Neighborly Love

by Christine L'Amour

  “Order out,” Meghan muttered without veering her attention away from what she was doing. Those emails wouldn’t send themselves and neither would anyone else send them, and she needed to get this done now so these people wouldn’t have any excuse not to answer soon, and then she could get things done.

  “We’re not ordering out for breakfast! If we do that, we’ll end up ordering out for lunch and dinner too, and I’m not made of money, Megs.”

  “I’ll pay for you.”

  Carlos’ voice gentled. “You’re not made of money either.”

  Meghan finally looked up at him, lips thinning. Once, ordering something for breakfast instead of cooking wouldn’t even register in her mind, but her friend was right. She shouldn’t be spending money on frivolous things anymore, at least until things settled again.

  Her parties didn’t count. Her guests brought most of the stuff, anyway, and if she stopped with them, she would do nothing with her life except work, which was just a recipe for disaster.

  She remembered vaguely the new neighbor that had come to complain yesterday and smiled to herself. It was always funny when someone new arrived and complained about the parties, but there was really nothing they could do—Meghan had had it all cleared with the building’s administration. There was nothing charisma and money couldn’t do.

  “Right,” she said, then smiled an innocent smile. “Then our breakfast is going to be expired milk and old lettuce.”

  Carlos groaned. He shuffled his way to the living room and threw himself down beside her.

  “We shall go hungry,” he decided instead. “Who are you emailing? Has Maria replied yet?”

  Meghan groaned, throwing her arms up to hide her face. “No! She has not. I think you’re right, I should hire a new accountant. Her numbers are perfect, and I don’t trust anyone else to do her job, but Maria never fucking answers me on time.”

  Carlos chewed on a nail and peered at her computer screen.

  “And without her report…” he started.

  “It’s not the end of the world,” Meghan said with a sigh. “I just need to know last month’s numbers precisely, so I can add it to the table and know if we’ve improved at all. I had the impression that we sold a few more books than before, but without the numbers…”

  “The digital age really hasn’t been too kind on publishing houses, has it?”

  Meghan shook her head, carding her fingers through her long red hair. The auburn locks were tangled and messy, and probably had had alcohol spilled on them last night. Not for the first time, she thought about cutting it all off.

  “We’re stronger than the others,” she said firmly. “We’re not going to close. We’ll power through this. I just need Maria to answer me!”

  “Yeah!” Carlos said, pumping a hand up in excitement. “You’ll see, when my next book drops, people will buy it in droves, and you’ll go back to being dirty rich!”

  She grinned along with him, touching her knuckles to his. “Yeah!”

  ***

  The next week, Maria had sent her the numbers and shown her things hadn’t improved, but hadn’t gotten much worse either, Meghan still hadn’t bumped into her new neighbor, and Carlos had fallen ill with a cold, which wasn’t surprising considering the weather, but still left Meghan feeling lonely. The party was less lively but just loud enough to make Meghan loosen up a bit.

  She stood on the dance floor that was the middle of her living room and danced with whoever was available, firmly not thinking about the many articles Carlos had sent her about the dangers of blurring the lines between work and home and fun. She had blurred them long ago, anyway, what with how she had turned her bed into her office and her office into her video game room.

  Her hair was bound up and she swung her hips to the music, feeling hands on her elbows and her shoulders; people wanting to dance with her. She wasn’t really dancing with anyone. Although everyone here was her friend, there was no one who was too close to her.

  There was Carlos, of course, but he wasn’t here, and if he was, he wouldn’t dance with her anyway.

  It was almost a relief when her phone started to buzz in her pocket. She extricated herself from the dancing, rubbed at the back of her neck, stole a cup filled with cheap alcohol from her own coffee table, and made her way to the veranda. She thought about smoking and then didn’t, and when she looked at her phone, she saw it was her father calling.

  She groaned, then got that cigarette after all. Her father only ever called her for reasons that made her doctor tut about her blood pressure.

  “Hello,” she said loudly, so as to be heard over the noise of the party.

  “Meghan,” came her father’s low, disappointed voice. She almost couldn’t hear it, and she thought that if she could hear it perfectly, she would probably have caught the scandalized edge to it. “Where are you right now?”

  “Home,” she said. “Is something wrong, Dad? You almost never call.”

  “You’re obviously not home,” he said, angry now.

  “I’m throwing a party at home,” she said with a roll of her eyes, leaning against the rails of her veranda. She didn’t have a view of the city, but of the apartment complex itself; she could see a few children playing in the park downstairs. “Like I do almost every week. Speaking of—why are you calling me on a Friday night? Did anything happen? You’re stressing me out by not telling me.”

  “Meghan, what do you think I’m calling you for?” he asked her, obviously annoyed. She took a drag of her cigarette and felt bitterly happy about the fact that he would hate it if he knew she was smoking. “I was sitting here looking over my finances and it just reminded me that—”

  Meghan took her phone from her ear just so her father wouldn’t hear her groan. There it was: her blood pressure rising. She had thrown this party to forget about the stresses of her day-to-day life; her father just had to call her and remind her of what she wanted most to forget.

  “—my daughter, so you know I won’t charge interest or anything, but a long time has passed, and you stopped updating me regarding the situation, Meghan, and I have to decide what to do.”

  “Dad,” Meghan said, controlling her voice so it wouldn’t come out as irritated and tired and stressed as she was feeling, “I’ve told you before it’s not a good time right now, but we’re pushing through, and I’ll have your money later! Why the rush? You told me when you gave it to me that I shouldn’t worry, that you were there for me, and that things would work out. Well, they’re working out, so you don’t worry!”

  “Any interest I don’t charge you is interest I could be gaining if I had this money invested somewhere,” her father said sensibly, and Meghan hunched her shoulders, took a drag of her cigarette, and prayed fervently that her father wouldn’t start charging her even more than she already owed him. “I’m not saying I’ll charge you more,” he said, and Meghan breathed out in relief. “But we need to settle this—”

  “Dad, it’s almost midnight on a Friday night,” she said, trying to sound sensible. “I’m in the middle of a party and you’re probably exhausted after the long week. Why don’t we talk later?”

  “Meghan—”

  “Nothing will come out of this conversation if we have it now,” she told him, and it was the truth; the music was loud and she was having to strain to hear his words, and the alcohol content in her bloodstream was making her too short-tempered to weather her father’s many pokes and jabs. “Let’s leave it for later.”

  “Tomorrow?” he said.

  “Yeah, sure,” she said quickly, “maybe. Bye, Dad!”

  “Meghan,” her father tried, exasperated, but didn’t say anything else.

  She hung up on him and sighed, bending her body over the railing. If Carlos were here, he’d complain about the danger, but he wasn’t, so she let herself smoke and let the ashes fall to the ground floor.

  She waited for her new neighbor to complain about the noise again, but no one pounded on the door or shouted; nothing cam
e.

  ***

  Meghan woke up precisely at seven in the morning to the loud sound of gospel music blasting itself directly into her ear canals. It felt like God himself was trying to punish her into stabbing her own ears out, and Meghan immediately regretted all the drinks she had had the day before. The music increased her headache a hundredfold, and she stumbled out of bed blind and in pain, clutching at her head. She staggered to her living room as if something there would help her understand what the fuck was going on.

  There were two or three people still lingering around her place; she spotted someone passed out on the couch and another person on the veranda. An angel must have visited her in the morning, because there was coffee in her kitchen. Meghan made her way there, her eyes closed as if that would help her block out the stupid gospel music. Her headache pulsed along with the voices, pain flaring around her temples and eyes and the back of her head, down her neck, and Meghan chugged down coffee and winced and tried to pray for mercy.

  She squinted at her fridge—there was nothing to eat that was easy to make and she moaned with hunger—and remembered, looking at the old lettuce that was still there, that soon it would be her turn to care for the gardens downstairs.

  While standing in the middle of her kitchen, the music got louder. Not louder like someone had turned up the volume, but like the source of the music had gotten closer. Meghan squinted at her kitchen tiles, rubbing at her forehead with her fingers, and followed the music in a daze, as if she would have been able to find the source of this nightmare and turn it off.

  She left her kitchen and shuffled to her front door, which seemed to be vibrating with the strength of the music coming through… right across the hall.

  The new neighbor, Meghan realized suddenly.

  She had waited and waited for the woman to come banging on the door again, to complain about the party and the noise, and she had never come. Meghan had put her out of her mind, figuring that the fun was over, but it wasn’t. Apparently, her new neighbor had tried to complain once, then jumped right ahead to revenge.

  Meghan started to laugh.

  With her headache and her queasy stomach and her stress and all the work she needed to do today—she forgot it all and laughed, her lips stretching into a wide smile. She just couldn’t believe it, the hilarity of it, her new neighbor blasting songs about Jesus early in the morning as payback for the party she couldn’t stop. Meghan laughed until her queasy stomach couldn’t handle it anymore.

  She would have gone over to pound at the door and shout about it, but her hangover didn’t let her; and for the rest of the day, though the stress and the hunger caught up with her and made the happiness slip from her face, she would eventually remember the morning and the music and smile.

  Chapter Three

  Amy liked gardening. She had a knack for it, and as a child, she had often planted beans and seen them sprout in cotton, had stolen wilting flowers to be thrown out and watched them bloom again, had snatched succulent leaves off supermarket floors to grow at home. She had never really been a gardener or invested in the hobby, and it had fallen to the side in the face of more exciting things such as video games, TV shows, and napping.

  But standing inside the greenhouse in the ground floor of her friend’s apartment complex, she felt herself wishing she hadn’t left it aside. She felt like she had stepped into Eden or something close to it; there were herbs anyone could use, like parsley and green onion and little peppers, but also big ferns and small trees, tomatoes and strawberries and a patch with growing watermelons. Amy had no idea how such different plants were kept together, but she loved it.

  There were three other people there. Amy waved cheerfully at them and took off the gardening gloves she had picked up before. She knelt by the strawberries, which were kept in the very corner of the greenhouse and touched a leaf with a fingertip. It was a new one, slick and light green.

  Coming to housesit for Brenda had been her best idea, she decided, stupid night-owl partying neighbor notwithstanding.

  “Here,” came an amused voice to her right.

  Amy turned in surprise, almost startling, but managed to keep her balance. The woman standing by her had a smile on her face and a watering can in her hand. It was extended to Amy; Amy caught it automatically, their fingers brushing as she did so. She felt a flush rise up to her face and hastily stood up.

  The woman was taller than her by half a head and her pitch-black hair was loose, messy and confident, in loose curls around her face, coming down to her waist. Her eyes were brown, but not the chocolate tone of Amy’s eyes, instead a light and honeyed color. She had a mouth that seemed made for smiling and a confident air about her. Her hip was cocked, and she had a hand half into a pocket of her very tight black jeans.

  Amy felt her mouth go dry.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hey yourself,” the woman said. “I haven’t seen you here before. Did you just move in or just decide to sign up to our little communal gardening thing?”

  “Oh, I’m neither,” Amy said, a bit embarrassed. “I’m housesitting for a friend while she’s off traveling for the next couple of months. She’s Brenda, from 103C?”

  “I’m in the same building!” she answered. “I’m Meghan, I’m in 104C, actually, which…” She got an odd look on her face, like she was figuring something out. “Which should be right in front of you.”

  “Small world,” Amy said, a smile twitching up her lips. It was nice to know someone nice like Meghan was right across from her—

  Wait, she thought.

  “Oh my God,” Meghan said, beating her to the punch. Her smile turned exhilarated, as if she had just been handed a gift. “It’s you. I thought it was some middle-aged woman, maybe an old lady what with the gospel music—but it’s you right across the hall from me?”

  “You’re the one who parties all night long and won’t let me sleep?” Amy asked, annoyance and anger rising up in her chest. She had been so excited to see someone her age who would be close to her, especially someone as gorgeous as Meghan, but of course this always happened: the most beautiful ones were always assholes.

  Meghan got a look on her face like she knew Amy was angry and she found it funny. Amy’s hands would have closed in fists if they weren’t busy clutching at the watering can the other woman had given to her.

  “I only party every other Friday or Saturday,” Meghan said with a smirk. “And I think you lost your moral ground when you blasted gospel songs at seven in the morning, Amy!”

  “I only did that to get back at you for not letting me sleep!” Amy snapped back, a flush rising up to her face.

  “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Meghan said cheekily.

  “Next week,” Amy said with narrowed eyes, “I’ll start blasting the gospel songs at five instead.”

  Meghan’s eyes widened in exaggerated distress. “Oh, no, how will I live when I will have the satisfaction of knowing that one, you had to wake up at five to turn up the music, and two, the music is much louder in your apartment?”

  Amy opened her mouth to hiss some curse word or other at her and was interrupted by a hand on her shoulder. Startled, she turned around and saw that a middle-aged woman was sending looks to both she and Meghan, a clearly annoyed line between her brows.

  “Excuse me,” she said with a smile that wasn’t quite a grimace. “But, um, I was wondering if you’d come help me with the watermelons, Miss…?”

  Amy winced.

  “Amelia,” she told the woman. “But Amy is fine… and of course I’ll go.”

  Meghan’s mouth had stretched into a smile that seemed genuine. “Hey, Mrs. Harrison,” she greeted. “I thought you were still in your daughter’s house. It’s nice to have you back.”

  “It’s nice to see you’re harassing the new neighbor already,” Mrs. Harrison retorted, though a bit of her annoyance had melted into amusement.

  “And how do you know I have a new neighbor? You’re such a gossip!”

&nb
sp; “You two were speaking very loudly and this is not a particularly big greenhouse,” Mrs. Harrison said dryly. “Come, Amy, we’ll see about the watermelons and leave Meghan to water the strawberries alone. She kills everything she touches, you see, and when we make her work alone, she can’t shift the blame to any of us for it.”

  Amy sent Meghan a dark, satisfied look. She felt like Mrs. Harrison’s words had been proof that Meghan was an evil person.

  “I was just having some fun,” Meghan said, her smile dimming.

  Mrs. Harrison dragged Amy away with a roll of her eyes and not another word, and Amy made a point of turning back around to Meghan so she could narrow her eyes and mouth five in the morning at her. Meghan didn’t do anything, but Amy got the impression that if she were ten years younger, she would have blown a raspberry or flipped the bird at her.

  ***

  “Don’t water them so much,” Amy hissed to Meghan not five minutes later.

  She had watched with horror as Meghan had dumped the entire watering can over one single little strawberry plant. If they had been planted anywhere but a vase, she wouldn’t have batted an eye, but as it were, Meghan had probably drowned the thing already.

  “What, are you an expert on plants or something?” Meghan retorted, not bothering to keep her voice low.

  “You’re going to drown them,” Amy answered, irritated. “If this is how you act anytime someone tries to help, then I’m not surprised Mrs. Harrison said everything dies with you!”

  “Girls,” Mrs. Harrison said lightly.

  The two of them grew quiet.

  ***

  “Someone forgot sunscreen,” came a sing-song voice.

  Amy didn’t stop plucking old, dry leaves off a fern to look up, but she couldn’t help but narrow her eyes anyway. Meghan saw, obviously, and snorted.

  “It’s winter,” Amy said, voice low. She didn’t want to catch Mrs. Harrison’s attention again. The woman made her feel like a teenager, and Amy didn’t really care for it. She was almost twenty-four!

  “And the sun doesn’t shine in winter?” Meghan asked sarcastically. “Because winter or not, your cheeks and your nose are red.”