A change of gravity

"Yeah, well, that's what I thought," Merrion said, "TV going and so forth. But then when I knocked again, and she still didn't come, I wasn't sure. Does she leave the TV on, if she happens to go out?

Because she told me she goes to the store in the morning to get cigarettes."

Brody nodded vigorously as Merrion talked. "Uh huh," he said, 'every day. Faithful as clockwork, you can depend on it. Winter; summer; hot or cold; raining; snowing; I don't care: by ten A.M. she's down the stairs and out the door, on her way down to Dineen's. Raining or something? Doesn't make any difference to her. She's got her little plastic hat on, one of those folding plastic hats they used to give out in banks and dry cleaners always wears one of those. Inna wintertime, her boots and coat and scarf on, so forth, all bundled up, keep her all nice and warm. Like the mailmen, you know? Whatever it takes. Janet's going out, and that's just all there is to it. She's got her routine she follows, regular rounds every day."

"But not this early," Merrion said, 'she doesn't go this early."

"Nope," Brody said firmly. This'd still be too early for her. Janet by now'd be just about up. Sittin' in her bathrobe in front ah the TV there. Drinkin' her coffee; tellin' everybody off, says something that she doesn't like on the television: "Yah that's what you say, always givin' us your stuff. Liar, liar, pants on fire. Bullshit." Talks back to it all the time. Oh, she gets all upset at them. I've been up there, working on the third floor, and I've heard her inside sayin' all that stuff. Very emotional.

"Assuming of course she got to bed last night; made it in the bedroom and then actually got into bed. Didn't go to sleep there in her chair, front of the TV; wake up still in front of it, still on, same place inna morning."

"She does that," Merrion said.

"Now and then, she does," Brody said. "She used to, at least.

Sometimes I guess she must've been sleeping so heavy she went to the bathroom in her chair, couldn't even get herself up to go in the bathroom and do that. "Cause there's stains on it. You can see them if you're in there, and she isn't sittin' in it.

"See, the reason I know this stuff is because the people under her and the ones next to her, the next apartment, they complained to me sometimes about the TV bein' too loud and goin' all night. That would mean I would have to go in there and speak to her, and find out what was goin' on. Didn't happen all that much, maybe four, five times, but it did happen. Go up there and knock on her door, and… this wasn't something I look forward to, you know? It's not like I enjoy it. But she didn't wanna believe that. She thought this was all my idea, to hassle her and make her feel bad, and it wasn't that at all. I tried to explain that to her, make sure she understood that it was nothing personal, involved.

"See, what I was assuming was that she was probably drinking, passed out in the chair with the television on. There was a lot of bottles I would see that she'd been putting out when she put her rubbish out, you know? That was mostly what her rubbish was -bottles. Newspapers, one or two magazines, cartons from frozen food dinners, which I guess she mostly lives on. Cereal boxes and that kind of stuff. But most of what she was throwing out that you would see when they emptied the barrels was liquor bottles, vodka and rum sometimes she didn't put the cover back on, and I would see what she put in. But you still would've known; you could hear them empty her barrel because the bottles made a lot of noise, bangin' and crashin' all over the place.

"But I was used to it. It wasn't like this was something new, you know? We've had other tenants here who've had that problem, and it's really not that uncommon. People living alone: they don't have much to do with themselves. Get lonely, start drinking too much. It isn't a good thing for them, but they don't stop; I guess they get accustomed to it.

"Where someone like Janet's concerned, well, Mark was a lot like that.

All you can really do when someone's doing that to themselves is say:

"Look," and then tell them what you think. And then I don't really know what you do I guess you just hope for the best. And so I told her quite frankly I don't mind telling this to you, either, because it kind of worries me, living in the same building with her too, my life's also on the line. She goes up in smoke some night, I could go up with her.

So that was also on my mind.