Sound of Revenge

The day I found out Ben moved in next door to my office, I nearly threw my coffee at the wall.

Let me back up. I'm Charley Hart, thirty-four, freelance analyst, which is a fancy way of saying I do spreadsheets for small businesses out of a rented office behind Sander's Garage. Miles Sander owns the place. We've been friends since we were twenty-one and both too broke to eat anything but ramen. He rents me the back office cheap because he's a decent man and and I do his books at the going rate, which we put in an actual written agreement years ago, because Miles doesn't do favors without paperwork. The rent and the books are their own tidy business and have nothing to do with anything else in this story.

Ben is my ex. He cheated on me two years ago, when I was thirty-two, and moved out of our apartment with his gym-teacher dignity intact and my good blender. I hadn't thought about him in months. Then one Tuesday I heard his voice through the wall.

Not through my office wall. Through the wall of the building next door, which shares a wall with my office. Old construction, thin as cardboard. He was on his phone, laughing, and I recognized the laugh before I recognized the words.

"Miles," I said, walking into the garage proper, still holding my coffee. "Ben lives next door."

Miles was under a Honda, just his legs sticking out. "The one sharing your wall?"

"The one sharing my wall. I can hear him brush his teeth, Miles. I can hear his television. I heard him tell somebody about his new place with the good light."

The legs scooted out. Miles sat up, greasy rag in hand, thirty-four years old and grinning like we were back in college. "You're kidding."

"I wish."

He wiped his hands slow, thinking. Then he got that look. The bad look. The one that's gotten us kicked out of two karaoke bars and one wedding. "You know," he said, "with a wall that thin, you could give him a show."

I blinked. "A what?"

"A show. Loud one. He's got to listen to everything through that wall anyway. Seems rude not to provide entertainment."

And that's when my whole plan lit up like a dashboard warning light. Because Ben left me, and Ben always, always thought he was the one winning. The idea of Ben lying in his bed with the good light, staring at that wall, knowing exactly what was happening on the other side and unable to do a thing about it? That was not revenge. That was art.

"Miles," I said slowly. "I could kiss you."

"Don't, my wife would be upset."

"You don't have a wife."

"That's how upset she'd get."

I went home that night and dug out the vibrator I'd bought the month after Ben left. Good purchase. Better than the blender replacement, even. Friday afternoon I brought it to the office in my laptop bag like it was a power bank, which, honestly, in a way it is.

The first test run was just volume calibration. I put on headphones as cover, sat at my desk, turned the thing on low, and pressed it against the wall for a second. Then I listened.

Thud. Muffled, low, a bass note through drywall.

I laughed so hard I had to sit down. Because I could hear it, and that meant he could hear it, and there was nothing on God's green earth he could do about it except lie there and know.

I waited until the following Wednesday. I know his schedule from the sounds. He's home by six, quiet until eight, then television. I waited until his television was off. Then I locked the office door, settled into my desk chair, and got to work.

And look, I will not pretend this was a chore. I hadn't been with anyone since Ben, unless you count batteries, and I do count batteries. The toy is a good one, curved, three settings, and by the second setting I'd stopped thinking about revenge entirely and started thinking about nothing at all. My head went back. My breath got loud. I let it get loud. That was the entire point, after all.

I was right at the edge, third setting, thighs shaking, when something knocked on the wall.

Three slow raps. Knuckle on drywall.

I nearly launched the thing across the room. I yanked my headphones off, sat there with my heart slamming, staring at the wall like it had grown a face. Then, low, through the seam where the wall meets the doorframe of the old passage between the buildings, a voice.

"Louder."

Miles. It was Miles. Not Ben. Not a break-in. Miles, standing in the dark passage that connects the garage to my building, which I had forgotten existed, whispering through a gap the size of a dime.

"You absolute bastard," I hissed at the wall.