It was a difficult way to start the day–I rolled out of the couch in my basement office. Calvin slept in the living room and got up to make coffee. We all exercised that morning, Daisy and Calvin jogging, Wyatt and I walking. When we came back to the house, the music was still pounding away in our bedroom.

We all fled into our separate corners of the house. Calvin was on the phone with CNN talking about an upcoming show. The kids were doing their schoolwork, and Daisy reported that the music had been turned off. Around noon we gathered in the kitchen to get lunch going. I was pawing through my horribly disorganized purse looking for something when I heard Wyatt say, “The cops are here!”

Calvin and I were thrilled. Someone has called the cops on Maggie and now we can be part of a team—us vs her. Except the cops come into our yard and head for our door. I open the door quickly, startling them, and Calvin yells at me to put on a mask.

“Hold on one minute! I’ll get a mask!” I tell them. Once masked, I come out on the stoop.

“Are you Wendy Ditmarston?” The police officer has Li on his name tag.

“I am! Why are you here?”

“You called and said there was a fight in your house.”

“No, I didn’t call.”

Then we reviewed my name and address a few more times, until he was satisfied I was me and there was no fight inside. I told him about Maggie, that she’d been torturing us with music all night. Officer Li said okay, this happens, and left.

Five minutes later a firetruck pulled up outside the house. Now I was prepared, and I put on my mask. Calvin was still on a Zoom call so I went outside alone.

“It’s a false call,” I told the fireman who seemed to be in charge. “Our neighbor is harassing us and you are the harassment. I’m so sorry.”

He yelled a code to his colleagues and turned to leave as an ambulance pulled up. “False alarm,” I yelled helpfully.

Then the police SUV pulled up and Officer Li got out. He made me recite my phone number a few times, and then backed away. “We got three more calls from you,” he said. “What does she look like, this neighbor?” he asked.

“She looks like me,” I said. I would not normally make that comparison because I hate Maggie with everything in my soul, but it was true. We both wear glasses, have wavy brown hair that is going grey, and we are about the same height.

Officer Li and his pals headed down the street to circle back up the alley—it only has one entrance because it dead ends three quarters up the block. Ten minutes later we watch Maggie, hands cuffed behind her back, led to the cruiser by Officer Li.

More neighbors were out by then and we were comparing notes. I asked the young woman next door to ask the cops which hospital she was being taken to. Even though I hadn’t called the police on her (why? why had I not?), I was afraid of her and I didn’t want her to see me talking to the cops.

That was when I realized how afraid I was. I had already asked the cops not to tell her we slept in the basement, like they would tell her and she would do the upstairs music again but add basement and first floor speakers. It didn’t feel like a big imaginative leap that Maggie would get the cops on her side, and we would be unable to ever sleep in our house again.

And just like that, the ambulance pulled out, the cops left, and everything was quiet.

That day I dyed my roots. At least I wouldn’t match Maggie in the greying hair category anymore, and that night we had a peaceful sleep.

ROUND 1 CONCLUDES