Being Gladys Kravitz.

"Do you hear that?"

It's around two in the moring. I've been asleep for about half an hour. Groggy, I open my eyes, and look over to Corb, sitting in shadows in the chair across from me. "Wha...?"

"The neighbors on the first floor. They've been keeping me up all night."

I rub at my eyes. "What are they doing?"

"They've been fighting for the past hour. Sounds like she cheated on him, and the guy who she on him with keeps texting and calling her, and he texted the boyfriend to say she had herpes. And the guy asked her if she had herpes and she denied it, but he just discovered a herpes sore on his lip and he's freaking out. He's talking to his mother on the phone right now."

I move over to the window. The boyfriend is standing by his car, shirtless. The lights from the front of the apartment glisten on his smooth body. "I'm leaving, ma. I'm leaving! She gave me herpes, ma." A pause, as he paced around the car. "Yeah, I'm sure! I..." He bangs on the car, a little embarrassed. "I went down on her, ma."

I turn to Corb, trying not to laugh. "He just told his ma he went down on her?"

"He's very close to his mother," grins Corb.

Another bang on the car. "Yeah, I'm leaving, ma. Getting outta here! I'm just hanging around until I sober up."

He moves away from his car. Looks up at the apartment building, at our floor. I duck my head so he can't see me. We hear the door to the building open, then close. I sit on the bed for about twenty minutes, waiting for the next eruption.

###

Nine o'clock in the morning. Corb's in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. He gives one last good spit and then moves into the room. "He's still here."

"No way! He didn't move out?"

"Not yet." Corb sits on the chair across from me, an impish smile on his face. "Think if I left a bottle of Herpex outside their door they'd get upset?"

Neighbors. Better entertainment than television, I tell you.

We haven't had a lot of neighbors stories lately, so it's nice to have some entertainment. The place we live now is fairly subdued and quiet. The first building we lived in was far more entertaining. We had a neighbor who smashed the windshield to her boyfriend's Mustang with a can of beans, for example. The best story was Thor, a rather addled obese man who decided to take off his clothes one day and wade in the pond located in the center of the complex, raising his fists to the heavens and shouting, all the while. That was quite a show for everyone. (PS: Corb took pictures.)

As I've been typing this, we've been watching an old eighties movie, something starring Kevin Dillon. Ashes and her eighties movies...she was forcing us. Just as I got to that part in the story, we suddenly hear a loud noise from the sky.

"What's that?" asks Ashes.

"Sounds like a plane." Corb strains his ears. "Or a helicopter." He pauses, runs over to the picture window, excited. "Can you see it? Something is happening over in the other building. Can't you see everyone running to it? Oh wow, they're air lifting someone out of one of the buildings. Something pretty bad must have just happened. LET'S GO SEE IT!"

Thrilled beyond belief, Corb and Ashes run to put on their shoes and exit the apartment, as if it were on fire.

I hang back. I know I'll get the full report in a few minutes. Besides, I want to wrap up my story.

Sometimes I don't need  to be Gladys Kravitz, you see. Sometimes it's more fun being Gladys Kravitz by proxy.