Pots and Pans

A crash was heard in the apartment next door. The fifth crash that has been heard today. Eric knew that his next-door neighbor was not in any danger. He knew that he was doing it on purpose. Ever since the week they both moved in, they have not gotten along. They will do whatever they can to cause the other a moment of stress or anger. In the apartment next door, Eric imagines his neighbor Calvin banging pots and pans together, or maybe he is lucky, and he is banging his head against the wall. But Eric is never lucky when it comes to Calvin. He and Calvin could have been best friends if it wasn’t for the week that they moved in. When Calvin began with the banging and yelling. Eric had finally had enough of the constant banging on his walls it felt like the whole room was shaking. He decided to bang back, Eric pulled out his pots and pans as well as the loudest speaker he had and got to work banging to pans and playing his favorite song. Calvin seemed to have had enough within the first two minutes when he came knocking on Eric’s door, Eric opened the door with the brightest smile on his face. “What can I do for you sir he said”. The look that he received is a look that he gets at least every day a look of pure anger. “You could stop all that racket,“ says Calvin. With many thoughts in my head the first and the one a felt to be the most important was, but he was making the racket first. So, I decided to ask, “what does the old man not like when someone is louder than him”. I didn’t want my question to be mean but most of the time with Calvin you just have to be. Him being an old man is a big stretch considering I am the one who is older than the two of us. Calvin looked at me with the most confused look in his eyes after he heard what I had said as if he wasn’t just making the loudest most obnoxious sound at 8 pm but I thought nothing of it until he asked. “What are you talking about”. The banging noise you were making for an hour I replied as politely as I could. He seemed as if he didn’t know what it was talking about. However, when, his facial expression changed from a look of fear to mischief I understood that he was completely bullshitting me. He then looked me in the eyes and said to me ”oh that noise don’t worry just having little fun”. It was then that he turned to walk back to his apartment next door, and I closed my door with anger. This is a daily routine we fight we talk at one another’s doors, and funny enough we have never seen the inside of others’ apartments. That is until three weeks after that fight. I was returning from an overnight shift at work, a shift that gets over at four am, as in the morning. When I saw Calvin sitting in front of my apartment door seemingly sound asleep. However, when I stepped closer, I noticed he reeked of alcohol and had tear stains on his face. I have never been one to worry but at this moment I was afraid of what had happened to the man that I fight with every day. I decided that if I was going to find out I was not going to today while standing in the hallway. I am not a strong man but when I went to pick Calvin up to bring him inside, he couldn’t have weighed more than 160 pounds even if he doesn’t look that underweight. I Carried Calvin inside my apartment when I realized he has never been in here before. I lay him on the couch sticking a sticky note on his forehead telling him where he was and to tell me what is going on with him when he woke up. Then I was headed to bed. When I woke up it wasn’t on my own accord it was to a banging next door as always however as a ran out to tell my nuisance of a neighbor to quiet down so I could sleep I realized I forgot said neighbor was laying on my couch completely knocked out. So I decided to investigate the cause of my early rise, peeking my head out the door I saw a girl, she was young couldn’t be more than sixteen, but the thing that caught My eye was that she looked exactly like Calvin, just a little more girly and a certainly just as annoying. It was in this moment of me staring at her that I remembered she was pounding on Calvin’s door and he wasn't there. I walked up to her and saw a frantic look in her eyes, a look of fear. “Hey Woah Woah, what is wrong,” I asked the young girl. She seemed to have just realized I was there when she looked up, she began to cry and talk very quickly” MYBROTHERHESNOTAWNSERINGMEANDIMAFRAIDHEDIDSOMETHINGBAD”. Woah slow down I can't understand a word you are saying to me first tell me your name. She took a deep breath and then bean again” my name is Chanel, and my brother lives in that apartment” she starts while pointing at Calvin’s door. I let her begin again “and since he isn’t answering his door, I am afraid he has done something bad.” Bad I think what he could do, what does he do. I look her in the eyes then I tell her, calm down your brother is in my apartment next door you can come in and wait for him to get up or wake him up for all I care. As soon as she was granted access to my apartment and her brother, she ran up to him and unexpectedly slapped him causing a loud noise to ring through my otherwise quiet apartment. I looked at her with a face full of shock, but when Calvin woke up with the biggest simile on his face the complete and utter amount of confusion, I felt was overwhelming. Calvin then pulled the note off his forehead without reading it. And pulled his frantic sister into a hug whispering sweet nothings in her ear, Confusing. It was then that he noticed I was standing here and that he wasn’t in his apartment. I just gave a small wave with a blank look on my face causing him to pull away from his sister no words spoken were between them about the slap. Calvin walked up to me with a serious look on his face. “What did she tell you,” He said to me. I look at him in anger, SHE didn’t say anything to me and if she did why would I tell you, I yell at him full of rage, he had a lot of nerve after all I’ve done for him. It was after he heard my tone, that he realized that he had made a mistake in the way that he had just spoken to me. He then took a deep breath and did something I never thought he would do, he apologized. I just stared at him with my mouth open, and he began to laugh at me. I closed my mouth and gave him a dirty look and with all the kindness I had in my heart which is not a lot, I asked if he was ok. He looked at me as surprised as I had just looked at him, he then closed his eyes and nodded, he nodded that was it that is all he was going to give me. “Oh, hell no,” I said to him. “I was going to be nice and give you chance to explain yourself but you didn’t take the chance to be truthful so now I am going to force it out of you, you are going to tell me why your kid sister was banging on your door at six in the morning, why you were sleeping on my doorstep when your apartment was next door why you always seem to be afraid when I mention banging noises next door if you don't do it daily,” I say to him all in one breath. He looked at me with that same look of shock I had seen less than five minutes ago and then he finally spoke, not a laugh or a look he spoke. He told me to sit, and Calvin told ME to sit," what a gentleman," I said to him. Trying to keep a light mood. I had a feeling it would stay light for very long. It was when I sat down that I realized that Calvin’s sister had just been sitting watching us this whole time, she seemed enthralled, and after I sat down, she then turned to Calvin and said: “are you going to tell him”. wow, little girl way to make me nervous. I then looked at Calvin and he just nodded, he then began, “Eric, I’m in a gang, I looked at him amazed. But when I fully looked into his eyes, I realized that he was holding in a laugh, he was making a joke. I was very thankful that the neighbor that I had is not some annoying gangster that I have been passing off for two years, but I was still a little mad that said non-gangster was making jokes in this serious situation. His sister seemed to find his joke hilarious as well. I looked at him blankly ”Calvin be serious, is something going on”. he looked at me full of emotion and like he was finally ready, to tell the truth. He started again but not before reassuring me that it was the truth this time. ”I have bad days” I looked at him confused” what does that mean I said. “He looked at me taking a breath he said I have bad days sometimes I just get so angry I hurt myself or I hurt others I also tend to stop eating during especially bad days” I stare at him and then I think about all the banging and the loss of weight. He looks at me as if he can tell that I have realized something. “I had kind of stopped talking to anyone other than you the past few weeks, of course, you didn’t notice” he whispered under his breath. However, he was right I didn’t notice he never did leave his apartment with the loud slam that he usually did I only saw him during the small fights that we had. I realized he was still talking. “That day that we had the bigger fight you know you called me old man” a laugh at him yes I remember “that was the day that my constant weeks of bad days started I had a rampage in my apartment and accidentally,” said with air quotes. “Began banging on the wall” I looked at him with an unbelieving look there was no way it was an accident; I say to him with humor in my voice. He laughed a bit and agreed, for probably the first time in two years we agreed on something. It was then I realized he was done talking I met his eyes and realized he had been crying. Calvin had been crying. I look to his sister, and she gestures for me to hug him I look at her as a ghost because that is what I will become if I hug Calvin. But alas he looks like he needs it. So, I dive in for the hug. A long hug that seems to last almost five minutes but probably was close to seconds. We looked each other in the eyes after the hug and I apologized, I had a feeling that most of the noise and annoyingness wasn’t him trying to actually be annoying and was just him having a hard time. Now it was Calvin’s turn to look like he saw a ghost. Breaking the silence was Chanel letting out the most monstrous yawn. It was when we finally broke into laughter that everything felt ok after this whole ordeal. It was also when we realized that it was nearing eight in the morning and none of us had gotten much sleep. It was then that we settled down in the living room all three of us and fell as asleep as frenemies. and maybe just one fight away from friends and maybe even roommates. It was right before I fell asleep, that I realized that I never was told why he was at my apartment instead of his own.