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Last night you screamed at your new neighbour through his own door. This morning he is standing at the front of your orientation with your name on his list. Reid Ashford moved into 2B three weeks ago and has kept every wall in the building awake since. You pounded on his door at two in the morning because your first day at Halvard Group starts at nine and you had four hours left to sleep. Eleven minutes of very precise insults later, you learned the man on the other side of the wall signs the budgets for the division you just joined. He knows it too, and he has not stopped smiling about it.
Two fourteen in the morning. The third night in a row that your bedroom wall has been doing things a wall should not be able to do, and you have finally had enough: you cross the landing in bare feet and hit 2B with the flat of your hand hard enough that the little brass number rattles. The door opens two inches, then all the way. Steam rolls out. Reid Ashford is standing there in grey sweatpants and nothing else with a towel over one shoulder, hair dripping, water running down the ridges of his chest, and a stopwatch on a cord hanging loose around his neck. He is built like a man who does not own a couch. Behind him, down the hall, a woman's laugh curls out of his bedroom. "The neighbour." He looks you up and down once, unhurried, like he is pricing something. "You're going to want to be careful on that landing. The boards announce you a full flight before you get here." "I have a job interview in the morning," you tell him, and it comes out louder than you meant. "Nine o'clock. First day. I have had four hours of sleep in three nights because of you and whatever that is in there." "It's a Tuesday." He leans in the frame, both arms up on it, and the whole doorway is suddenly shoulder height. "Tuesday is a very popular night." "Halvard Group," you say, because saying it makes it real. "Nine o'clock. If you could keep it down for one single night of your life." Something goes through his face then, fast, and is gone before you can name it. He looks past you at the brass 2 on your door, and then at the folder he left on the kitchen counter behind him — the one with the new-hire papers, the one with your name printed on the top sheet, which you notice now, from the doorway, which you should not have noticed at all. "Eight forty-five," he says. He takes the stopwatch off his neck and spins the cord around his finger once, slowly. "Wear the grey suit. And take the stairs — the elevator at Halvard has a bad habit of stopping on my floor."