Subtly Does It

Waking up in the middle of the night to make the third trip to the restroom is not really worth a mention even. But waking up ravenous is still new to me, so of course I will have to tell you about it.

My apartment neighbors don’t know I’m pregnant. I’m showing alright but an early winter in the NE area means baggy sweats and turtlenecks can do the great cover-up job they do. In the building next to ours stay a musician couple. Boston being what it is, their windows are extremely close to ours. They possess and play every imaginable music instrument and it’s quite a treat to wake on a Saturday morning and hear music wafting in. Sometimes it’s Vivaldi on the violen, sometimes it’s the trumpet and sometimes it's Beethoven on the piano. It’s like having your own broken juke box which will play what it likes. Lovely ain’t it? In a world of predictability (no Shuffle doesn’t count. You loaded those songs in yourself didn’t you?) these delights are akin to taking a detour and finding out it’s faster than your usual route.

So last night at 3:30 AM I woke up with these pangs of hunger. Pangs like I’ve never felt before. I needed food. Now. I shook the hubby (Poor man, let him sleep! Poor man! I can hear you all-you-MrG-supporters! Who is carrying a baby here? Who?) and told him. He said something about plantain chips and yogurt smoothies that didn’t sound quite right. Wide awake now, I let him be and padded to the kitchen. Cereal with strawberries soaked in the milk sounded right. And maybe a cheesemelt? I proceeded to fix myself a proper meal. I changed my mind about sitting by the computer and eating and proceeded to set up my meal on the dining table. I even took a napkin and a glass of water. The smell of the melting cheese turned me off a bit and after a couple of bites I leaned over and lit one of the mint-y aromatherapy candles we keep at the center of the table.

As I chewed I stared out of the window that overlooks the musician’s apartment. A light came on in their music room. I saw the man scramble through towards the restroom I think. He came back in a minute and peered at the clock. He was just about to switch off the light and leave the room and my line of sight when he turned towards my window, I guess noticing a light.

Now let me pause here and tell you about the relationship we share with these neighbors. As they don’t live in our building we haven’t ever had those elevator or mailbox run-ins. So we’ve never said “Hi”. But we know their lives in and out almost. And they know ours. Any eye-contact we have shared across the windows has been very brief with one of us quickly turning away to avoid any awkwardness. After all they are in their home, their own private haven and we in ours. I bet he knows Mr.G and I prefer shorts to pyjamas and we know his wife snaps and pretends to pull his track-bots down when he corrects her on the piano. Which he does, all the time. Very annoyingly. Then the same line is repeated again and again. Did I already call it a broken juke box? O well. But these things make a formal introduction seem very out-of-place.

So he turned around and saw me sitting at the table. Our eyes met. I could see he thought this very creepy. The Indian girl is sitting all by herself at the dining table with a meal layed out (candle et al) and eating, at 3:30 AM. Instead of turning away as I usually do, I held his gaze as I chewed slowly. I don’t know why I did that. Maybe because I wanted to see his reaction, or maybe because we are moving anyway or maybe because it was Halloween night. He stood there somewhat spooked. Then I smiled, slowly. If it had happened at 9 PM, he would have smiled back and maybe even waved. But I think he found this unsettling as he quickly left the room. He forgot to switch off the light, so I knew he would be back. Surprisingly, it was the wife who came into the room and she tried to peek at me without being too obvious but I kept very still and watched. She hurriedly switched off the light after giving me one last look.

I finished my meal, blew out the candle and crept back into bed. “Are you OK?” he mumbled. “Yes, but our neighbors aren’t” I said. He knows better than to ask me why at that hour. He just rubbed my belly as if it was his. As we drifted off I thought of how “The Shining” was so much scarier than “Evil Dead”....Blood and gore are okay but a disturbed human mind is what can really rattle.