My neighbor is a playboy. I've got mental pictures of all the things he's enjoyed and I find them all replaying in my head when I hear the noises next door. I can hear him through the thin sheetrock walls, so clever but motives misguided. That's all I'd hold against this master of words that are all wrapped up in flame.
It's in the way he responds to a lady's question â he's a smooth operator who works at the bank. I saw him last week when I cashed those two cheques from my aunt in New Jersey.
I've been working as a bellboy. Each night there are two bags full of chips I've destroyed and a video (a loaner, a rental I'll return on Tuesday). I can hear Neighbor in the hallway, accompanied by the thin voice of some girl â it's always a new one. My ear's to the wall to imagine her hairstyle and choice of stockings.
My neighbor doesn't give me no joy, though it was surely worse when I was unemployed...
But then again I wonder what I would do if Roy Horodner left The Chalet. I'm really not quite sure how I would take it, his grand disappearance. My mind draws a blank. What then would I hear on the sixteenth floor but a passionless silence?
I'm thinking of getting a job as a teller. Maybe I'd sit next to him at the bank and listen to what he says to all the ladies in line for withdrawals.