Neighbors sans u

I've told you about the constant talkety talk talk talk. People talk to you, you talk to people (except your neighbours you don't talk to those fucking strangers). Sometimes people turn out to be crazy and all you can do is keep smiling and nodding until it is your stop. Yesterday I was standing on E 16th St with a carton of half and half (yes, I was) and this passing delivery guy informed me "Milk - it does the body good!" Today I tried to leave my umbrella on the 4 train and two huge dudes started yelling "Miss!" "Ma'am!" "Miss!" until it broke through my consciousness and I turned around.

That's not true - I did actually talk to one of my neighbours today. I was walking slowly up the stairs, scrutinizing my paycheque and reading the deductions out loud, and he said

"Hi"
"Hi"
"[something] scary [something]"
"What's that? You're scary?"
"No, I said I didn't want to scare you."
"Oh. Thanks."
[beep]
"Can you figure out where that beeping is coming from?"
...
...
[beep]
"I'd say definitely the second floor and not the third. Can you hear it in your apartment?"
"Yes. I mean, it's not terrible, but... I just wanted to locate it before I call the landlord or the fire department."
...
...
[beep]
"Yes, it's a smoke detector whose batteries are dying."
...
...
[beep]
"I'm so-and-so, by the way. I live in 5."
"I'm Marianne. I live in [nb]."

He was hot.

When I was younger my mom always made me go to the neighbours' and borrow a cup of sugar/ egg/ teaspoon of paprika and I hated doing it because I felt self-conscious or something. Not any more. But when I have tried to do this with neighbours in my adult life it doesn't work because nobody cooks. Now I only borrow objects. Last night it was my neighbour's corkscrew. He took about 20 seconds (count it out that's a long time) to shift a bunch of things, stare through the peephole and finally answer the door.

One time my other neighbour witnessed a pretty messy altercation I had with someone while my door was open. And the night I was assembling all my furniture and needed a hammer he was the only neigbour home for me to borrow one from. He was pretty hesitant to hand it over.