The meth addicts upstairs

How else can you explain why they pace back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, all day and well into the night? Going to bed after 1 and waking up before 7. Moving furniture constantly. Sitting at the table and scraping their chairs in and out, getting up and sitting down over and over again. Letting their mail pile up for days while they're coming in and out of their apartment every day. Stomping up and down the stairwell, slamming their door every time, stomping back and forth, back and forth.

Many sleepless nights, me pounding on the ceiling at 3:45 am, earplugs, notes written and left on their door.

Do tweekers listen to talk radio at 7 am? These ones do. Is it loud, the bass rattling our sleep-deprived skulls? Um, yes.

We never hear them talk to each other, though. We can hear each footstep like a Randy Savage piledriver, but not a peep of conversation from what must be their dry, pipe-scorched lips. We hear them having extremely loud sex, and we hear her on the phone with the shrillest, most irritating voice imaginable, but not a word between them. They have a bond that's so tight, so disturbed, that they need not speak. They are peas in a pod, compadres, lovers, fiends, slinkers, creatures of the night, one and the same. They have their heavy boots, their furniture for moving, their beloved crystal meth, and each other, and that is all they need.