The Neighbors

The world is such a small place when you think about it. Yes, there are 7.9 billion people, but it seems that wherever you go, there is always someone you know. New York City is the largest city in the United States. You would think that in a population of 8.4 million people, you would be able to hide from people pretty well. But of course, I happen to live in the same building, even on the same floor, as some of the most aggravating and frustrating people I personally know. Because why should I be free to live in my isolation away from anyone I know?

Everyone on our floor can obviously tell that they have a thing for each other. Yes, they might be constantly yelling at each other, but that’s not the point. The point is that they don’t even live together, they live across the hall from each other, but they still spend every single minute together. It’s honestly so annoying. To be fair, though, they do get pretty creative with their insults and passive-(mostly) aggressive notes they leave on each other’s doors. My favorite interaction so far has been: “How convenient that your parents named you Justice since it’s such an in-Justice for me to have to deal with you!” “At least my name isn’t Grey. At least I didn’t get named after the most boring color ever. And honestly what’s with the spelling?? G-R-E-Y? What are you, British?” As you should have noticed their names are Justice and Grey. I’m not sure they even know my name, Autumn.

When I moved in a couple of months ago, who knows how long they had been living here before. I had a friend helping and, as a joke, they always call me Fall (get it? Like a pun? Autumn? Fall? I don’t think it’s that funny either). Justice and Grey were arguing in the hallway (as usual) when I was moving everything to my new apartment. They heard my friend call me Fall and have called me that ever since. Of course, they haven’t bothered to learn my real name, because they’re too caught up in their own drama to think about the existence of other people.

As I said earlier, no matter how much they argue, they spend all of their time together. But the weird thing is it’s never in either of their apartments. It’s either in the hall or outside or in the garden next to our building. My neighbors and I have taken turns trying to catch both of them going into either of their apartments (because we knew there was obviously something going on), but we never found any proof. Then, out of the blue, one day when I was coming home from work, I walked out of the elevator and down the hall to my apartment and I saw both of them going into Grey’s apartment.

I was so astonished that I texted my neighbor and told them what was going on. They immediately came over, knocking on my door demanding more details. Suddenly, we heard a really loud crash and some yelling. Someone obviously made a mistake. My neighbor and I ran out in the hallway to see what was happening when Justice ran out of Grey’s apartment screaming, holding a lamp. With the speed and volume of their voice echoing down the hall, I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but I could tell it was nothing good. They started walking aggressively toward the elevator to leave when they abruptly turned around, went back to Grey’s still open door, and threw the lamp back inside. They screamed one more indecipherable insult and walked back to the elevator and never came back.

My neighbors and I were never able to figure out what had happened between the two of them since they didn’t register that other people existed outside their own little worlds, and never responded when any of us tried talking to one of them. Since we were all worried about them (but, let's be honest, we were all just really nosey and curious), we continued our monitoring of the halls to see if Justice came back or if Grey left, but we never saw either of them again.

A couple of days later, some people hired by the super came and cleared out Justice’s apartment. We all watched as they took out the most luxurious, extravagant furniture any of us had ever seen. If Justice could afford all of that, why on earth did they live in our crappy apartment building? I guess we’ll never know.

A few days after that, the crew came back again and cleared out Grey’s apartment. There weren’t nearly as many things as there were in Justice’s apartment, and the vibe was completely different from theirs. Where Justice had delicate extravagant furniture, Grey had dark, heavy woody furniture. They were so completely different, it was no wonder why they couldn’t get along. It was as the apartment was being emptied that I realized that I had not seen Grey leave. Had they gone while none of us on the floor were paying attention? But we had been taking turns watching around the clock. We couldn’t think of any reason why we hadn’t seen them, other than that they had never actually left. I guess we’ll never know.