I am not happy about this at all. Everything was quiet for at least two weeks. We went away and she only called the police once on us, about a child in a wheelchair. The workers did not speak such great English but that is what our contractor told us.

Yes, we had words about the broken window, which we know she broke but she blamed on the hurricane. She played 1010 WINS into our room but the AC drowned it out. I told the contractor not to sound-proof our bedroom. I knew it was a foolhardy. But the basement was trashed, I had no laundry machines, the cat’s litterbox was in the living room. I just could not stomach more contractor crap, more dust, and where was I going to sleep.

So I settled for the peace we were in and didn’t insist on the soundproofing. I’m going to venture to claim that it probably would not have happened while we were gone because the basement took 2 weeks, not 1, and one of the workers left halfway through because he was sick. I’m letting that fact just sit there.

But last night the bedroom peace fractured. Maggie got someone to come over and fix her internet, so now the Sonos Soundbar is back in action, playing loud Turkish radio played into our room.

Maybe it was worse because Calvin was/is not here. He’s upstate shooting at a farm in a socially-distant television shoot, the first in-person shoot their company has done since The Covid. My only hiding place is my illegal basement, where I have a very narrow IKEA couch. But yesterday it was covered in dust and crap and pillows and books and bikes, because the rest of the basement was having major surgery.

Maggie started her music at 11:00 PM and by 12:30 AM, I was despondent. I am a terrible, wretched sleeper and the music into my bedroom wall gets at the heart of everything that is wrong with me. In college (first year, which clearly was a big one), I stayed awake for four days straight for midterm week. My face broke out in oozing pimples and I think I might have lost my mind. My dad found me a therapist, and there I learned that if I didn’t say the things I was thinking during the day, I couldn’t sleep at night.

That learning has served me well enough—I’m alive. But once you threaten my sleep, oh, I crumple, I break just like a little girl. I don’t like that lyric, by the way. I don’t break like a little girl. I break like a dry stick.

So Maggie has got me by the short hairs. I did take a lot of Ambien and sleep until 6:30, and then I got the stuff done that I absolutely had to. Our cleaning lady, Tonia, came and told me she got a good, full-time job and she was leaving. The Wednesday after next is her last day. This makes me so sad. I really like her but I am happy she has a good job. I’ll miss talking to her.

Then I went to work on my basement hiding place. I cleaned and moved stuff and dusted and even used a Phillips head screwdriver to loosen the plate of the AC so I could clean the dusty filter, so clogged it looked like a shaggy, unshorn sheep. I stacked a lot of dusty books and so many DVDs for movies we should have seen. Calvin is in hundreds of film organizations and they all send screener DVDs and we just keep them.

And then Tonia swooped in and vacuumed and mopped and made things symmetrical and there I had my place to sleep when 1010 WINS blasts into my bedroom.

Here’s a secret: I use Maggie’s Dancing Mirror as my secret reading light. I even charge it. Then she can’t see if I’m down there or not.

I’m scared of her.

We had a really nice dinner. The kids and I did drinks on the deck and we called Calvin. He was sitting in front of his motel door, and he showed us the view down the row, and all of his people were there. They had a big day puppeting the crap out in that farm.

We went inside and watched the John Oliver show and laughed and learned a startling amount. Then Wyatt and I took the recycling down to the alley.

Maggie was out there. We could smell her cigarettes and hear her nondescript classic rock and burbling of her hot tub.

Then Wyatt hopped and then crouched down. We saw the shadow at the same time, Maggie’s head streaming huge on the wall. I spotted the up-and-cross-alley neighbor, Timmy, taking his garbage out and I hissed, “Timmy, hey Timmy!”

Wyatt shushed me. He knew I wanted to ask Timmy about his next door neighbor, skeeby-guy. I think Skeebe and Maggie are making the beast with two backs.

I have never seen the front of Skeebe. I know him only as a man who wears dress socks, leather shoes, shorts and a wife-beater and has overdeveloped shoulders. I do not like that inverted triangle shape men get when they lift weights too much. It’s not a good look.

Calvin and I think Skeebe and Maggie are a thing. Timmy would know. He lives next door to Skeeve and I have seen him knock on Timmy’s door over and over again until Timmy’s wife comes out. She seems not happy to see him.

Timmy didn’t hear my hiss and Wyatt told me not to do it again. Then we crouched behind our brick wall on the alley side and stared at Maggie’s giant shadow head.

“It’s like the minister movie.”

Yes, I knew what he meant but couldn’t remember the reference. “Love and Hate?” I asked.

“Yes!”

“Doctor Hate!”

“No!” Last night we had finished Dr Sleep, the sequel to The Shining, and we had all agreed it was the best Stephen King movie ever, maybe better than The Shining. And it’s always good to see Colorado even if it was filmed not anywhere near Colorado.

“Night of the Hunter!” I got it. The minister hunting the kids. The boat. The doll. The shadows. That was Maggie. She hunted us.

Wyatt carefully scrambled back to the door. I skillfully crab walk–somewhere between a spider and an armadillos, all the way back inside.

The night is just getting started. Wish us luck.