Wall Songs

My office gave me a window, a plant that refuses to die, and a title with the word senior in it. Senior paralegal. Twenty-eight years old and it only took seven years of billable hours to get someone to say that out loud in a meeting.

So on Friday I did the responsible thing. I went looking for the ghost noise.

Here is how it started. Two days ago I moved my work stuff into a rented studio in the old clothing warehouse on Mill Street. The town converted half of it into cheap rooms for artists, and the anniversary committee took the other half, and somehow a paralegal with a promotion hangover fits into that equation. My studio is small and smells faintly of old wool, which I have decided is charming.

And through the thin wall on the left side, I heard it. That sound. Wobbling, rising, mournful, like a voice singing from underwater. It came at odd hours. Wednesday afternoon for ten minutes. Thursday night for an hour, on and off, rising and falling like something breathing.

I did what anyone does. I texted my friend Connie.

"What is the wobbly ghost instrument called," I typed.

"A theremin," she replied in four seconds. "Why."

"No reason!"

So yes. I knew by Thursday what it was, and I knew that the person making it was on the other side of a wall I could press my palm against. And I had, more than once. Pressed my palm against it. Like a weirdo.

Here is the other thing about Thursday night. Paper thin walls go both ways. I had a glass of wine, I was celebrating my promotion in the traditional way, alone, and I got loud. I am not proud. I am also not that sorry.

Friday morning I wrote a note. I sat at the desk in my new studio and I wrote:

What instrument makes ghosts horny?

And under it, my phone number, because I am a professional and professionals leave contact details.

I slid it under the door of the studio to my left on my lunch break and then spent forty minutes pretending to review a lease.

Nothing came back all afternoon. I went home. I sulked mildly. I ate toast for dinner as a functioning adult.

Saturday morning there was a piece of paper that had been slid under my door, folded in thirds. It was a hand drawn map. An actual map, with a little compass rose in the corner and a dotted line that started at a drawing of my door, went left along the corridor, around a corner, past a coffee machine with a note that said avoid, and ended at a door labeled with a sketch of a theremin. Beneath it, in neat block capitals:

THEREMIN LESSON AT 8 PM. BRING A QUESTION. D.

I read it four times. Then I checked the time. Then I regretted every hour of my life between now and 8 PM.

I went at 7:58, which felt cool, and knocked.

"Come in, it's open," said a voice through the door, and I went in.

The studio on that side is bigger than mine and messier. Long tables covered in rolled paper, inks, a lamp with a bendy neck. And on the near table, sitting there like it had teleported from 1955, a wooden box with a vertical antenna on the right and a horizontal loop on the left. The theremin.

The man behind it was tall, dark hair pushed around by his own hands at some point, early thirties maybe, wearing a shirt with rolled sleeves. He stood up.

"You must be the ghost horny note," he said.

"That's me. Rachael." I put out my hand. "Twenty-eight, paralegal, recently promoted, emotionally unstable about a wobble sound."

"Declan. Thirty-two. Mapmaker for the anniversary committee, emotionally unstable about all sounds." We shook. His hand was warm and had ink on the knuckles. "You've been listening."

"I've been listening for four days. My friend texted me the name of the instrument before I even knew there was a person."

"Then she did the hard part." He stepped aside from the box. "Come here. Lesson one. You don't touch it. The whole trick is that. You hover."

I came around the table. The theremin looked harmless, like a little podium with an aerial. "You're joking. It makes that sound with no touching?"

"Pitch antenna on the right, volume loop on the left. Your hand is the instrument. Watch." He stood behind it, raised his right hand, and the sound bloomed out of the box, that same underwater wail I had heard through the wall, rising as his hand moved closer to the antenna and sinking as it fell away. It shouldn't be beautiful. It absolutely is.

"Now you," he said, and stepped back.

I raised my hand. My first note came out like a seagull being personally insulted. Declan laughed, not unkindly.

"Smaller movements. Think of it as very slow."

I tried again. This time I got a long, swelling slide, low to high, and something in my chest went along with it. I moved my hand closer and the pitch climbed, closer and closer, and Declan reached out to adjust my elbow, and his fingers brushed the back of my hand, and my note wobbled all over the place.

"Sorry," he said. But he didn't move his hand.

"Don't be sorry," I said. I turned my palm up. He fit his hand into it, which was an answer, so I said it out loud. "You can kiss me, if you want. I've been listening to you through a wall for four days. I feel like I've earned a kiss."

He laughed, and then he kissed me, and it was a good kiss, unhurried, one hand at my jaw. When we broke off I was grinning like an idiot.

"So," I said, because I am apparently brave now that I have a job title. "Full disclosure. Thursday night I heard you through the wall too. Not the theremin."

There was a pause. Then Declan tipped his head back and laughed, a real one, both hands on the table.

"I was going to be mortified," I said, "but honestly the acoustics are your fault."

"My fault," he agreed. "And to be clear, I heard you too. Around midnight. That sigh."

"Oh god!" I covered my face. "That was not quiet."

"It was the best thing I've heard through that wall all week, and I've heard myself all week."

I peeked at him through my fingers. He was smiling, and there was a question in it, so I took my