Paulie got inside her apartment, locked the door behind her, pulled her hair and gritted her teeth. Chirp. Fucking ridiculous. Despite her exhaustion, she had pulled herself out of bed and gone on a walk through the city at four in the morning to escape the incessant chirping, hoping by the time she came back her neighbors would have taken care of the smoke detector’s dying battery. But they hadn’t. They must’ve been on a date. Chirp. They were probably having a grand old time at some fabulous loft party filled with actors and writers. Or they were at some sweaty club dancing to techno music in an MDMA-induced haze. She wanted them to come home only so the fucking beeping would stop but they probably wouldn’t even notice it even if they did come home. Chirp. They would probably begin their foreplay out in the hallway and be so preoccupied with each other they wouldn’t even bother with turning it off. Then she would have to hear three godawful noises at once: her moans, his grunts, and the stupid fucking beeping. Chirp. She put on her industrial-strength headphones – the noise protection that construction workers who jackhammer use – that she had ordered from Home Depot. Chirp. Quieter, but still there. Fucking fantastic. The time between the chirps was torturous. It didn’t seem to be regular. Sometimes they were seven seconds apart, and sometimes it seemed like they were ten or twelve seconds apart. And every time the next chirp was slow in coming, she wondered if it was done, if its battery had become so drained that it could no longer make the tenants aware of its situation. Chirp. Nope. Still alive. Little fucker. After three more chirps she decided to pack a bag. The first ferries of the day would be running soon, and maybe a trip to the beach would calm her down, give her some peace and quiet. She stuffed a blanket, a couple books, and a sweater into a tote bag and left the apartment. Chirp. A note was taped to their door that she hadn’t noticed before: “Hi neighbors! Went to the Catskills for a weekend getaway. Call us know if there are any issues. XOXO Jack and Macy.” Macy had added a heart. Fuck them, Paulie thought, Yeah there’s a fucking issue. Great idea not to leave a number. She got in the elevator, went down to the lobby and into the street. It was close to getting light out, and the sky was a deep and dark blue, that almost calmed her down. Until a man drove past her in a car missing its muffler, slowed down when he saw her, gave her a sneer and sped away, revving his engine. She got to the subway station, where she was met with that awful screeching sound of the brakes, and rode to the Wall Street station, listening to the muffled, indistinct conductor’s announcements all the way. Finally, to the ferry, and finally to the beach. The sun was rising by now. She decided she would call in sick to work. She would play hooky, read her books on the beach, get a nice lunch, relax, try to forget all of the noise. It would be a nice day. She lay out her blanket, sat down, skimmed the backs of her books to decide which one to read first, and settled in to start relaxing. She opened the book she had decided on. A used copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses, which she had been meaning to read since college. She couldn’t get past the first sentence. The sound of the waves distracted her, then infuriated her. They would never stop. They would never shut up. They would just keep crashing and crashing. Seagulls joined in on the torture as they started to squawk at semi-regular intervals. She gathered her stuff and left, storming back to the ferry, becoming more enraged as the thick sand hindered her movement.
Back in her apartment, she was hostilely greeted by the oh-so-familiar chirping. She went back to her bed, smushed her head between two pillows Chirp and screamed. It was the first time she had made a sound in days – since she said, “Good morning” to a colleague the previous Friday. The man who lived above her – a clean-cut man with a kind smile and kind eyes – began playing Debussy, a ritual of his as he began his day. Paulie, enraged by some of the repeated forte notes, got up from her bed, got a candle and a match, and looked at herself in her bathroom mirror as she dripped hot wax into her ears. Silence. Finally.