, and if he ever wanted me back in there again, he’d better give me that train. I must’ve sounded like a spoiled little brat: ‘Gimme that train!’”

Peter laughed. “I went into the fabric store and actually asked for their loudest sewing machine. The poor woman in there thought I’d lost my mind. She kept asking where I was from, and if anyone knew where I was!”

Ollie nodded. “I think I did lose my mind a little. What was I thinking, getting into something like that? I guess it was like the pranks I used to play when I was a kid, but I completely forgot about the rest of the building. I was so surprised when I read that letter! Come to think of it,” he said, with an eyebrow raised in a mock-wondering fashion, “Why didn’t I just call the landlord in the first place? I wouldn’t have had to deal with you at all! More tea?” he added quickly, to make the point that he was only joking.

“Please,” Peter said, pushing his teacup over to the pot. “Now, I’ll tell you why calling the landlord wouldn’t’ve worked: he doesn’t exist. Not for you and me, anyways. Once your hair turns grey, you might as well be invisible. No one cares. I told you the heating’s broken in my apartment; did I tell you it’s been that way for a year? I’ve lost track of all the messages I’ve left. The landlord only bothered with us because the entire building was in uproar. He wouldn’t really have evicted us, either. Too much trouble for him.”

“I believe you. And you said it: no one cares about us. I’ve got a son on the other side of the country, but I’ve never even seen my grandkids. I don’t really have any friends; I’ve got people I see every now and then, like the guy at the antique store, but they don’t take any more notice of me than they have to.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. My husband died years ago, and besides my nephew, I’ve barely got any family that I talk to. I guess that’s why I got into that little fight so quickly: that was the most human interaction I’ve had in, oh, two or three years.”

Ollie was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Seems like no one’s got any time for us except for, well, us…maybe we ought to do this more often, only without the alarm clock and sewing machine parts.”

Peter shrugged, then nodded. “Come over to my place next time. I always keep a box of chocolate graham crackers around…speaking of that, I’d better get back. It’s getting late.”

They both got up, and Ollie showed Peter to the door, asking, “By the way, what were you going to do next? I was out of ideas.”

“Fireworks!” Peter answered, and they both laughed.