Little by Little
Susan Tepper
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A drum roll woke me at 3am. When I saw that time lit in red on my alarm clock I almost had a hemorrhage. The racket was coming from the downstairs apartment. I got up and kicked the floor a few times. No change. Then, in full force with the cymbals and all the rest.
I stuffed my ears with cotton balls and put two pillows over my head. When daylight showed through the blinds, I got dressed quickly and went to the pocket park at Bleecker and 6th for some peace and quiet. A few street people were scattering crumbs to the squirrels. I stayed a while then phoned my friend Robin to meet me at Rocco’s for cappuccino.
“My head is shattered,” I told her. “I’ll have to move out immediately.”
“But aren’t you rent-control?”
The waiter, Antoine, put down the two cappuccinos. “A cannoli with pistachios?” he said with a wink at me. He knew my cannoli habit.
“Maybe later, Antoine.”
When he was gone, Robin said, “Want me to ask Rocco to lower the music?”
“How can I let it go! A new apartment will be quintuple what I’m paying. I always expected I would die there. You know—like Dijuna Barnes dying across the hall from some other dying writer. I heard he used to scream out: You still in there Dijuna?”
“That’s kinda creepy,” said Robin, taking a sip.
“You think so?”
“What I think is you should talk to this drummer.”
“Oh… I don’t know. People are really nuts now. He could pull out a gun and shoot me.”
She pointed at my cup. “It’s getting cold.”
I spooned the creamy foam into my mouth then took a few sips.
“Well… I suppose you could concoct a scheme,” said Robin. “Remember when I sewed Ralph’s coat sleeves together?”
In spite of my fierce headache I cracked up laughing. “How could I ever forget!”
Ralph was her old boss who was simply intolerable in every way. Then, at the end of the day, he’d hold out his coat to her, so she could help him slip into it. It galled her. That’s when she concocted the coat scheme. Just a few stitches each day. Little by little, she named it. Eventually, he’d start to feel the tightening of the sleeves as his hands went in; but he’d assume he was getting fat or maybe even hallucinating it. He wouldn’t really figure it out until his hands could no longer get inside the sleeves. Robin timed it carefully By then she’d have quit; getting the last laugh.
“Should we order cannoli’s?” I said.
She nodded.
I caught Antoine on his way to the kitchen. “Pistachio for me, and…
“Chocolate chips for Robin,” he finished. “I don’t know how you girls keep your figures.”
“Thank you, Antoine.”
Robin just glared at him.
“See, you get taken advantage of by men. I assume it’s a male drummer who caught a look at you on the street when he was moving in. Saw sucker all over your face. Found out from the Super it was you living above him and voila! The torture begins.”
I took a deep breath. What she said had a certain validity. I do get taken advantage of by men. “Well look at you and Ralph! He took big advantage of you.”
“Those days are dead and buried,” she said. “We need a scheme. You live above this jerk. That gives you a big advantage.”
“It does?”
“Yeah! You can attack him back from above. You have the superior attack position.”
Antoine interrupted: “Girls, another capo?”
“OK,” I said.
“No,” said Robin. She kept silent until he was out of earshot. “You can’t be too careful,” she told me. “The drummer could be a friend of his, for all we know. Maybe that’s how he got into the building. Antoine may have brokered the deal with the Super.”
Rocco’s was starting to fill up. We moved into chairs against the wall so that other people could sit down, too, at the table for eight. But we put our bags on the table blocking off the two chairs directly next to ours.
“Water,” said Robin. “We’ll go with water.”
“You want me to overflow my tub? That will make some big mess in my apartment, too.”
“Do I look dumb? Would I make a scheme that would jeopardize your position?”
She kept saying position, like it was two militias facing off.
“Well what then?”
“Here’s your’s, honey.” Antoine picking up my old cup and saucer, setting down a fresh cappuccino. “Still time to change your mind,” he said to Robin. She ignored him.
“You don’t have to be rude,” I told her.
“You know that old hardware store on Houston?”
“That place is still there? With the keys and all? I bought stuff there years ago, I got my Medeco lock and some odds and ends.”
A woman with a terrible blonde dye job took a seat on the aisle of our table. She was alone. That meant nobody would sit across from her, which meant our table was more or less pretty much filled; despite the few empty chairs left. Nobody ever climbed over someone else to get at a seat. They went to the back greenhouse, reluctantly, if worst came to worst.
“Finish your drink and we’ll head on over,” Robin said. “You’re going to buy a drill this time. It’ll be Little by Little again. Part Two.”
I finished off my capo and we paid at the register. Rocco was wearing his crazy red trademark hat with all the stuff pinned to it. “You want some house cookies to go? he said. “Nice and warm, just came out.”
“We’ll get some later,” I told him.
On the street I started to feel uneasy. I was still very tired and the caffeine and sugar rush wouldn’t last long.
The fruit market had a nice pile of oranges on their outside stand. “Maybe I’ll get some oranges, they’re healthy,” I told Robin.
“Concentrate!”
“OK.”
“Because little by little you’re going to drill through your floor all these tiny deep holes. Clear down through his ceiling. We’ll have to buy a long drill bit. And little by little you’ll pour water into the holes. Holes so tiny you won’t even notice in your floor. By the time you’ve drilled dozens, his apartment will be a rain forest.”
“I thought it was dry in the Rainforest.”
“Don’t quibble! You want him out, right? And meanwhile get some really good ear plugs from Bigelow’s. This is going to take time. Little by little.”
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Playlist song: B.J. Thomas, “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head”
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Susan Isla Tepper is the author of 11 published books of fiction and poetry and 5 stage plays. Her work has been nominated 21 times for the Pushcart Prize, and once for a Pulitzer Prize. Her stage play Crooked Heart will appear in the May Play Festival at Origin Theatre Company, NYC. It previewed in a fall reading at the Irish Repertory Theatre in NYC.
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Posted in All Music: Espressivo '24 and tagged in #boudin, #fiction, #music