Chapter 1: Not so great start
The knock was too soft. Barnaby knew it the moment his knuckles left the painted wood of the door across the hall. A timid, papery tap that vanished into the bass thump of music shaking the floorboards. He adjusted his glasses, cleared his throat, and stared at the peephole, a dark eye he felt certain was staring back.
He could still smell last night’s beer through the wall. Could still feel the vibration of laughter, a raw, barking sound that had made the framed print of Van Gogh’s sunflowers above his sofa rattle well past two AM. His carefully worded complaint, rehearsed in the shower, suddenly felt absurd.
He raised his hand to try again, with more force this time, just as the door swung inward.
The space filled with her immediately. It wasn’t just her height, though she had to stoop slightly under the frame. It was the presence of her. The smell of sawdust, cheap perfume, and a hard day’s sweat washed over him. She was a canine anthro, her fur a dense, black-brown pelt that gleamed under the hallway’s sickly fluorescent light. She wore grease-stained cargo pants and a tight tank top that strained over a frankly monumental chest. Her green eyes, intelligent and utterly unimpressed, locked onto his.
Barnaby’s prepared speech evaporated. His mouth was dry.
“Yeah?” Her voice was a gravelly alto.
“I… hello. I’m Barnaby. From across the hall.” He gestured weakly behind him.
“Ram.” She didn’t offer a hand. She leaned a muscular shoulder against the doorframe, arms crossing beneath her breasts. The movement was casual, but it made the tendons in her forearms stand out. “What’s up, Barnaby?”
“Right. Well. It’s about the… the noise. Last night.” He pushed his glasses up his nose. “It was rather loud. Quite late. I have to work, you see, at the library, and the… the thumping. It was disruptive.”
He winced at his own tone. He sounded like a substitute teacher.
Ram’s ears—triangular and perked high on her head—twitched slightly. She didn’t blink. “Yeah. Had some people over. It was Friday.”
As if this explained everything. As if it were a natural law.
“I understand that,” Barnaby said, a faint heat rising in his cheeks. “But the walls are rather thin. Perhaps… perhaps you could keep it down? After eleven? There’s a building bylaw, actually.”
She let out a short, puffing sound through her nose. Not quite a laugh. “You gonna call the bylaw cops on me, library man?”
“No! No, of course not. I’m just… asking. As a neighbor. Politely.”
He watched her look him over. His neatly pressed chinos, his cable-knit sweater, his slight frame that seemed to shrink in the shadow of her. She was assessing him like a strange, fragile object that had appeared on her doorstep. A faint, sharp smell of lager wafted from the apartment behind her, mixed with the scent of microwaved pizza.
“Politely,” she repeated, rolling the word around. She shifted her weight, and the floorboard creaked in protest. “You know what’s polite? Bringing over a six-pack when you hear a new neighbor moving in. Not waiting ‘til Monday to bitch about a little music.”
Barnaby felt thoroughly dismantled. He hadn’t even known she was moving in. He’d been reading with noise-cancelling headphones on.
“I didn’t… I wasn’t aware. My apologies.”
Ram’s tail, a thick brush of fur, gave a single, slow swish behind her. She uncrossed her arms, one hand going to her hip. “Look. I work construction. Ten-hour days. My back hurts, my hands are cracked, and on Friday I want a beer and some goddamn noise that isn’t a jackhammer. You get me?”
He did, in a way. The sheer physicality of her life was overwhelming to contemplate. “I get that. Truly. I just… the thin walls.”
A longer silence stretched between them. The bass from her stereo had muted, leaving only the hum of the streetlamp outside his own apartment window down the hall. She was studying him again, but the edge in her gaze had softened into something more like curiosity.
“You live alone?” she asked abruptly.
“Yes.”
“Figures.” She scratched at the fur on her neck. “Fine. I’ll turn the shit down after midnight. Can’t promise more than that. Sound travels in this dump.”
It was a concession. A small, grumpy one, but it was more than he’d expected. Relief, warm and clumsy, flooded him. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”
“Whatever.” She began to close the door, then stopped. Her green eyes pinned him once more. “You like hockey?”
The question was so left-field it short-circuited his brain. “Hockey? I… don’t really follow sports.”
She just growled and slammed the door