Apartment 504

*A note. All names, events, and places are purely coincidental and aren't based on real events.*

The noise rolled up through the walls and threatened to shake the picture frames off the coffee table. The wood floor vibrated and made my feet tingle the rest of the day. I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t know what to do about the band practices going on in the apartment below me. My once beautiful and open apartment now seemed cluttered and choppy. It was the noise. The abrupt changes of beats from the drums, the bass guitar, and the screeching (or was that singing?) changed everything.

* * *
I wasn’t a feng shui expert, but my furniture made good use of the space available in my one-bedroom apartment. The couches’ low backs didn’t divide the living room into sections. My desk, with books and a laptop, had a low profile and hid in the corner where I had just bought a plasma television to mount on the wall. I was very proud of the whole layout and I called my parents to thank them for finding the apartment for me. I had been so busy with job applications that the time to search for housing was out of the question and my parents took it upon themselves to find a nice, but inexpensive residence in Newark. I was hoping for something closer to Manhattan and specifically not in New Jersey, but it was a sacrifice I had to make because living in Manhattan would mean much more expensive housing.

When I moved in, I noticed the apartment below was vacant, and hoped a pretty young lady would take it. Perhaps she would commute to Manhattan with me when I found a job there.

After I finished my job searching for the day I knocked on the door of the empty apartment. I held my breath as I anticipated the sight of my beautiful neighbor, but no one came. I was beginning to fear it would be vacant until I upgraded to a Manhattan studio apartment.

It was a Sunday afternoon. I started climbing the stairs to my sixth floor apartment. As I approached the fifth floor door right below mine, I heard a noise from inside. It grew louder with each step and I knew that my wish hadn’t come true. There couldn’t have been a pretty young lady in that apartment making that earsplitting racket. I stopped at the door and stared at its dull green paint job. My hopes for a neighbor had been dashed away in a matter of stairs and I dreaded what lay beyond that fifth floor door – the source of that noise.

I slammed the door behind me but it couldn’t be heard. The disturbance from beneath my wood floor muffled all other noise. I wasn’t and am still not the expert on rock music, but I knew by the time I reached my door that a rock band, or at least one member of the band, was now living below me. I thought to myself, I need a job fast, and a well-paying one. Newark can be home to the lower people in life, the rock bands. People with the loftier goals can move to the city.

Sleep didn’t visit me that evening. The band played through the night. Even in my room, where I wasn’t directly over the guitar, drums, and amplifiers, I heard every chord. I lay there with my eyes closed. Why did people have to do this during the night? I made a pact with myself that if I didn’t sleep at all the next night I would visit Apartment 504. I would ask them as politely as possible to practice some other time, maybe during the day. I was sure that wouldn’t be much of a problem for the band. I mean, it wasn’t as if they would have day jobs.

Still, I was without sleep twenty-four hours later. I dressed for the big introduction and kept imagining the person who would open the door. I had heard mostly yells from below the last two nights and feared what kind of body housed the vocal cords that could make such noises. The vocals in the band’s songs were raspy and loud. The voice carried notes, but in the form of shrieking. This was a discovery for me. I didn’t know the human voice was capable of such horrendous noise. I wore jeans and black leather shoes with a pea coat. I hoped that my clothing wasn’t too preppy or would somehow intimidate the neighbor into a position of inferiority. Naturally, my apartment cost more because I lived higher up, not that I had a great view of Newark, but I had a sense of pride that no one lived above me. I took a cautious approach to Apartment 504 because I was going to suggest a change in their daily schedule for my convenience and I didn’t want to come off as arrogant.

The drab green door stared back at me. I was now ready to say what I had to say. I had played through the conversation in my mind and it was going to go smoothly after some small talk and introductions. I knocked. There was no answer. I put my ear to the door and listened for even the faintest sound of the guitar. Maybe they were playing acoustic in there for a change. I leaned harder into the door. My right ear smashed into the door and engulfed the peep hole.

Someone yanked the door open and I almost fell into the entryway. Just in time, I grabbed the door jam with both hands and managed to stay upright. At least I had kept an embarrassing scene from becoming worse.

“Can I help you?” A man asked me before I saw him.

I was repositioning myself and fixing my coat, which had been shifted on my body in the attempt to rescue myself from complete humiliation. I looked at a man who was 6’5” and probably weighed 250 pounds. I could tell he was strong, but not chiseled like a body-builder. He wore holed jeans with Converse Chuck Taylor low-tops. His tight black shirt stretched across his chest and the words, “The Sex Pistols”, were barely readable. He had a protrusion of metal coming out of his chin. I had only seen this piercing on MTV a few times and thought it was so animalistic. His face was stern. There was no moustache or beard present except enormous sideburn chops coming to a point on either side of his mouth. His hair was buzzed short and he had a mohawk. It was a subtle mohawk, if there is such a thing.

“Uh, yes sir. I wanted to introduce myself. I am from Apartment 604, the one right above you. My name is Brent.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Craig.”

“Sorry if I seemed to be snooping around. I was trying to hear if anyone was home.” I made eye contact and was surprised to see welcoming blue eyes that weren’t glaring with anger as I had imagined them to be.

“Oh that’s all right. I was just cooking up some breakfast. Everyone else is asleep.”

I was trying to nonchalantly peer around his mass to get a view of the entryway. I saw a bunch of cords wrapped in electrical tape running through the hallway from the bedroom to the great room. The light from the window reflected off of the wood floor, making the dirt visible. By the look of Craig I would expect more dirt on the floor, but the entryway was almost as clean as mine.

“Brent?” Craig asked.

“Sorry. Excuse me Craig, but did you say everyone?”

“Yes, I did. There are four of us. We’re all in a band and needed someplace to stay before we move to New York. We are trying to make it big and get some gigs going that will give us more than enough money to get us through the night.”

“I see. And does your band have a name?”

A wave of mercy came over me and I suddenly felt sorry for these four guys. They were just trying to make a living and I selfishly wanted to change their daily schedule so it would improve mine. I felt intimidated by Craig’s presence and was not ready to suggest that they practice some other time.

“We go by Damrosch.”

“Well, good luck with the gigs…Damrosch,” I squeaked out. I can’t believe I said that. I didn’t even mean it, but was too scared to say anything about the sleep deprivation that was clearly visible in my bloodshot eyes.

“Thanks man. I’ll let you know what happens.” Craig turned and shut the door. The sight of the door made me forget about the surprisingly nice tenant who lived behind it. The music came rushing back – the screams, yells, and violent guitar.

I spent the rest of the day strolling around Manhattan. I hoped to find a job writing short, one paragraph product descriptions for one of the big department stores’ catalogs. The distraction of Damrosch’s music hindered my job-searching enthusiasm. The rock of Damrosch came with me wherever I went.

The bass drum had vibrated a picture frame off the wall in my entryway while I was away. I picked it up. It was a picture of my parents and me on Fifth Avenue. They had come out to help move me in and we had taken a day off and gone into the city to gawk at the canyon of skyscrapers in the heart of New York City. I opened the closet to the right of the front door, grabbed the broom and swept up the glass. Damrosch was playing as I swept and the glass shards bounced across the floor with the vibrations that thundered from beneath.

After the third consecutive night without sleep I couldn’t even move the next morning. I tried to sleep during the day but the thumping was in my head. The bass drum would constantly strike, even when the neighbors weren’t playing. I had never experienced a migraine until now. It came with the drums. I spent that day hiding from light. I pinned a dark blue fleece blanket over the curtains in my room to snuff what ever light had managed to leak through the curtains. I took a body pillow from my bed, stuffing the edges of it between the base of the door and the floor. It was pitch black; I stumbled back to my bed and hit my nightstand. The stand was the cheapest piece of furniture in my apartment. I had bought it at a garage sale before I left for Newark. It had three legs, but one leg was significantly shorter than the rest. I sat down as slowly as possible into my bed. My brain felt like it would burst forth from my head any minute. I groped for my water in the dark; I found it along with a bottle of ibuprofen. I took four of them. As I lay there, I couldn’t distinguish anymore between the echoes of Damrosch’s music in my head and the live music below my apartment. They molded together and synchronized in my head. I was accepting the noise, that was when I was able to sleep.

My migraine was gone the following morning. I had slept through the rest of the day and that night. I had fallen asleep around four in the afternoon. I had sixteen remarkable hours of sleep. There were no guitar chords echoing through my apartment when I pulled the body pillow away and opened the door. Damrosch must have been taking a break from their noisemaking. It didn’t ever sound like playing. For me, the goal of Damrosch’s music was to make noise, and they were damn good at it.
I had some luck that day with the job searching. I had applied at Macy’s and given them some samples of my writing. They called for an interview later that day. It was set for three in the afternoon. I spent the morning cleaning the apartment. I had denied any effort to clean the last couple of days because I couldn’t find the motivation. It is so useless to clean when vibrations are bound to knock more objects off of desks and tables. I found some sticky tack in a drawer of my desk and thought it would be of great use. College graduates didn’t have to sticky tack their posters to walls anymore. Graduates trying to make a living needed to mount their framed posters by nail, hammer, and level. This was another step toward sophistication.

The sticky tack held pictures to tables and my computer speakers to my desk. I even put a piece in every corner of the laptop. The computer was fairly heavy but my paranoia about the powers emanating from below my apartment pushed me to extremes. I was so sick of picking up the same books off of the floor that I stuck them to the shelf in the bookcase. The books were old and dusty anyway, left over from some obscure college course because the bookstore refused to buy them back. I also remounted my plasma television on deep hooks so even an earthquake couldn’t send it from the wall.

My apartment was Damrosch proof. However, my mind wasn’t. The time came for my interview but I had another awful migraine. I ended up having to excuse myself mid-interview and that surely sealed the deal that I wouldn’t get the job at Macy’s. I didn’t even notice the guitar riffs when I came back to my apartment. The real ones just melded into the guitar already playing in my head and caused me to hole up in my cave with some more ibuprofen.

I slept again and woke up right before sunrise. Damrosch was still playing, but now I wanted to hear more of their music, it had made me lethargic before, but now it was energizing me. I took down the blanket and opened the window. There was an escape ladder right outside the window with small platforms at each floor. I slowly stepped out of my window and set my feet down on the platform outside the window sill. The platform and steps of the ladder were rusted red. I didn’t want to trust the metal with my whole weight. I was fearful of the platforms ability to support even my flimsy body. I bent my head to hear the music. The noise was coming out their open windows and bouncing off of the brick wall facing the building and up to my perch. After all this time listening to the music I couldn’t decipher the words in any of the songs. If the words were sung and not yelled, that would make the difference. There were parts of one particular song that I did enjoy. The drums died down and so did the shrieking while the guitar player lit up the amplifier with an impressive solo. It started slowly and built to a climax. Its rhythm always thrilled me, but it would be drowned out by the drums bursting forth from the silence. I tried many times to pick apart the drums so I could hear the guitar, but it was too hard. The noise began to irritate me, it wasn’t as muffled outside, and so I slipped through the window into the dim apartment. However, I was thankful for the timing of my rest on the windowsill, so I could hear the guitar solo that I enjoyed since Damrosch moved in.

I walked into the living room and felt imprisoned. The room didn’t flow like it used to. The edges of the room and furniture were sharp. The lines of objects ended suddenly, much like the songs, and then they would start up out of nowhere again to disturb the peace. I wanted to rearrange the furniture but knew that this was the best possible layout. I had drawn up all the layouts and chosen this one because it made the most use out of the least amount of space, but now the walls seemed to lean in on all sides. Perhaps the beats of Damrosch’s music were caught up in the walls like they were caught up in my head and they were about to explode onto the room, rearranging the furniture in the loudest formation possible – the way Damrosch would arrange furniture.

The next morning I woke up from sleep that wasn’t induced by a load of ibuprofen and a migraine. Damrosch kept playing through the night, but how could I tell? They were always playing in my mind. There would be no job searching that day. I needed some rest and hoped that I would be able to get back on the same daily routine now that I could sleep to Damrosch’s music. Lunch was New York style pizza in New Jersey. On my way back to the apartment I saw a moving truck out front. I remember thinking maybe someone would move in on my floor. We could help one another cope with the monotonous chords of Apartment 504. I tore up the stairs hoping to find a pretty young lady in the empty Apartment 606, but I halted at the fifth floor. The door to Craig’s apartment was open and there were boxes stacked six feet high. I took a few more steps and Craig came around the corner of the entryway and out the door with a box in each arm.

“Hey Craig. Are you moving out?” I said.

A low grunt came out of Craig as he set the boxes down and he rose with a smile, “Yes, we are. We finally got a permanent gig in the city and we are headed there. The housing is going to be steep, but we will get by.”

I couldn’t believe it. Just when I was learning to live with Damrosch’s music, they were moving out. Now my thoughts were focused on the future of my life in Apartment 604.

“So no more late night practice sessions?”

“Nope. Why? Were we keeping you up?” He chuckled.

“Ah, are you kidding me? No. No. No.” I smirked and doubted my ability to lie.

“Great. I was worried about the other people in this building and the next.”

“It was fine. Do you need any help?”

“Nope, the rest of the guys will get the last stuff. Thanks anyway.”

“Yeah, no problem. Maybe I will see you around in New York.”

“Maybe, talk with you later.” He heaved up the boxes and lumbered down the stairs in his Chuck T’s.

When I got into my apartment I felt as though Damrosch was still below me playing. The only thing that was missing was the vibrations moving through the floor and the walls. The sticky tack was the first stuff to go. It didn’t bother me that it was holding my pictures down. However, the tack was simply unnecessary with Damrosch gone. I swept the floor and picked up some papers that had been drummed off of my desk. Lying on the sofa, staring at the ceiling, I fell asleep to the guitar riff I was going to miss.

I woke up with the worst headache yet and stumbled around with my eyes closed until I found some ibuprofen. This headache had come on instantly, much like earlier versions when Damrosch would start up another concert in their living room. A couple hours had passed and the ibuprofen still wasn’t working. I made my room as dark as possible again, remaining on the brink of sleep throughout the day and night. Movement hurt and I only got out of bed for the bathroom, where I would also fill up my water bottle. I might have slept some during the night, maybe an hour, before I came out into the living room. I wore my Oakley sunglasses to reduce the throbbing pain brought on by the light. The beige curtains in the room didn’t do a great job blocking out the morning rays.

The bowl of Frosted Flakes was hard to keep down that morning and it was hard enough to eat. The light burned my sleepy eyes so badly I couldn’t see my cereal bowl. I managed to find my spoon and take a few mouthfuls of Frosted Flakes, but I couldn’t finish them. I felt sick. My headache was different; it was brought on by the lack of Damrosch’s music, not because of it. I was now certain this was the cause of my pain. I knew I had started to get more used to the constant noise. The music may have been continuous, but I had some of the best nights of sleep and my headaches were beginning to be rare. If Damrosch were here now, maybe the headaches would be dying off completely. If I kept on living in my apartment without Damrosch below me my headaches might eventually go away, but how long would that take? I didn’t have the time to take a week off from job searching. I needed to be rested and sane to even have a shot at an interview. I wondered where Damrosch would have moved. Certainly, they were some place that was cheap, but closer to their work. I didn’t have Craig’s last name though. I didn’t even know the other band members. I thought that it would be impossible to track down Damrosch and even harder to move in above them, but that was my best shot at getting rid of the migraines. The housing wouldn’t be as nice and the rent would be more, but this move had the power to open windows. I wouldn’t have headaches. I would be able to sleep. And I would be closer to a potential job in New York City.

I walked down to the fifth floor and stared at the doors. Craig had to have befriended someone on the floor. He turned out to be a nice guy and it was possible that he had given someone his new address. I tried Apartment 502. My memory served me right, my other neighbor, Adam, answered the door. I hadn’t spoken with Adam much since I had moved in. There was an occasional “hello” and “how you doing?” but nothing serious. I used to hear Adam’s surround sound when he watched movies but all other noise was drowned out when Damrosch moved in. He answered the door in gray plaid pajamas and a white t-shirt. I had woken him up by the look of his hair.

“Hey Adam, I have a weird question for you.”

“Alright, go ahead.” He looked puzzled.

“It’s nothing bad, don’t worry. Did you know Craig, next door?”

“Yah, nice guy. His music was a little loud but I learned to deal. They moved out yesterday.”

“I know. Would you by chance have their new address?”

“Let me check. I wasn’t here when they left but I think Craig slid it under my door with a note.” Adam walked back to a small stand inside his entryway and picked up a slip of paper. “Here it is.”

I read it, Northwest Corner of North 10th St. and Berry St., Apartment # 301. It was hard to tell if it was 10th or 11th Street. Craig had drawn a vertical line right through the zero. “Thanks a lot Adam. Have a good day.”

“You all right, man? You look like you haven’t slept in a few days.”

“A couple. I am fine. I just need to get out of here.” I walked away quickly hoping Adam wouldn’t inquire as to why I needed to leave – he didn’t.

So, there were two possibilities. I wished that there weren’t apartment buildings on the corner of 10th and Berry and 11th and Berry, but I wasn’t that lucky. There were two apartment buildings, nearly identical, and they both had Apartment #301. I knew it would weird Craig out if I knocked on his door and told him I am his new neighbor, but I was willing to take that risk to get my daily dose of Damrosch back. I tried 11th and Berry first without any luck. No one came to the door. The apartment building at 10th and Berry was similar to mine in Newark. Its staircase wound up in a big circle and Apartment 301 was in the middle of a flight of stairs on a landing that was not much bigger than two doormats. I didn’t even have to knock. I heard Craig’s shrieks coming from inside and I knew I had found the place. The bass drum was hitting hard, the energy from that guitar solo was back, and the bass guitar thumped. I didn’t have to spook Craig out by telling him I followed his band to another city to live above them.

I contacted the real estate agency and couldn’t believe my lucky streak. Apartment 401 was vacant and I told them I would move in that day. I didn’t have much to move. Adam was willing to help me move the sofas and the bed with his pickup truck and I thanked him a number of times. As I took load after load up the stairs I heard Damrosch’s rock blasting through Apartment 301. The Newark apartment was twice as large as the new one, but I was all about sacrifice. Adam helped haul the couches up the stairs and I gave him a twenty as a thank you. I wanted to spare more, but this place almost cost twice as much as Apartment 604. My headache had begun to taper off when I arrived and by the time Adam left it was gone.

The arrangement of my furniture wasn’t such a big dilemma this time. There was barely room for it all. I put everything up against the wall and created as much open space in the middle of the room as possible. I finished unpacking in a few hours and sat down on the sofa. I was completely relaxed and ready to start my job searches tomorrow. Damrosch’s music shot up from the floor and my ears ate the noise up. There was something weird about the floor. My feet didn’t feel any vibrations. I looked at the pictures on my coffee table and they weren’t shifting at all from the bass drum. I was no longer able to see the dirt on the floor bounce to the music. There was something different about this Damrosch. The ear splitting sound was there but the force that shook everything on the same block was gone. It might have never been here. I didn’t pay any attention to feel the walls or the floor for the vibrations of their playing earlier. I was too pleased to hear their music again. I was positive Damrosch was playing so I had to go see for myself.

I visited the apartment right below me and could hear them playing inside. It was deafening. I pounded the door with my fist because I knew it would take something awful to be heard inside that noise box. Damrosch kept on playing and they were playing my favorite song with the guitar riff. I stood at the door and didn’t knock until the drums had overpowered the artistic expression of the guitarist. This time the door opened. It was a woman. She was probably in her mid-twenties. She wore a lot of black make-up but it didn’t hide her beauty.

“Can I help you?” I couldn’t hear her over the music.

“What? I can’t hear you,” I yelled.

She didn’t answer, turned around and ran into her apartment. The music stopped. It didn’t gradually die down like it was live. It stopped like it was a CD. I realized then that Damrosch didn’t live here. I was hearing their music, I wasn’t hearing them playing. Whoever this girl was, she was playing Damrosch’s music as loud as they used to practice it. This would explain the lack of vibrations. The sound was present in my apartment, but not the energy, the force that made the building shake violently.

“Hello, can I help you?” The woman asked.

She caught me daydreaming about the band she was listening to.

“Sorry. I thought someone else lived here.”

“Nope, it’s only me. And your name is?”

“I’m Brent.”

“I’m Cassy. It’s nice to meet you.”

“I just moved in upstairs, right above you.”

“Would you like to come in for a minute? Have a drink maybe?”

“Uh, sure.” I felt uncomfortable but she was being the nice neighbor and inviting the new kid on the block in for a drink.

I followed her into the apartment. It was identical to mine and she had her furniture backed up against the wall too. One wall had an enormous bookcase with a television, CDs, books, and her stereo. Cassy pressed play on the CD player and turned the volume down.

“Sorry the music was so loud. I really like this band.”

“Who are they?” I played innocent.

“A new band from Jersey. They’re called Damrosch. Have you ever heard of them?”

“No, but I like their sound from what I have heard so far.”

It’s true. Their sound had grown on me and I discovered after they left that I couldn’t live without it, I had mistakenly followed it here. Cassy wasn’t Damrosch. Her Damrosch CD didn’t shake my apartment and knock picture frames off the wall, but it was the same sound. I hoped that the sound would be enough for me and that I didn’t need the vibrations of the live music to rid me of the headaches. I was willing to give up the live music to live near Cassy. I was sure I could adapt to living with just the music and not the presence of the actual band living below me.

Cassy was a pretty young lady, and I was all about sacrifice.