Upstairs

"Quick!" I'd shouted to Sam the first time. "Come here, quick!" I didn't know at the time but he needn't have rushed. It was a Sunday evening and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Sam didn't appear immediately. "Quick!" I shouted and eventually I heard him put the N64 control pad down and start heading for my voice. I was standing at my bedroom door. Sam was wary. I beckoned with my finger and he came into my room. He stood puzzled for a moment and then his face broke out in a wide smile. I nodded, grinning. The woman upstairs was getting banged. We stood there listening and nodding and grinning. "Fucking hell," I told him. Sam was concentrating though, his head cocked as he grinned. "They're going for it," I told him.

"Go on!" Shouted Sam because he's an idiot and gets carried away and I scolded him with and angry face and a shake of my head. That was out of order. The woman had complained about me once already. When Andy had tried to break in the back of the building with a ladder stolen from the next door building site. He'd climbed the ladder to my window and shouted for me to let him in for an hour like a really annoying drunken dickhead vampire from Salem's Lot.

He'd been clearly drunk and I'd not let him in because I couldn't be bothered but after an hour he hadn't given up, even though he could have walked home in the time he'd been shouting, and so I'd let him in and he slept on the couch. The woman upstairs had complained to the letting agent. She'd said she was fearful for her life and I bought her a box of chocolates from the Spar.

When Sam's voice has stopped echoing around the room I listened carefully hoping the pounding sound hadn't stopped. That would be too awkward. I'd only bumped into the woman once, out on the stairs but it could happen again and I didn't want her to know I'd heard her having sex. She was definitely having sex and thankfully she hadn't heard my friend's shout of encouragement. We listened some more. They were really going for it. You could hear the odd male muffled deep sound. She sometimes said something but the pounding was constant. We stood there grinning, listening. Ten minutes later it was still going on and we were baffled and then the pace increased and we nodded. Sam gave me a thumbs up and looked back up to the ceiling.

This gave me the opportunity to
 discretely tuck my stiffy into my waistband.

Incredibly the increased pace didn't wasn't the portent we imagined. After a few minutes of rapid pumping it settled down again and continued steadily and Sam looked puzzled. I shook my head.

"Is she nice?" He asked looking for answers.

"She's alright actually!" I told him. Her face didn't explain what we were hearing. We stood and smiled and listened. "That's amazing," I told him. We gave up before they did and returned to Turok 2 occasionally pausing the game, listening and sniggering. That had been the first time but this then happened at least once a month, always on Sunday afternoons, always lasting far too long, for as long as she was there. I never saw the guy come or go and I was pleased when the woman moved out. It took me a while to realize she'd gone but after a couple of weeks I realized I hadn't heard a single sound from upstairs. I loved the silence. I could relax, I didn't have to worry about anybody else and I began to think nobody was going to move in upstairs. Sam got a girlfriend and stopped coming around but I'm fine on my own. The building consisted of two flats, one above the other on top of an empty shop and with her gone the building was mine.

And then the car appeared.