“Maddie! You’ve just gotten here and already you look like it’s time to go home. What’s the matter?”
“Emily, I hardly got a wink of sleep last night. You remember how I’ve told you about that old lady who lives next door to me? The widow?”
“Yes?”
“The one who always turns up her radio, or turns up her TV because she’s half deaf and can’t hear it. Well, I’ll tell you this! Everyone else in the building can hear her radio or her TV.”
“Oh, dear. Was she at it again last night?”
“I’m telling you! She’d been up and down with it throughout the evening, and I’d have to bang a little on the wall. ‘Mrs. Kevitz!’ I’d yell. ‘Mrs. Kevitz! Turn that racket down over there!’ And just as I’m settling in and going to sleep, I’m getting Danny Thomas yelling at his bratty son on a rerun of that old Make Room for Daddy!”
“Oh!”
“So I get up and cross the room and bang on the wall again. ‘Mrs. Kevitz! Turn that racket down!’ But nothing happens.”
“Nothing?”
“Danny Thomas is still yelling and the audience is still laughing just like they all did in the first place. Well, it’s near the end of the show and I think maybe she’ll shut the TV off and go to bed like a human being. But then there are noisy commercials and noisy jingles for I don’t know what. And then? Another old TV show comes on and it’s still loud enough to be heard outside.”
“What was this one?”
“It was Dick Van Dyke.”
“Oh, I’ve always enjoyed that one.”
“Me, too. But not at that hour of the night when I need to get some sleep.”
“No, certainly not. So then what, Maddie?”
“I get out of bed again and cross the room again and pound on the wall again. ‘Mrs. Kevitz! Turn that racket down!’ And what kind of results do you think I get, Emily?”
“I’m guessing none.”
“You’re a good guesser. I can hear Morey Amsterdam insulting that Mel Cooley guy and Rose Marie telling him to pipe down like they were performing it at the end of my bed for me.”
“Oh, that’s terrible.”
“It sure was. So I do the banging on the wall some more. ‘Mrs. Kevitz! Turn that racket down!’ And once more for emphasis, I yell, ‘Turn that racket down, Mrs. Kevitz!'”
“Did it work this time?”
“Do I look like it worked that time?”
“Well, no, you don’t.”
“I shouldn’t think I do. I put on my robe and go out in the hall, and you know what kinds of people can be in the halls at that hour and I don’t like to do this, but I don’t have any choice. So I go out into the hall and next door and bang on the old lady’s door. ‘Mrs. Kevitz! Mrs. Kevitz! Turn that racket down! Turn it down right now!’ And I just about yelled something extremely unkind, but I kept myself from it somehow.”
“You’re a saint; that’s all there is to it.”
“Thank you, Emily, dear; I try, God knows I try. And I go back in to my apartment and I can hear that old bat’s TV like it was my own. Well, I can tell you I’ve had more than enough of this. So I call the super on the phone. And it takes a bunch of rings because he doesn’t like answering the phone at that hour of the night. I don’t blame him, naturally, but still, he’s the super.”
“Yeah.”
“And he gets on the phone and is all, ‘Whaddya want?’ I tell him that old Mrs. Kevitz next door has her TV on like 60 and won’t turn it down and I gotta get some sleep so I can come to work this morning. So he says he’ll call her. Now I’ve got her telephone ringing in addition to whatever funny things Dick Van Dyke is saying and nothing changes.”
“Then what?”
“Then, when the old lady’s phone quits ringing, I call the super back. ‘She didn’t answer,’ I told him. ‘I know she didn’t answer,’ he says. ‘Well, you’re gonna have to come up here and do something,’ I says. ‘Fine,’ he says, only I don’t think that was the word he’d started to say, if you get what I mean.”
“Oh, goodness!”
And it’s another ten minutes before I finally hear him tromp his big beer belly up the stairs and pounds at the old lady’s door. I’ve still got my robe on and I step into the hall, even though I don’t like to, but the super’s there and nothing’s going to happen with him standing there. And he gets out his passkey and goes into Mrs. Kevitz’s apartment. Pretty soon, the TV goes all quiet.”
“It’s about time!”
“Yeah, it is. And then the super comes out and he looks a little blank. ‘She’s dead,’ he says.”
“Dead?”
“As a doornail, I guess. ‘She’s on the floor,’ he says. ‘She musta fell over on the volume button on the remote,’ he says. Well, I don’t want nobody dead, naturally.”
“Naturally.”
“But still … that noise!”
“Yeah. Did you get some sleep after that?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But just as I was drifting off finally, the ambalance and cops the super called show up and there are sirens and they tromp up the stairs and make all sorts of noise for the next hour.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Yeah, it is. Nobody’s got no respect for anybody in this city anymore.”
“At least she won’t be making noise tonight. You’ll get to sleep good tonight.”
“Thank God for that. You know, rest in peace and all. But that was so inconsiderate.”
“Yeah.”
