Our next-door days are numbered. I will be moving house soon and then my neighbour will be my neighbour no more.
I’ve actually been dreading to tell him, worried that telling him will make him more adamant than ever to have me over for dinner. But as the day approaches there’s no beating around the bush anymore; there are people coming to see my apartment, and I break the news gently.
The man sits at the table and thinks. His thoughts are with his wife who is sitting in the other room. He can hear she’s crying. The man takes a swig of his beer and thinks. He could go back in there, say he’s sorry, and that’d be all she needed to hear and they could be back in their neutral zone again.
But the man isn’t sorry and too many times now he’s admitted to being so even if he wasn’t really. So he drinks his beer. He can hear she’s rummaging around in the kitchen, looking for something.
He ain’t sorry. He’s relieved. He feels a strange elation in finally knowing what it’s like, and wonders why he took so long to get there. Looking back, it’d been dead easy and it felt fucking great.
He hears her scream briefly. And a bit more, all drenched in sobs. Then the gunshot.
The man sits at the table, thinking and drinking his beer.
