The man across the hall

When I open my door, he shuts his, and he opens it again when mine shuts. It’s like we have a rope tied to the handles across the corridor. He creeps out when he thinks I’m not looking – but I am; I’m peeking through the spyhole I use to check who’s at the door: politicians peddling policies, Jehovah’s Witnesses peddling salvation. I invite some of them in, the ones I think might be entertaining, and we have long chats. Not the neighbours though, and certainly not the man across the hall.

One day there was smoke coming from his letterbox and obviously, in the interests of self-preservation, I had to phone the fire brigade. When they arrived, I watched them through that little fish-eye, bobbing up and down looking through the flap and calling to him. Then they started creasing up and choking on snorts – the kind that go up your nose and make you sound like a dork. Seems he was running around in the altogether, shouting at them about milk pans and how they should bugger off and leave him alone. He has a tiny little backside, apparently, and an even tinier little frontside. I took in a delivery for him once, a pair of size ten stilettos, so it seems his feet aren’t on the same puny scale and neither is his idea of suitable attire for a bald bloke in his fifties.

He comes home drunk most evenings from wherever it is he goes every day – and wherever that is, it doesn’t seem to require those shoes, unless they’re in the carrier bags he always has with him. Usually he’s wearing dull brown lace-ups but he might as well be teetering along on six inch heels for all his balance is under control. I hear him ricocheting along the corridor, muttering and scuffling as he goes until he gets to my door where he leans, steadies himself, and then launches across the hall with his key held out in front of him like a lance. It takes him another several minutes to get it slotted in and fiddled with, and then he shuffles through, turns, and sneaks a last look down the corridor as he winds his neck indoors like a turtle on the retreat. He doesn’t see me of course but I’ve often thought what a hoot it would be to open my own door while he’s leaning on it. That would be too funny for words, watching him fall backwards into my flat. But he’d see the inside then wouldn’t he, and he’d have to stay.

Suzanne Conboy-Hill 2014. May or may not be a true story.