It\u2019s not worth knowing what\u2019s inside the wall. The thing\u2019s brick and I\u2019m not made of money, especially not after buying a home. The knocking you hear, coming from behind it\u2014just ignore it. It\u2019s the big city; apartments always knock. It\u2019s the air conditioner in the place next door, maybe. The pipes, probably settling. It\u2019s nothing to concern yourself with as a first-time home (apartment) buyer\u2014<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just a vaguely human shape painted on the wall of one of the bedrooms, that knocks at specific intervals.<\/p>\n
You can hear it all the way in the kitchen, or the bathroom, but (upside) you can\u2019t from the office. That\u2019s good enough for me. And the thing (the outline of a man painted on the wall) isn\u2019t in the master, don\u2019t worry. Now, if it was the master, I\u2019d want to know what\u2019s behind the wall. But it\u2019s the spare bedroom so, no, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s because there\u2019s nothing to be concerned about. The realtor said it was nothing (she\u2019s an expert). She also said the previous owner disappeared but that\u2019s just the area, which is changing, up and coming (gentrifying). And let\u2019s face it, an estate sale made the apartment a good price for a 3\/1 in the heart of a city that isn\u2019t mid-size, one that\u2019s hard to break into, difficult to find a career and a future in, if you\u2019re 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\u2019s a starter home, I\u2019m not trapped here forever. Ever meet someone who owns a home and loves every part of it? Well when you\u2019re a homeowner, you\u2019ll understand.<\/p>\n
Like I said, that thing, that man, is in the spare bedroom, so it\u2019s 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\u2019d knock back rap-tap but the Serbs didn\u2019t like the noise. That\u2019s why I run the fan and the space heater, for the white noise. White noise as in, \u2018not white man painted on the wall\u2019 noise.<\/p>\n
The more I think about it, the more I don\u2019t even know why someone would paint a man on the wall, much less put someone in there, if there\u2019s someone in there, if the previous owner is in there (he isn\u2019t). By that, I mean there\u2019s room for more than one man (I\u2019ve 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\u2019t do much. It just made the first man on the wall, the one that\u2019s possibly in the wall, seem a lot more eye-catching. And his rap-tapping got louder.<\/p>\n
At least that\u2019s 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\u2019t 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).<\/p>\n
I asked her if she thinks someone could survive sealed into a wall for this long but she didn\u2019t remember my apartment in particular since the area\u2019s getting big for tech and the neighborhood\u2019s such an investment that it\u2019s tough to remember just one place out of hundreds that she\u2019s sold. I asked again, this time more forcefully (politely, as I wanted an expert\u2019s 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\u2019d be happy to SELL it again\u2014<\/p>\n
Which was a terrible answer.<\/p>\n
She thinks it\u2019s 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\u2019s not. A guy as smart as one that rap-taps at specific intervals for months straight isn\u2019t dumb enough to throw away an investment\u2014he\u2019s made of paint and alive in there and smarter than this whole city combined.<\/p>\n
The realtor doesn\u2019t get it, but my guys do. We\u2019re 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\u2019t need the city out there, the realtors, \u201cexperts\u201d\u2014we\u2019ve got the whole city in here (we work from HOME, which this apartment IS, even if it doubles as an INVESTMENT), pipes and all.<\/p>\n
So, yes, I know what\u2019s in the wall. It\u2019s the same as what I\u2019m sealing in this office and money is no object. This apartment\u2019s up-and-coming and, sure, you can sell it (realtors, can sell it), but I\u2019m not leaving, not ever. Living here, in the city, is an INVESTMENT. And when I knock every seven minutes from behind this wall\u2014you won\u2019t be able to ignore it. Even in the master bath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s not worth knowing what\u2019s inside the wall. It\u2019s just a vaguely human shape painted on the wall of one of the bedrooms, that knocks at specific intervals. But the thing\u2019s brick and I\u2019m not made of money, especially not after buying a home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":21965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-marco-visciolaccio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21406"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21966,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21406\/revisions\/21966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}