The Complex (4 page)

Both the pounding and the screams get louder. Hands trembling, Stephanie lets the shades fall shut and unlocks her phone. She dials 911 and brings the phone to her ear, realizing as she does so that she is hyperventilating. She struggles to get her breathing under control as the emergency dispatcher answers.

“York County Nine One One. What’s your emergency?”

“I…there’s…” Stephanie’s voice trembles. “There’s a naked man with a knife trying to break into my neighbor’s apartment. I think he may have…killed someone. Or at least hurt them.”

“Can you confirm the address, ma’am?”

Stephanie is so scared that she doesn’t even feel the momentary sense of happiness she usually gets whenever somebody calls her ‘Ma’am.’ She does notice, however, that there seem to be a number of phones ringing in the background, and assumes it must be a busy evening at the call center.

“It’s the Pine Village Apartment Complex in Red Lion. Apartment 2-D. And I’m in apartment 3-D. Please, hurry.”

“I’m alerting police now, ma’am. There’s a lot of activity tonight.”

“What do you mean? What kind of activity?”

Instead of answering, the dispatcher asks, “Can you stay on the line with me so I can get some more information?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you. Can you…”

The dispatcher pauses. At first, Stephanie thinks the call must have been disconnected, but that can’t be right, because she can still hear the phones ringing in the background. Then the woman comes back online.

“I’m sorry about that, Ma’am. We’ve been getting an unusual amount of calls in the last ten or fifteen minutes, and now, apparently there’s a disturbance in our lobby. I was distracted for a moment.”

“That’s okay,” Stephanie says.

Next door, the pounding has ceased. It is followed by the sound of glass breaking. The screams grow frantic now.

“Hurry,” she says. “I think he just broke a window.”

The dispatcher doesn’t answer.

“Are you there? Hello?”

Stephanie hears more glass breaking, but this time, she realizes, it’s on the other end of the phone.

The dispatcher shouts, “Hey, what are you—”

Something booms on the other end of the line. Stephanie thinks it might be a gunshot. The dispatcher yells. The boom is followed by three more. Then the call ends.

“Oh my God…”

She stares at the phone, blinking. When she tries calling back, she gets a message telling her that her call cannot be completed as dialed.

“How can it not be completed as dialed? I’m calling 911!”

She listens for the sound of approaching police sirens, but all she hears are more screams from next door, now at a fevered pitch. After a moment’s debate, Stephanie puts the phone down on the counter and grabs a butcher knife instead. Terrified, she opens the front door, just enough to stick her head outside. Then she gasps. Her eyes widen.

More naked people are trudging out of the woods and into the parking lot. Some of them are carrying knives. One of them has a bloodstained axe. Another is armed with a weed whacker. A few carry nothing but are equipped with crazed, slavering grins. And then the fat man, who is apparently too large to squeeze through the broken window next door, turns toward her. Shards of broken glass crunch under his bare feet. He doesn’t seem to notice.

Stephanie is frozen in place. She forgets about the butcher knife in her hand. She doesn’t think to close the door and lock it. She simply stares, paralyzed with fear, watching his head twitch back and forth, back and forth, as he raises the machete and trudges toward her, leaving bloody footprints on the sidewalk.

Four - Mrs. Carlucci: Apartment 4-D

Mrs. Edna Carlucci has no patience for nonsense. Fighting neighbors, screaming children, loud music, or teenagers squealing their tires in the parking lot—these things constitute nonsense, and nonsense is not to be tolerated. Mrs. Carlucci believes you should be respectful of your neighbors at all times. Don’t get involved with their business. Don’t be a snoop or a gossip. Be friendly. Say hello. Stay on good terms. Don’t be disruptive or a nuisance. Don’t drive like a maniac through the parking lot. Carry your trash to the dumpsters between buildings A and B, rather than letting it sit outside your door. Clean up your dog poop. Keep the volume on your television and radio at a responsible level. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Don’t engage in nonsense.

So, when she hears the screams and the car alarm, her first reaction isn’t panic or fear. Instead, she is angry. While some of the other buildings in the complex have rowdy tenants, the D-building has always been relatively quiet and peaceful. She doesn’t really know any of her neighbors that well—not like the old days, when she was a young girl, and everybody on the street knew everybody else. Those days are gone. These days, a person is lucky if they get a nod of acknowledgement when passing by a neighbor outside. Neighbors aren’t really neighbors anymore. They’re strangers, for the most part.

She knows the young girl next door. Stephanie is her name. Mrs. Carlucci isn’t sure, but she thinks Stephanie might be one of those Trans people she’s seen on the TV. And if so, that’s okay. As long as she’s not hurting anybody else, she can be whatever she wants to be. Still, Mrs. Carlucci sometimes gets nervous around Stephanie, because she’s unsure how to refer to Stephanie, or whether or not she should inquire about the process. She would like to. She would very much like to understand it more. But she’s not sure if asking Stephanie about it would be polite.

She also knows the man three apartments down. His name is Sam. Mrs. Carlucci isn’t sure what he does for a living, but he never seems to go to work. Maybe he works from home, or perhaps he has an inheritance—although, if he’s living here at the Pine Village complex, it must not be much of one. Sam always inquires about her cats, which is nice. He recently had his dog put to sleep, and was quite upset. Poor man. Mrs. Carlucci made sure to buy him a sympathy card. She knows how devastated she would feel if something happened to one of her four cats—Princess, Queenie, King, and Hannibal. King came to her as a stray, a black-and-white Maine Coon kitten who showed up beneath her car one summer morning. Princess and Queenie are shelter adoptees, she took in as kittens. Hannibal is also a shelter adoptee, although he came to her as an adult. His previous owners—a young couple and their daughter—all died in a house fire. Mrs. Carlucci has done her best to make him feel at home, and he seems to tolerate both her and the other cats, but sometimes, late at night, he sits on the sill of the living room window and stares out into the dark, and she is certain he misses his other owners.

Mrs. Carlucci worries a lot about her cats. She fears what will happen to them when she is gone, and at her age, that’s more of an inevitability than a possibility. Her doctor says she is in good health, and jokes that she will outlive him, but her doctor is prone to nonsense, and Mrs. Carlucci doesn’t like him very much. She preferred her old physician, Dr. Hammond, but he passed away five years ago. Most of her friends have also passed. These days, it’s just her and her cats. One day soon, it will just be the cats. What will become of them? Will one of the neighbors take them in?

In the apartments below her, accessible from the other side of the building, there is a nice young married couple that always smile and nod, but she doesn’t know their names. And, of course, there’s Mr. Hicks, a widower or a bachelor. She can’t be sure which. He is friendly with her, but she knows what he has in mind, and she is not interested. And it’s not because he’s black, or ugly. Indeed, he’s quite handsome for a man his age. But Grady Hicks could be Robert Redford or Sidney Poitier and she still wouldn’t be interested. She hasn’t been interested in anyone since Mr. Carlucci, God rest his soul, went to be with the Lord ten years ago next May.

Mrs. Carlucci begins and ends every day down on her knees at the foot of the bed, hands clasped in fervent prayer to God and the Holy Mother, hoping that she will be reunited with Mr. Carlucci soon.

And that when she is, someone will watch over her cats.

She doesn’t know which neighbor is making all this noise, but it sounds like somebody is being murdered. King, who has been perched at the kitchen window, leaps down and darts for the bedroom, his fur standing straight up. Queenie and Princess follow his lead, perhaps sensing his alarm. Hannibal remains sprawled out on the sofa in the living room, but his ears are up and his eyes are alert.

Frowning, Mrs. Carlucci goes to the kitchen window and peeks outside. Her eyes widen in stunned disbelief. There are naked people running across the parking lot towards Stephanie’s apartment.
Naked people!
This is the biggest instance of nonsense Mrs. Carlucci has ever experienced, in all her years living at Pine Village. They seem quite agitated about something. Then she realizes that not only are they nude, but many of them seem to be carrying weapons. As she watches, one of them pauses in the middle of the parking lot and pulls the starter cord on a gas-powered weed whacker. The engine chortles, then sputters. Lips curled back in a snarl, the naked man tries again. This time, the weed whacker roars to life, belching tiny puffs of blue-gray smoke from its exhaust. Its wielder joins the throng of other naked people, all of whom seem to be heading for Stephanie’s front door.

Reeling, Mrs. Carlucci backs away from the window. Her hands are tingling and her lips feel numb. There is a heaviness in her chest, and she wonders if she is having a heart attack. Her first thought is to turn to the four food dishes and large water bowl on the floor next to the refrigerator, and make sure that there is enough food and water for the cats. Who knows how long it will take someone to find her? She doesn’t want Princess, Queenie, King, and Hannibal to starve in the meantime.

She hears Stephanie scream next door, but the sound is curiously muted. So, too, are the noises the crowd is making outside. After a moment, Mrs. Carlucci realizes this is because her ears are ringing. Her skin feels flush, and the tingling in her hands increases, running up her arms and into her shoulders. Her hand flutters to her chest. She feels her pulse, thrumming beneath her skin. Has it ever felt so strong or so rapid? Mrs. Carlucci doesn’t think so.

Something soft brushes against her leg, just below the hem of her dress, and Mrs. Carlucci squawks with fright. She reaches for the wall to keep from falling. Glancing down, she sees Hannibal. The cat looks alert and angry. His muscles are taut beneath his fur. He glances up at her, and the ringing in her ears subsides.

“Hannibal,” she gasps, “you fool cat! You nearly tripped me.”

Mrs. Carlucci leans against the wall, catching her breath. Slowly, the tingling in her arms and face begins to subside. Not a heart attack, she decides. More likely just panic. With caution, she reaches down and scratches the cat on top of his head, right between his ears. This usually elicits a deep purr from Hannibal, but now, he barely seems to notice. His attention is focused on the wall—on the other side of which is Stephanie’s apartment.

Moving slowly, because her legs feel weak and she doesn’t trust them, Mrs. Carlucci shuffles toward the phone mounted on the wall between the kitchen and the living room. She doesn’t own a cell phone, and has never even used one. She’s familiar with them from television, and seeing other people with them. Indeed, it seems like everybody these days owns a cell phone. She sees people with them at the grocery store every week, and at the park where she stops once a week to feed the ducks, and everywhere else. Most heartbreaking—or perhaps annoying—are the parents with cell phones, their attention focused on the tiny screens instead of their own children. More nonsense.

Mrs. Carlucci fumbles with the receiver and manages to lift it from the cradle. She brings the phone to her ear and hears a dial tone. Silently thanking God and the Holy Mother, she dials 911. There is a pause, and then she gets a recorded message informing her that the call cannot be completed as dialed. She feels her panic start to return, and glances down at Hannibal in an effort to stay focused. It works, and she feels a sense of resolve. She tries calling again, but now there is no dial tone at all. Instead, she hears a blaring fast busy signal. Apparently, the lines are down. Either that, or they are overloaded. Mrs. Carlucci considers this. If there are naked people with weapons running around all over Red Lion, then it stands to reason that the phone lines are overloaded. Still, the experience is disconcerting, and only adds to her fright. She has only experienced an outage once since living in Pine Village—during a very long week in January 2014, when the Polar Vortex turned all of Central Pennsylvania into a disaster area, and eight feet of snow and ice, downed trees, and below zero temperatures led to a temporary loss of not just phone service, but electricity and other utilities, as well.

She hangs up the phone as the naked people begin battering Stephanie’s door. Glass shatters, and she assumes its either Stephanie’s living room or kitchen window. Her breath catches in her throat as she wonders if they’ll come to her window next. It occurs to her that Stephanie is no longer screaming. Indeed, she’s not making any noise at all. The only sounds now are those of the crowd outside, and the weed whacker. The naked people don’t speak. They simply growl and shout.

Mrs. Carlucci hurries out of the kitchen, moving as quietly as she can. Hannibal follows her, but he doesn’t entwine himself between her feet. She retreats to her bedroom. Usually, the bedroom smells of cranberry and rose petal potpourri. Now, however, the only thing she can smell is the bitter, ammoniac stench of the two litter boxes in the spare bedroom. With some effort, she kneels on the floor, ignoring the sudden pain that flares up in her knees and lower back, and peers beneath her bed. Queenie, Princess, and King are hiding beneath it, pressed back against the wall. Only their eyes and a tuft of Princess’s white fur are visible in the darkness.