rear window

This week we had some rain showers in the ATL which cooled things down a bit. This means it was in the 80s and not the 90s, but losing those 10 degrees meant I could enjoy my balcony deck a little bit this weekend. That enabled me to continue my project of spying on my neighbors.

I live on the third floor, and my deck faces three other apartments. I have discerned they are two bedrooms (I live in a one-bedroom). Here is the rundown on my neighbors:

Top-floor: From what I can tell, two girls live there. Now, I don’t know if these girls just lack distinguishing features, but it seems like every time I see a girl over there, it’s a different girl. As I say, these gals could just be so bland that every time one of them changes clothing, she looks different. Or it could be that it’s some sort of hostel or underground railroad sorta place where young women can crash when they’re passing through Atlanta.

I do know that one girl is very concerned about a plant that is on the balcony. Perhaps she’s the innkeeper. When people come over, she brings them out on the balcony to show them the plant, ask their opinion on the plant, talk about her troubles with the plant. As I said, I can’t be sure whether it’s the same girl or not. She always looks different.

An interesting thing about the top-floor apartment is that they leave their living room light on ALL NIGHT EVERY NIGHT. It’s on when I go to bed, and it’s on when I get up, no matter when those times are. And it’s always on when I get up in the middle of the night for a bathroom break or after a weird dream or something. The light is always on. To my mind, this is support of the hotel theory, because many hotels will “leave the light on for you.” What do you think their electric bill is? Why do you think I can’t tell which girl is which or even whether they are the same girl?

Middle-floor: Two guys live here. They have a dog. Sometimes they leave the dog on the balcony and it sees its reflection in the glass and freaks out. They only come out on the balcony to smoke and drink. Frequently they leave their beer bottles and cans on the balcony rail which worries me because I fear a strong breeze could knock them over and an unsuspecting person below would be hit in the head and I might be a suspect. Surely the wind trajectory would prove me innocent but I think I’d have to be questioned all the same.

Bottom-floor: Okay, I hear and see one girl from this apartment all the time. I have never seen the roommate, but the girl talks about him/her. I get the sense they don't get along. The girl has an extremely loud voice so I have picked up a lot of things about her. She is either a waitress or a stripper, but I think in the spirit of keeping things interesting for myself, I tend to interpret things on the stripper side while ignoring clues that would confirm the waitress part.

Basically this girl has a lot of DRAMA. One of her favorite things to do is to have people over, and tell them about her drama. Drama is primarily related by reading aloud text messages that people have sent her. (“ohmigod, listen to this text she sent me. So then I texted her this. And she texted this back” etc.) I have never seen the same person over more than once (although I may have flawed observation; see my notes on the top-floor occupants), which I can only conclude means that each person has, in turn, caused some DRAMA and is banished.

Sometimes she has guys over on dates and she tries to talk about deep things. She told one fellow the story about the man who got stranded on the roof of his house in a flood, and he prayed to God for help. Then a helicopter came by for the man and he refused it, and this happened a bunch of times, and when the guy died he asked God why God had not helped, and God replied that he’d sent all that help. Everyone’s heard that story. Anyways, the anecdote was used as a sort of justification for some DRAMA that the girl was involved in, and the girl was comparing herself to God.

Also, this girl does a ton of drugs, which is her business but it seems like a poor idea to talk about it so loudly on her balcony. Also, mostly what she’s talking about is how sick the drugs make her, and sometimes I just want to shout, "stop taking drugs if they always make you sick!" Like, one time, this guy at work sold her some bad ecstasy and she was sick for three days and now she has DRAMA with that guy’s girlfriend.

So that’s all I know about my neighbors so far. Oh, but I did overhear some other DRAMA this weekend. This weekend I was at the mall, trying on some clothes. In the fitting room next to me, this girl was talking on her phone REALLY LOUDLY to her friend that had just gotten out of jail that morning. Here’s what I was able to ascertain:

Fitting Room Girl and several friends were out Friday night and Fitting Room Girl told one of her friends to steal a road sign. The friend who stole the sign got arrested. Fitting Room Girl and another friend sat at the jail for awhile waiting for her to get out, but then they decided to ditch their friend and go get some breakfast instead. Then Fitting Room Girl, instead of going back to check on her friend who had to go to jail, decided to go to the mall. Jail Girl called Fitting Room Girl to let her know that she was finally out of jail. I was just amazed at Fitting Room Girl’s brazenness. She admitted it was her fault Jail Girl got arrested, she admitted she should have waited at the jail for Jail Girl, but she didn’t really seem to have any guilt over either thing.

Now what I kinda hope will happen is that Jail Girl will turn out to be my Bottom-floor neighbor, so I can hear about the DRAMA from Jail Girl’s perspective. But I guess coincidences like that only happen in sitcoms.