Night Call

CW: mention of suicide

It came every night, usually around midnight but sometimes later. The cry of “Happy New Year” from a man approximately three floors and two apartments over from mine. When he started up the call there were a few brave residents who would scream back at him, telling him to shut up and go to bed or reminding him that it was not the new year but just a regular night in September. Nothing worked to stop him. Even threats to call the police weren’t enough. So every night my neighbors and I were wished a Happy New Year. Except tonight. It was well past midnight and he still had not called out. 

 New Year's Eve was my least favorite holiday. Every year was the same. The obligation to make plans with friends, to line up several options for celebrations and do my best to find a mouth to kiss by midnight. Every year I was disappointed. Almost everyone would be drunk by 11:30 and I was always the only one left sober enough to get them safely home. I had never successfully found a kiss to ring in the new year, but I had been thrown up on three years in a row. 

With this historical record in mind, I decided this year would be different. 28 was just too old for babysitting puking friends and desperate make-out attempts. Instead, I bought myself a bottle of 30 dollar Italian red wine, ordered dinner from my favorite local trattoria, and turned on reruns of “Friends.” I would celebrate the holiday on my own terms. I even considered taking a bath, that was how serious I was about self care. I also planned to join my festive neighbor in the nightly “Happy New Year” call. When the countdown began at 11:59, I rushed to the window in the kitchen. Giddy with anticipation, I stared at my phone with the intensity of a child staring at the clock in the last minute of the school year. I was ready to leave the last year in the past. I was ready to scream into the crisp winter air. I was ready to harmonize with my neighbor. 

At midnight I heard cheers and music streaming out of various units, but nothing from our new year’s harbinger. Where was he? It’s true, he didn’t exactly go off like clockwork, but this was New Year’s Eve. This should have been his time to shine, but there was no shout. I waited at the window, draining and refilling my wine glass, until 12:45. The sounds of celebration had ebbed and most of the golden rectangles in the brick walls had switched off to black as the other tenants went to bed. I wondered how many kisses had been exchanged all around me while I sat here alone and waited to celebrate with a man I knew nothing about. 

I put the empty wine bottle in the recycling bin, put my food in the fridge for lunch leftovers, and brushed my teeth. My spit was stained burgundy from the wine and I brushed until it came out clear. I almost skipped my full skincare routine, but compromised and just rinsed my face and put on my moisturizer that was approved by nine out of ten dermatologists. I wondered why that tenth dermatologist did not approve of my moisturizer. Then I wondered again why my neighbor hadn’t wished me a happy new year. I settled into bed and sulked in my bitter disappointment. Was he out somewhere, joining a chorus of other new year’s enthusiasts? Maybe he had gone up to Times Square to watch the ball drop? Maybe he had died? 

I knew once I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep that this year would really end, and for all that I knew how much I wanted that, I was still afraid to let it go. I was leaving a lot behind in the lost year. I was leaving behind the man I loved who moved away before we could make any future plans. I was leaving behind my childhood best friend who had killed herself almost exactly a year ago. I was leaving behind the only extended stay I ever spent in a hospital, dazed and half asleep from the morphine drip. I was entering a new year as a woman with a broken heart and a healed sepsis infection. 

The man who celebrates New Year's every night of the year must always feel this way. Every midnight signaled a fresh start, every morning a chance to try again. Was he suffering from some form of amnesia and was caught in an endless loop of New Year’s Eve? Was he just irritatingly positive? Or maybe it was some kind of Groundhog Day time vortex? Regardless, I was a little jealous of his insistence that every night was worth celebrating. When he started his ritual, I had been lying comatose on the couch after saying goodbye to the man I loved. The bottle of cheap wine on the floor was empty and the clock kept counting up the minutes and I could not move. Then his voice rang across the courtyard and through my open windows. It traveled on the lazy summer breeze and reached me like a CPR administrator’s breath of life. I smiled, the most movement my muscles had managed in over an hour. His call gave me enough motivation to sit up on the couch and feel the rush of pain flood my head. The kind of throbbing wine headache that begins before you’ve even had time to be hungover. 

It was time to give up on the New Year’s man, turn off my bedside lamp, and accept the inevitability of the ever-forward march of time. I had spent New Year’s Eve alone and I needed to reckon with that, but not at 1:30 in the morning. So I fell asleep and didn’t wake up again until the sun was cutting across my bedroom walls and sneaking under my eyelids. I blinked away the bleary sleepiness, made myself a half of a pot of coffee and a bowl of cereal, sat at the kitchen table, and played Solitaire on my phone. After rinsing my empty cereal bowl and coffee mug, brushing my teeth and showering, and dressing in my thickest sweater and jeans, I headed out into the new year. It felt the same outside, just like every year. New Year’s Day was like a birthday, you always expected to feel different somehow but it was no different from the inch forward of any other day. There were no leaps for time, only crawling and scooting. I ran my holiday errands, all of the tasks I usually didn’t have time for during the week. Enough groceries for meal prep, a stop at the ATM for cash, dropped laundry at the laundromat, then a swing by the liquor store for more wine. I considered calling a friend, but didn’t really want to talk. I considered calling the man I loved, but knew if I really wanted to stop loving him I would have to stop calling him. I considered knocking on every apartment door until I found the one with the New Year’s man to make sure he was okay, but decided to just go home to my empty apartment. 

I made dinner for myself, a rare occurrence, and opened the bottle of wine. I ate my spaghetti bolognese and drank my ten dollar Cab Sav in front of the TV. Exhausted from staying up late last night, I turned in at 9:30 and was asleep by 10. I was in a superficial sleep, just under the surface of consciousness, when I woke with a start to the sound of a man’s voice calling out to the quiet winter night, “Happy New Year!” I whispered back to him, “Yeah, Happy New Year.”