It’s not worth knowing what’s inside the wall. The thing’s brick and I’m not made of money, especially not after buying a home. The knocking you hear, coming from behind it—just ignore it. It’s the big city; apartments always knock. It’s the air conditioner in the place next door, maybe. The pipes, probably settling. It’s nothing to concern yourself with as a first-time home (apartment) buyer—

It’s just a vaguely human shape painted on the wall of one of the bedrooms, that knocks at specific intervals.

You can hear it all the way in the kitchen, or the bathroom, but (upside) you can’t from the office. That’s good enough for me. And the thing (the outline of a man painted on the wall) isn’t in the master, don’t worry. Now, if it was the master, I’d want to know what’s behind the wall. But it’s the spare bedroom so, no, I don’t think it’s worth it to find contractors, to find three, negotiate prices, get a date, and set a time which we all know contractors never meet, just to know whether that human shape on the wall in white paint on the exposed red brick is something to be concerned about.

And that’s because there’s nothing to be concerned about. The realtor said it was nothing (she’s an expert). She also said the previous owner disappeared but that’s just the area, which is changing, up and coming (gentrifying). And let’s face it, an estate sale made the apartment a good price for a 3/1 in the heart of a city that isn’t mid-size, one that’s hard to break into, difficult to find a career and a future in, if you’re not from here (like me). Places like these, with character, always have one or two niggles. You get used to them. Like Serbian neighbors. Pipes, settling. Or an eggshell man on the wall with his hands outstretched, legs shoulder length apart, head faceless, knocking every few minutes. It’s a starter home, I’m not trapped here forever. Ever meet someone who owns a home and loves every part of it? Well when you’re a homeowner, you’ll understand.

Like I said, that thing, that man, is in the spare bedroom, so it’s not like I need to see it constantly. I work in the office (converted guest bedroom). There, you can barely hear the knocks. They come every seven minutes, seven minutes on the nose, a two-touch rap-tap. At first I’d knock back rap-tap but the Serbs didn’t like the noise. That’s why I run the fan and the space heater, for the white noise. White noise as in, ‘not white man painted on the wall’ noise.

The more I think about it, the more I don’t even know why someone would paint a man on the wall, much less put someone in there, if there’s someone in there, if the previous owner is in there (he isn’t). By that, I mean there’s room for more than one man (I’ve got sixteen hundred square feet). You could paint him on each of the walls, if you wanted to. Put them hand-to-hand, or shoulder-to-shoulder, make them less lonely in this big suffocating city. At least I thought that, but when I painted a good eight more of them in the spare room, the new coat of paint didn’t do much. It just made the first man on the wall, the one that’s possibly in the wall, seem a lot more eye-catching. And his rap-tapping got louder.

At least that’s what I told the realtor when she came over for drinks. We got drunk and she liked the new French doors for the office (guest bedroom, converted) but the knocking every seven minutes turned her off and she said some of the renovations (like the white human shadows I painted on the walls and ceilings of the master bedroom) didn’t look great, especially since I got rid of the furniture and she was not interested (not interested, she emphasized) in fucking on the bare hardwood floor (carpet removed, repainted with white figures).

I asked her if she thinks someone could survive sealed into a wall for this long but she didn’t remember my apartment in particular since the area’s getting big for tech and the neighborhood’s such an investment that it’s tough to remember just one place out of hundreds that she’s sold. I asked again, this time more forcefully (politely, as I wanted an expert’s opinion), and she postulated that if the man in the wall, on the wall, somewhere between the bricks, wanted to leave, he could just leave instead of knocking every seven minutes, and she’d be happy to SELL it again—

Which was a terrible answer.

She thinks it’s easy, leaving the exposed-brick apartments of up-and-coming investment-level neighborhoods with hard-to-break-into tech jobs and Serbian holdouts? Easy, leaving the city? It’s not. A guy as smart as one that rap-taps at specific intervals for months straight isn’t dumb enough to throw away an investment—he’s made of paint and alive in there and smarter than this whole city combined.

The realtor doesn’t get it, but my guys do. We’re on the same page. All of us. Homeowners. White with arms stretched to my exact same wingspan, painted on every wall, some touching, some angular and perpendicular. We don’t need the city out there, the realtors, “experts”—we’ve got the whole city in here (we work from HOME, which this apartment IS, even if it doubles as an INVESTMENT), pipes and all.

So, yes, I know what’s in the wall. It’s the same as what I’m sealing in this office and money is no object. This apartment’s up-and-coming and, sure, you can sell it (realtors, can sell it), but I’m not leaving, not ever. Living here, in the city, is an INVESTMENT. And when I knock every seven minutes from behind this wall—you won’t be able to ignore it. Even in the master bath.