Interruptus.

There had been a woman once - in a way - who had made him question things. 

Before he had lived in the little house near the river, Volkmer had lived in a pre-war brick apartment building in town. The window of his little living room had looked out into the center courtyard and into the opposite apartment beyond. He had lived there through the winter and felt that the building was a frozen warren of dull red caves, but then spring came and it was in the spring that he realized that he could see into that opposite apartment. Whereas all through the winter there had been a dark curtain there, suddenly there was a bright square of light. At first the apartment had been completely empty, but within a few days a young couple moved boxes in. She was small and beautiful in a pale, pre-Raphaelite way. He was lanky with a beard and his body was lean in such a way that Volkmer sometimes thought that he could see the sinews and muscles stretch and then relax a layer beneath the skin. They were beautiful in that thoughtless way that only youth ever can be.

They never did buy curtains for the living room and never appeared to even think to do so.
Many nights Volkmer would turn out all of the lights in his apartment and turn his chair toward his window and their window and he would watch them go through the motions of their evenings together. At some point he realized that one or both of them were deaf. In a moment of sudden clarity he’d realized that the humming bird motions of their fingers were a language.

From the bookstore at the mall he purchased a book and set about decoding them. It took all of the spring, but eventually Volkmer was able to somewhat follow the flitter of their words. He, it turned out, was rather funny. He was animated and gregarious. She, it seemed to Volkmer, was more contemplative, though occasionally sardonic.  

Many nights She would disappear into the bedroom and He would continue to sit in the living room watching television. Volkmer could not see into the bedroom once the door was closed, but he could see when She turned out the light to sleep because the edges of the doorframe would cease to be illuminated. On those nights Volkmer would stare at the man angrily, unable to understand why He did not follow Her into bedroom at every opportunity, if only to nuzzle His face into Her hair or press His mouth slowly to the back of her neck.

That spring had passed slowly into summer and there came a night in July when they arrived home late, dressed nicely and drunk. She in a flimsy little black dress and He in slacks and a tie. Volkmer’s windows had been open for the breeze, as had theirs, and he heard her giggling and it was - he’d realized suddenly and obviously - the first time he had ever heard Her make a sound.

They had kissed there in the living room, and touched there in the living room and Volkmer had inched his chair just a little nearer to the window. His hands slid down to the flesh of Her thigh and Her fingers ran across His lips and He raised the dress up and over and off of Her body and She pulled at the zipper of His pants and He unwrapped Her from her bra and She unbuttoned hastily each of the buttons of His shirt while His fingers, always so quick, moved back between Her thighs.
 Volkmer watched them as they giggled and stumbled and kissed and soon they had moved all the way to their window and all he could see then were their shapes against the light of the apartment. 

Volkmer watched as His body moved behind Her and She pressed Her palms flat against the glass of the window. He cupped her breasts, tenderly at first, then harder as She began to push Her hips back into Him. He reached an arm out above the arch of Her back, pressing His own palm flat against the glass for support as He leaned into Her body.

Volkmer listened carefully to the wide vowels of her sounds as they drifted across to him.
 In his blackedout apartment Volkmer stepped carefully toward the window and pressed his own palms against it, knowing that the thickness and warmth of the glass against his hand felt exactly as it did for Him, and for Her.

Then She suddenly let out a loud oblong moan and jerked against Him, shifting His weight and His palm left the glass by uncontrolled inches, then fell back fast and his palm smashed hard into the window and the glass split into a web of fissures and a sharp crack echoed around the brick courtyard of the building.

Shocked, He grabbed Her shoulders and pulled Her away from the window, then quickly guided Her down, out of sight onto the floor.

Volkmer took his own hand off his own window and he looked out to the other apartments facing into the courtyard. A few of them had snapped on their lights.

Then he heard it. The summer breeze carried it into his apartment; the disembodied sounds of Them laughing uncontrollably. 

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