Aaron woke up to a strange silence. His toes were cold. He didn't want to move his legs out of the small radius of warmth his body had conducted throughout the night. He pulled the covers tighter around his neck and tried to force himself back into sleep. His dreams had been pleasant, and he wanted to return to them, to Janne's arms. He couldn't remember the sound of her voice, couldn't feel her soft Nordic hands anymore. He wooed his mind back into an awkward, uncomfortable place somewhere in between sleep and consciousness. He tried to recreate his dreams of the previous night, but his subconscious wouldn't buy the facade, and they were too practical, too logical, too formulaic. His psyche knew he wasn't really dreaming, and he was about to give up when he heard a knock on his door. Cursing under his breath, Aaron flung the covers from his body and slipped his feet into his lime-green terrycloth slippers. He hurried to the door, having not been in contact with any of his neighbors and hoping for a lucid conversation, though also dreading the possibility of confronting another lunatic. He peered through the peep-hole and viewed two lush, bluish-green eyes glancing down at an angle, inhabiting a man's face. The fish-bowl quality of the peep-hole seemed to dramatically shrink the man's head in proportion to the rest of his body, while somehow keeping his eyes true to size. Aaron unlocked his deadbolt and opened the door only enough so that he could stick his head out without offering his entire figure for the man to look at. Immediately, a wide grin, obviously forced beyond its natural extent, spread itself over the man's face.

"Good evening, my name is Mr. Paul Neuman, might I ask what your doctorate is in?" the man cheerfully inquired.

"Well, I'm not a medical doctor, if you need one. Is someone hurt?"

Though not a particularly religious man, Aaron had been raised Jewish, and considered himself a good Jew. He attended synagogue as often as he could, which translated to as often as he felt like, which generally was about once a month. He was not especially spiritual, either, and really only went to synagogue in order to counter the numerous vices in his life, adultery being his sin of choice. Today, he felt exceptionally Jewish because he walked all the way down the block to the synagogue in a torrential downpour. His L.L. Bean rain jacket certainly did its job, and his sweater vest stayed reasonably dry during his trek. Towards the end of the service, in the middle of a prayer, a crazy Russian burst through the doors and stood wide-eyed at the end of the aisle. He attempted to produce a smile, which ended up an awkward grimace, and said "I'll just come back later then?" and turned and ran out as ungracefully as he had entered. "Blubbering idiot," Aaron thought. "The one day I decide to be a good Jewish boy and that fool has to ruin it for me!"

Aaron's morning only spiraled down from the interruption at synagogue. Hoping the weather had cleared up, he was abysmally disappointed when he exited the synagogue and the rain had only increased in magnitude. As a result of the sheer volume of water rushing down the streets, it appeared that the open manhole in the road had backed up, and sewage had joined the rainwater puddling at Aaron's feet. "Was that a head?" he asked himself. "It couldn't be...." he thought. Before he was able to inspect it further, a Mercedes-Benz flew by and splashed a mixture of mud and sewage onto Aaron's pants. The sludge dripped down his pant legs into his galoshes and soaked his wool socks. "Bloody psycho!" he shouted at the woman driving away from Watershed Heights. His day thoroughly ruined, Aaron walked back to his apartment in disgust.

Aaron unpacked his record player first, setting it on the floor as he had no furniture to place it upon. "Ah Chopin. My only friend," he muttered as he pulled out his record and set it playing. He turned the volume up as loud as it could go and blasted Chopin's Waltz No. 5 in A flat major. The neighbors may not like it, but hey, who doesn't like Chopin?

"Ha. What neighbors?" he thought. The only person he'd met so far was Marjorie, the woman he'd seen hanging around the first floor early on the morning he moved in. She was carrying a box of what seemed to be loads of laundry and inspecting the moldy walls outside what must have been her apartment. "I wonder what her story is," he thought. "She get kicked out too?" Maybe everyone in this whole blasted apartment building is only here because they can't stay anywhere else.

He let his thoughts return to the music, fully submitting his senses to the fluttering alto line and the hammering melody. One thing he enjoyed doing more than pretending to be British was pretending to be musical. Aaron had no rhythmic or musical talent whatsoever, but his facade of having a great appreciation for classical music tended to make people take him more seriously. "Maybe the neighbors will want to come over for tea sometime to discuss Brahms," he mused. "Or maybe they'll just want me to shut up."

Introduction

It was a dark and stormy night. Dr. Aaron Gallagher, a former professor and head of the psychology department at the local university, lugged his suitcase up the 4 flights of stairs to his apartment, number 448. "Crazy bitch," he thought. "Why'd she have to move out AND sell the house?" His suitcase was full of his necessary belongings, such as clothes and toiletries, but also of the various objects his wife (ex-wife, technically speaking) Robin threw at him when she kicked him out. Objects like: a silver napkin holder, piano music to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, an umbrella, an umbrella stand, and a bike pump. The napkin holder was especially uncomfortable, he found, to be hit in the back with. At 5'6" and roughly 200 pounds, the stairs were no easy feat for Aaron. By the time he got to the top, his Lands' End button-down was entirely soaked through. "Blast," he muttered under his breath, one of the many phrases he used to make himself sound more British and therefore more clever. It worked, or so he thought. It did at least with the Norwegian exchange student Janne with whom he carried on an affair for roughly seven months. "We never would have gotten caught," thought Aaron, "if she hadn't persuaded me to boost her grade on the final."
Aaron opened his two windows in the apartment because it was "so damn hot in here," and unpacked his many sweater vests and sensible slacks. He set out his alarm clock, except he didn't really see the point, as he didn't have anything he needed to wake up for anymore. He lost his job, his family, his home, all for nothing. Janne went back to Norway and won't return his emails. So now, with no prospects, plans, hope, or optimism, Aaron sat on his unmade bed, and pondered how he possibly could have sunk so low.