Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 111, No. 1. Whole No. 677, January 1998

The Music Lovers by Seymour Shubin

© 1997 by Seymour Shubin

Seymour Shubin is an author whose works stay in a reader’s mind. As if we needed proof of that, he’s just informed EQMM that his first novel, Anyone’s My Name, first published in 1953 and a New York Times bestseller, is about to be published again in the United States. It has already come out for a second time in France.

Bette and I had just moved into our apartment that day and were in the process of putting things away when we heard footsteps coming up the stairs. We looked at each other, frowning, and walked out of the kitchen to the long staircase that led up to our apartment from the street. A bearded man was standing halfway up, smiling at us, drunkenly.

“Name’s Al. Live next door. Your door was open — shouldn’t keep your door open — and I thought I’d come in to welcome you an’ see if I can be of any help.”

“Thank you,” Bette said weakly, “but we—”

He continued to walk up, holding onto the railing against the wall to steady himself. He was a rather good-looking guy, maybe fifty-three, with drink-heavy blue eyes and a wide smile within a Van Gogh-ish beard.

“Ver-ry nice,” he said, standing at the top of the stairs and looking toward the kitchen and then the living room. Apparently he’d never been here before. “Well, welcome,” he said, and stuck out his hand.

I shook it.

“Very nice,” he said again.

No, I said when he asked, we didn’t need any help. But thanks.

“Wife’s name’s Hetta,” he said. He waved vaguely in front of his face. “You need anything, any time you need...” Then he turned heavily and made his way down the steps. I followed right behind him in case he fell. And this time I made sure to lock the door.

“God, he gave me a scare,” Bette said as I walked up.

“What’s the matter,” I kidded her, “you don’t like friendly?”

“Friendly. He scared the hell out of me.” Then, “What a shame, what a pity. Basically, he seems so nice.”

“That’s right. And he did mean well.”

She shook her head sadly. “It’s, what now, almost two? And he could barely hold himself up.”

Our apartment was on the second floor of a converted brown-stone, above a real estate office, the only apartment in the building. Al and Hetta lived in the entire brownstone to our left. He was, we learned later, a draftsman who worked, when he did work, out of the house. And she was a former schoolteacher whom we were rarely to see out of the house — a “former” teacher, apparently, because she was as alcoholic as he was. And, like him, beneath the puffiness of face there were the strong traces of handsomeness.

They had no children, but they did have cats. Lots of cats.

We moved in there in the summer. It was a great apartment, especially for a young couple just starting out. There was something bohemian about it, but with the comfort of central air conditioning. Which brings me to the first problem we had with them.

Although our two buildings adjoined each other in the front, a narrow courtyard separated them at the rear. Their bedroom — which we knew was a bedroom because it was always a question if they’d be sober enough to close the curtains — faced ours across the yard. And from one of the windows jutted a rusting, slanty-angled air conditioner. That clanged and banged throughout our apartment.

I was a freelance magazine writer who worked out of the apartment, and was attempting a book. And there was no way I could shut out the noise. Then one day, seeing him walking toward me on the street, the urge to approach him about it became suddenly overwhelming.

“Al, how you doing?”

“Here and there,” he said with a smile. He looked sober, but the stiffness of his body said it was taking effort to stand straight.

“Al, I don’t know if there’s anything you can do about this, but your bedroom air conditioner? I hate to be a bad neighbor, I’m really not a complainer, but are you aware it makes... you know, a lot of noise? I mean, a lot more than the ordinary noise. Do you think there’s anything you can do about it? I mean, maybe it needs oil?”

Oh, he was sorry about that. Hadn’t realized.

“Glad you told me,” he said. “Really glad.”

He sounded so sincere that it took Bette to make me realize that he probably wouldn’t give it another thought, or maybe even remember it. And nothing did change. But then about two weeks after that, Bette and I were in the living room when we heard a tremendous crash. When we rushed to a window, we saw that the air conditioner had fallen to the yard. And now Al and Hetta were out.there, standing looking dazedly at the wreckage. Then he whirled on her.

“Why?” he yelled. “Shoulda told me!”

“Shoulda told you what?”

“You were gonna dust it, wipe it!”

“I didn’t touch it.”

“You did somethin’, you had to do somethin’! It don’t just fall!”

“I didn’t do anything! And don’ yell at me!”

“You don’ yell at me!”

He pushed her and she pushed back and he swung, missing, and she ran screaming into the building.

“Tod, call the police,” Bette pleaded.

I started to, then stopped as I saw her come into the bedroom. She sat down on the bed. He started to come in, then stopped, waved his hands, spun around, and left.

“It’s terrible,” Bette said.

But now that things had calmed down, I could only think what a miracle, that maybe now they’d get an air conditioner that didn’t make all that noise. But they didn’t replace it. Instead they opened the windows. And for the first time we became aware that they played music. All day. Good music — symphonies, concertos, sonatas. The best. The greatest. But all day. And loud. Loud.

On the third day I called them. “Al. This is Tod next door.”

“Tod, how you doing?”

“Al, will you do me a favor? A big favor? Would you lower your record player a little?”

“We don’t have a record player, we’ve got a radio.”

“Would you lower it for me? I’m trying to work.”

“Sure. Why didn’t you tell me? Sure.”

Almost instantly our apartment went silent. But two or three days later the music came on as loud as ever. And stayed on. The only thing louder was their fights.

“They’re like animals,” Bette said. “And the thing is, they’re intelligent people. And nice, if it weren’t for the drinking. I still think of the day he came over to help us.”

“Look,” I said, “I’m going to call ’em again.”

This time Hetta answered. Her first word came out “ ’Low?”

I said, “Hetta, this is next door. Tod. I hate to bother you, but would you please lower the radio for me?”

“You don’ like music?” There was a little giggle in her voice.

“I love music. But don’t you think it’s blasting?”

Al came on. “Who’s this?”

“This is Tod again. I really hate to be a pain, but I’d appreciate it if you would lower it.”

“Sure.” Then without hanging up, he began yelling at her, blaming her, and then she began yelling at him. Then the phone went dead. I was sure he’d forget about the radio, but he didn’t. For a few moments I couldn’t believe the sudden silence. It was as though something pulsating and noxious had been drained out of the air.

But that same night Bette and I were wakened by the blasting of the radio.

“I don’t believe this,” I heard myself saying. “I don’t believe this.”

I looked over at the clock on the night table. It was almost three-thirty.

“Those bastards, those bastards!”

I grabbed the phone and punched out their number. It was almost five minutes before he came on. Sleepily. “Hullo.”

“Al, this is next door. I’m sorry to wake you, but could you please—”

“Jee-zus,” he cried out, “why don’t you people go to sleep?”

What? I wanted to reach my hands through the phone for his throat. “What do you think we’re trying to do?” I yelled. “What do you think’s keeping us up? What do you—”

He hung up. And the music kept on. I ran into the living room, grabbed a small radio, found rock music, turned it up loud. I was going to put it against the wall or open the window—

I turned it off. And for the first time I thought of murder. Not seriously, mind you, but still it was the first time I can remember where I really wanted someone dead.

The music was still playing loud the next morning. I called the police, then watched from my front window as a patrol car pulled up and an officer got out and went to their door. Soon the music stopped. But a couple of days later, it was the same thing. I called the police again.

I never told the police who I was, but of course Al and Hetta knew. In fact, he made a big thing out of smiling at me as we passed on the street one day.

“Look,” Bette said when the second cop’s visit didn’t work for more than two days, “we’re just going to have to move.”

“Move. Those sons of bitches aren’t going to make us move!”

We’d started playing our own TV and CD player loud, to drown out their music. But theirs always seemed a little higher. Then one afternoon, a Saturday, I called Bette to come to the window. We would do everything we could to avoid looking into their bedroom, but there they were, sprawled out on separate beds, fully dressed and asleep while the radio was blasting.

“They’re not even listening,” she said. “They’re dead drunk, they’re in a stupor—”

“And we have to listen, we have to hear it!”

I swept up the phone and stabbed out their number. And I kept calling them for maybe fifteen minutes without them waking up. Then I ran to their house and rang the doorbell. I kept my finger on it for minutes at a time. I could hear it ringing through the house. Then I knocked hard on the door, then again — and the second time I did, it gave. It creaked open.

There was a door to the left that opened to the first floor. But in front of me was the stairway to the second floor. It seemed to climb up into darkness, though the day was bright with sun. And even before I took a step toward the stairs, I was hit by the stench of cat urine.

I called up there, “Hello!”

Nothing. Just the music. Beethoven, I remember, though I don’t remember what.

“Al!”

I pictured them in their beds.

Maybe, I thought, they’re dead.

It was with a feeling of both hope and dread of what I might find that I took the first step up.

“Al!”

Still only silence. I took another slow step up, then another. Something brushed against my ankle but I didn’t have time to be startled because I saw instantly that it was a cat. It ran up the steps and stared down at me. Three or four others joined it. One of them meowed and came down toward me.

I continued walking up through the stench.

I was on the second floor now, in a hallway strewn with clothes and newspapers, staring through the din of music into their bedroom. They lay in the same fixed way, he on his back, mouth open, she on her right side. I came closer, heart beating fast, unable to tell if they were alive. And then I saw the rise and fall of their breathing.

The radio was on a night table between their beds. I went over and looked at it carefully, to be sure I knew how to turn it off, aware that a greater blasting — or even the jolt of total silence — might wake them. But they didn’t move in the room’s sudden hush. I walked quietly out of the room and down the steps, closing the door.

Bette was waiting for me at the top of our stairs. I said, “Honey, you’ll never believe what I did.”

“Believe? I saw you. Oh God, he had the legal right to kill you. You shouldn’t have done that. That was crazy.”

“Well, they drove me crazy.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Oh stop it. It’s funny. It’s something we’ll be telling our kids.”

“You took a terrible chance.”

It was maybe an hour later when we heard them fighting.

“You did!”

“No, you did!”

“Don’t tell me that! I know what I did! You did!”

“I didn’t touch that goddamn radio!” she screamed.

“You’re saying I did? Are you telling me I did? Don’t tell me I did, you low-life bitch! I know what I did! Don’t tell me!”

Bette said, “Oh Jesus. Let’s get out of here. I want some fresh air.”

“This is funny,” I said. “I’m sorry, but it is funny.”

“Let’s get out of here. Let’s take a walk, something.”

We walked over to a small park several blocks away. Then we stopped at a luncheonette and had lunch. When we headed back and turned the comer at our street, we were jolted by the sight of several police cars parked up the block along our curb, and a crowd of people staring on from across the street.

“What...” But Bette, a hand starting to rise to her mouth, couldn’t finish, and we both began walking faster.

Something made us hesitate going over to the police. Instead we went across the street and asked what happened. Two people answered at the same time. They were dead, the couple who lived there. Apparently he’d stabbed her — repeatedly — and then hanged himself.

Bette and I stared at each other. Her face was drained of blood. She looked sick. And I felt not only horrified and guilty but afraid. Of the stories that might come out about what I’d done. Even about my fingerprints on the radio.

But most of all, I knew that this was a time that could change our lives together. Where we would somehow either become closer — or grow irretrievably apart.

An officer spotted us as we started to walk into our building. He came over and asked if we’d known the people next door. I said yes.

“What kind of people were they?”

I said, “They seemed nice. Except they were very heavy drinkers.”

“Yeah,” he said with a nod, “there were bottles all over the place.”

I was almost afraid to say what I said next. “They played their radio a lot. Loud. It’s the only problem I had with them.”

“Yes,” Bette spoke up for the first time, “they loved music.” And as I looked at her she said, “Good music. It’s so sad, so horrible. I know we’ll always think of them when we hear good music.”