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mallorys_cameraFor Mark Conly
---
Alice had been enchanted with the tiny, second-floor walk-up when she answered the Craig’s List ad one Sunday morning. Her first apartment! She’d bake cookies!
Disillusionment quickly set in.
Every day of the week except Sunday, the traffic noises were so bad, Alice could close her eyes and imagine she was lying down for the night in Times Square. Black sprinkles in the cupboards were not, as she’d had first thought, evidence that a previous tenant had been partial to pepper, but insect shit. The lights flickered on and off when she turned more than three of them on at the same time. The oven didn’t work.
And then there was her upstairs neighbor.
“Milo’s just an old hippie,” said Marylise, the paralegal who lived on the ground floor. “Imagine! He moved in when there was still rent control.”
Alice grimaced. “It’s the music. Every night. This is an old building. All the noise transmits straight through my ceiling.”
Marylise shrugged. “You could talk to him. When I asked him to please stop going through my garbage, he was nice enough about it.”
“Did he stop?”
“Well, no. But he didn’t snap my head off or anything.”
“But he didn’t stop. Why didn’t you talk to the management company?”
“Are you kidding? To what end? Those assholes never do anything. And anyway, now I never have to worry about my recycling – Milo takes care of that for me. Besides. You have to pick your battles wisely.”
###
Alice was a nurse. She worked the seven-to-three shift and had to get to bed early most nights. That meant dinner at seven. An hour or three of futzing around on the computer, posting photographs on Facebook for distant family and friends: Me with the cookies I baked for the work potluck! (She’d bought the cookies at the Safeway deli counter.) Bed by ten if she could manage to fall asleep in the midst of all the traffic noises.
Only to be woken up two hours later by a steady bass beat pounding through the wooden floors over her head. Duh duh duh – duh DUH. Duh duh duh – duh DUH. Sometimes she could hear voices screeching mostly unintelligible lyrics, though Alice could make out, Fine little bitch… fuck that girl all kinds of ways…
This cacophony always lasted until the first rays of the rising sun shimmered in the east. A few minutes later, her alarm went off.
On her day off, Alice realized she would have to confront Milo.
She found him in back of the building, rooting around in the garbage bins. He was a tall man with a cadaverous, intelligent face and long, thinning white hair kept back in a buck hide clip.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said when he saw Alice, “but there really isn’t enough here to share. You’ll have to find your own dumpster to dive in.”
“I haven’t come to dive in your dumpster,” Alice said. “I’ve come to complain about your music.”
“Music?” said Milo. “What music?”
“The music you start playing every night at midnight and keep playing until the sun comes up.”
“That’s not music,” said Milo. “That’s Louie Louie.”
“That’s what?” asked Alice.
Milo sighed with exasperation. “Louie Louie? Probably the most famous rock ‘n’ roll song ever made? First recorded in 1956 by Richard Berry and the Pharaohs? Subsequently recorded by hundreds of other artists including The Kinsmen, Toots and the Maytalls, Led Zeppelin, Barry White, Black Flagg and Paul Revere and the Raiders? I discover a new recording every other week or so.”
“I know what Louie Louie is,” said Alice. “It’s music. I’m not questioning your taste. I’m here to tell you you’re playing it way too loud.”
Milo peered at Alice through red-rimmed eyes that made him look improbably for a moment like a large white rabbit in a frayed tie-dyed tee shirt. “I don’t even know how to begin to address the fallacies in that last statement,” he said. “But hey! I taught physics for 15 years at the University of California before I realized working for the establishment in any capacity was a rigged game, so I’ll give it a try.
“In the first place, Louie Louie is not music any more than the prayers on Buddhist prayer wheels are scraps of paper. Louie Louie is a divine revelation that was handed to Richard Berry in 1955. Note, please, its lack of comma. The Old Testament uses a similar method of repetition to highlight emphasis in prophecies. Note as well that it it’s not played at the appropriate decibel level, Louie Louie will not have its intended effect.”
“Its intended effect on what?”
Milo stared at Alice as if she were a particularly dim-witted child. “Louie Louie is what keeps the universe going,” he explained slowly. “I’d be the first one to admit: It’s not a particularly good universe. But for now, it’s the only one we’ve got. If someone doesn’t play Louie Louie continuously during the darkest hours of the night then poof! It’s all over.”
“What’s all over?”
“The universe. You. More importantly, me.”
“That’s crazy,” said Alice.
“So’s quantum physics,” Milo said. “Hey, I didn’t ask for this job.” He reached into the garbage bin and pulled out a half-rotten turnip. Out of the pockets of his dirty jeans, he withdrew a long serrated knife. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have tonight’s dinner to prepare.”
###
“You say he threatened you with a knife?” the cop asked. They were standing together in Alice’s tiny kitchen. Alice had offered the cop a cookie. He’d turned it down.
Alice nodded. “He did. It was big, too. And all I did was ask him to turn down his music. I mean, I was trying to approach him as a neighbor. Look, I live here alone –“
The cop nodded. “Not the greatest neighborhood for a young woman to be living alone in, if you don’t mind my saying. Okay, let’s have a chat with this Milo.”
They climbed the rickety stairs to Milo’s apartment. The cop pounded on the door. “Open up, please. Sir, it’s the police. We’d like to have a word with you –”
“Police?” came Milo’s frightened squeal. “There’s no way I’m letting the fucking pigs in here –“
The cop sighed. “Sir, we’re here at your neighbor’s request to talk to you about your response when she asked you to turn your music down –“
“Fuck you!” Milo screamed. “I’m not afraid to defend myself –“
The cop shook his head grimly, pulled out his walkie talkie and called for backup.
Later that afternoon, after Milo had been shot up with Haldol and spirited away on a stretcher carried by attendants in white jackets, Alice finally figured out what was wrong with her oven: The pilot light had gone out! Fixing it was simple enough, and so was making cookies. There were some black flecks in the flour, but Alice figured they’d be taken care of after they were baked for half an hour at 350 degrees.
She made chocolate chip cookies, lemon bars, snickerdoodles late into the night. Her tiny apartment was awaft with the smell of baked confectionaries and when she finally finished baking – close to midnight – it was so quiet that she imagined that the scent of her cookies had finally vanquished the noxious traffic noises outside. The fancy made her smile. She threw open her window to enjoy this milder, kinder world for herself.
And then she noticed. In the sky above her. One by one, the stars were blinking out.
---
Alice had been enchanted with the tiny, second-floor walk-up when she answered the Craig’s List ad one Sunday morning. Her first apartment! She’d bake cookies!
Disillusionment quickly set in.
Every day of the week except Sunday, the traffic noises were so bad, Alice could close her eyes and imagine she was lying down for the night in Times Square. Black sprinkles in the cupboards were not, as she’d had first thought, evidence that a previous tenant had been partial to pepper, but insect shit. The lights flickered on and off when she turned more than three of them on at the same time. The oven didn’t work.
And then there was her upstairs neighbor.
“Milo’s just an old hippie,” said Marylise, the paralegal who lived on the ground floor. “Imagine! He moved in when there was still rent control.”
Alice grimaced. “It’s the music. Every night. This is an old building. All the noise transmits straight through my ceiling.”
Marylise shrugged. “You could talk to him. When I asked him to please stop going through my garbage, he was nice enough about it.”
“Did he stop?”
“Well, no. But he didn’t snap my head off or anything.”
“But he didn’t stop. Why didn’t you talk to the management company?”
“Are you kidding? To what end? Those assholes never do anything. And anyway, now I never have to worry about my recycling – Milo takes care of that for me. Besides. You have to pick your battles wisely.”
###
Alice was a nurse. She worked the seven-to-three shift and had to get to bed early most nights. That meant dinner at seven. An hour or three of futzing around on the computer, posting photographs on Facebook for distant family and friends: Me with the cookies I baked for the work potluck! (She’d bought the cookies at the Safeway deli counter.) Bed by ten if she could manage to fall asleep in the midst of all the traffic noises.
Only to be woken up two hours later by a steady bass beat pounding through the wooden floors over her head. Duh duh duh – duh DUH. Duh duh duh – duh DUH. Sometimes she could hear voices screeching mostly unintelligible lyrics, though Alice could make out, Fine little bitch… fuck that girl all kinds of ways…
This cacophony always lasted until the first rays of the rising sun shimmered in the east. A few minutes later, her alarm went off.
On her day off, Alice realized she would have to confront Milo.
She found him in back of the building, rooting around in the garbage bins. He was a tall man with a cadaverous, intelligent face and long, thinning white hair kept back in a buck hide clip.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said when he saw Alice, “but there really isn’t enough here to share. You’ll have to find your own dumpster to dive in.”
“I haven’t come to dive in your dumpster,” Alice said. “I’ve come to complain about your music.”
“Music?” said Milo. “What music?”
“The music you start playing every night at midnight and keep playing until the sun comes up.”
“That’s not music,” said Milo. “That’s Louie Louie.”
“That’s what?” asked Alice.
Milo sighed with exasperation. “Louie Louie? Probably the most famous rock ‘n’ roll song ever made? First recorded in 1956 by Richard Berry and the Pharaohs? Subsequently recorded by hundreds of other artists including The Kinsmen, Toots and the Maytalls, Led Zeppelin, Barry White, Black Flagg and Paul Revere and the Raiders? I discover a new recording every other week or so.”
“I know what Louie Louie is,” said Alice. “It’s music. I’m not questioning your taste. I’m here to tell you you’re playing it way too loud.”
Milo peered at Alice through red-rimmed eyes that made him look improbably for a moment like a large white rabbit in a frayed tie-dyed tee shirt. “I don’t even know how to begin to address the fallacies in that last statement,” he said. “But hey! I taught physics for 15 years at the University of California before I realized working for the establishment in any capacity was a rigged game, so I’ll give it a try.
“In the first place, Louie Louie is not music any more than the prayers on Buddhist prayer wheels are scraps of paper. Louie Louie is a divine revelation that was handed to Richard Berry in 1955. Note, please, its lack of comma. The Old Testament uses a similar method of repetition to highlight emphasis in prophecies. Note as well that it it’s not played at the appropriate decibel level, Louie Louie will not have its intended effect.”
“Its intended effect on what?”
Milo stared at Alice as if she were a particularly dim-witted child. “Louie Louie is what keeps the universe going,” he explained slowly. “I’d be the first one to admit: It’s not a particularly good universe. But for now, it’s the only one we’ve got. If someone doesn’t play Louie Louie continuously during the darkest hours of the night then poof! It’s all over.”
“What’s all over?”
“The universe. You. More importantly, me.”
“That’s crazy,” said Alice.
“So’s quantum physics,” Milo said. “Hey, I didn’t ask for this job.” He reached into the garbage bin and pulled out a half-rotten turnip. Out of the pockets of his dirty jeans, he withdrew a long serrated knife. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have tonight’s dinner to prepare.”
###
“You say he threatened you with a knife?” the cop asked. They were standing together in Alice’s tiny kitchen. Alice had offered the cop a cookie. He’d turned it down.
Alice nodded. “He did. It was big, too. And all I did was ask him to turn down his music. I mean, I was trying to approach him as a neighbor. Look, I live here alone –“
The cop nodded. “Not the greatest neighborhood for a young woman to be living alone in, if you don’t mind my saying. Okay, let’s have a chat with this Milo.”
They climbed the rickety stairs to Milo’s apartment. The cop pounded on the door. “Open up, please. Sir, it’s the police. We’d like to have a word with you –”
“Police?” came Milo’s frightened squeal. “There’s no way I’m letting the fucking pigs in here –“
The cop sighed. “Sir, we’re here at your neighbor’s request to talk to you about your response when she asked you to turn your music down –“
“Fuck you!” Milo screamed. “I’m not afraid to defend myself –“
The cop shook his head grimly, pulled out his walkie talkie and called for backup.
Later that afternoon, after Milo had been shot up with Haldol and spirited away on a stretcher carried by attendants in white jackets, Alice finally figured out what was wrong with her oven: The pilot light had gone out! Fixing it was simple enough, and so was making cookies. There were some black flecks in the flour, but Alice figured they’d be taken care of after they were baked for half an hour at 350 degrees.
She made chocolate chip cookies, lemon bars, snickerdoodles late into the night. Her tiny apartment was awaft with the smell of baked confectionaries and when she finally finished baking – close to midnight – it was so quiet that she imagined that the scent of her cookies had finally vanquished the noxious traffic noises outside. The fancy made her smile. She threw open her window to enjoy this milder, kinder world for herself.
And then she noticed. In the sky above her. One by one, the stars were blinking out.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-09-16 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-16 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 01:02 pm (UTC)But isn't that really Facebook's primary function? To make other people think you're having this terrific life when you're not??? :-)
no subject
Date: 2014-09-16 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-16 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 01:09 pm (UTC)I know you were a Lucius Shepard fan and I know you read LJ sporadically. Did you happen to catch my kinda sorta homage to Lucius?
http://mallorys-camera.livejournal.com/545399.html
no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 07:37 am (UTC)Milo stared at Alice as if she were a particularly dim-witted child. “Louie Louie is what keeps the universe going,” he explained slowly. “I’d be the first one to admit: It’s not a particularly good universe. But for now, it’s the only one we’ve got."
I liked this line. Hit me the right way. Actually, in general, I just liked the whole piece and the concept a lot. (I dunno...it's just not a bad song.)
no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 01:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 01:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-18 04:58 am (UTC)So maybe Milo was wrong, and it wasn't Louie Louie at all...
*dun dun DUUUUNNNN*
no subject
Date: 2014-09-18 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-19 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-18 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-19 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-18 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-19 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-18 06:13 pm (UTC)Well, at least it's not Rammstein.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-19 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-18 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-19 11:11 pm (UTC)