Neighbors: A Warning
This is an unfortunately true story of why it’s important to be a good, or at least non-bad neighbor.
We had just moved into the place. It was perfect. Enormous, with tons of old Victorian character, at the back of an incredibly deep courtyard, far from the street, near the lake, perfect U-shaped layout where you could live together but still have your on space, dog park out back, laundry in-building, great maintenance man, phenomenal water pressure. It was perfect.
It wasn’t.
It wasn’t because we lived below 2 awful people and their awful dog. I don’t say that lightly either. I like to think I’m a people person and an animal lover (and a goddamn cat whisperer f your i), but there are exceptions to the rule.
When we moved in we went around and introduced ourselves to everyone. We knocked on their door. We heard them in there. They never came out.
Oh well.
Then came the complaints and the passive aggressive notes. Not a ton, but just enough to irk you. And the clomping. Clomp clomp clomp. In the guy’s defense he was pretty tall, but the woman was the main culprit, we knew it. He worked at home – quiet as a library up there. At night – a goddamn rodeo.
And that fucking dog. Miserable little thing. Couldn’t walk past it without it growling at you (he was tiny, so it was kind of funny). Seriously though, all it would do is growl at everyone. The lady from upstairs would clutch it to her chest as they both growled (her growing mentally, we were sure of it) at anyone they happened to pass in the hallway.
The dog would bark and bark and bark. But ignorance is bliss.
We couldn’t care less about them, and in the end, that was unfortunate.
Because on October 24th, 2010 we were ignoring the dog’s frantic barking as if it were usual. If they had been anywhere close to cordial, maybe we would have walked upstairs and knocked to make sure everything was alright.
It wasn’t.
A fire had started under their sink in the kitchen and started to spread throughout their apartment. Eventually I noticed a soft beeping – the upstairs smoke detector. I went to my back door and opened it. There was some smoke in the back stairs, and I heard some commotion. I figured someone had burnt something in the kitchen. I closed the door back up.
For some reason I walked to the back kitchen window, and standing in the dog park were three people pointing up at the apartment above me. And they weren’t pointing at nothing.
I called 911. We grabbed our cat and got out of the building. Windows were breaking from the fire and flames shot out of their apartment. The fire department arrived. Too many trucks to count. Too much to remember in my head. Literal panic.
Eventually they put out the fire. We saw the firemen carry a limp cat outside into the courtyard. We saw another fireman perform chest compressions on the lifeless body of that miserable fucking dog. Hours later we saw them come home. We saw the firemen talking to them. We saw the look of lives that had just fallen apart.
Everything they had was ruined. Their pets, gone.
I the end, we were lucky it didn’t spread. Our place flooded and we had to move, but that’s small potatoes after an experience like this.
After we moved the first thing we did was introduce ourselves to our new neighbors.
