“But I fell
asleep,” John balefully wailed, a grown man sounding like a fourth grader. I
was the third neighbor who had complained to him that his loud television had
kept us up all night. It never occurred to him that perhaps the TV was too loud
in the first place, and that falling asleep did not relieve him of any
responsibility for broadcasting from his TV to the neighborhood in the first
place. How unfeeling we were to
complain!
On most days,
my downstairs neighbor played his music so loudly that my floors and walls
vibrated. Small objects on the shelves actually moved. I complained to him. I
complained to the super. I complained to the landlord. Nothing changed his
behavior. I went to the super again. Joe had worked with this man at the same
elevator repair company and so knew him personally. He would talk to him for
me.
Maybe a
dozen days later, as I opened my living room windows to let in a pleasant summer
day, the bright sun, and the fresh smells of cut grass and leafy green trees, I
felt a summer breeze waft against my face. It felt almost idyllic. The
experience was abruptly spoiled-- by a spontaneous image of my neighbor with
his ugly unrelenting music. And then a series of images formed in my head: a
panel truck, on a narrow and windy, wet and wind-swept road, speeds around the
sharp turns in the middle of a dark rainstorm. It slips off the road, careening
straight into an immense, time-worn tree. Time stops and then, there in the
shadows, is Death, just to the left of the driver side door. Such an ugly thought on such a beautiful day.
I shook off imaginings and returned to tidy my apartment.
As the next days followed, I went about enjoying my life, enjoying the quiet of summer. After two or three weeks, I realized that my neighbor had not disturbed me. I didn’t know what my super, Joe had said to John, but it had worked. I went around the corner to the apartment office to thank Joe for his help. “Oh,” he told me, “I never got to talk to him.” Joe explained. “John was in an awful accident. Remember that rainstorm a few weeks ago? He was driving his elevator repair truck on the Interboro Parkway . . . you know, that windy road that runs through the cemeteries. He skidded off the road smack into a big tree. Almost died. Be in rehab for months. He won’t be coming back to the apartment.”
I was relieved and guiltily joyful, that John and his loud disturbances weren’t coming back. Simultaneously, I shivered that anyone —even dislikable John-- was so mangled and in pain that he would need rehab for months. Then I stood stock still. Had I caused the crash? Had I envisioned the accident beforehand? Had my vindictive thoughts morphed into destructive reality? My heart constricted, as I pulled away in fear from my own power. A few deep breaths and I calmed myself. It was a moment of precognition, I told myself, not an act of vengeful psychic capability. I mostly believe this.
My new downstairs neighbor is quiet. I am thankful. Still, in the recesses of my mind, lingers a fear of distant pulses of psychic power. If I’m afraid of such power, I think others should heed the possibility. Please, please, do not annoy me.
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