the house without her coffee. There were certain rituals that shouldn’t be sacrificed. In Louisa Brannigan’s opinion, a civilized cup of coffee in the morning was what separated man from beast.
She poured herself a cup and felt a stab of satisfaction when she heard the thunk of her morning paper against the heavy wood front door of the two-story brick row house. Lately, Louisa had taken to telling herself it was the little things in life that really mattered. Lunch at the Willard was nice on her birthday, but fresh sheets, perfectly cooked pasta, glasses without water spots, and five minutes to leaf through the paper before leaving for work were pleasures she could count on day in and day out. She especially loved the five minutes she allotted for the paper. Five minutes of peace and sanity. Five minutes to enjoy her coffee and read the funnies. It wasn’t too much to ask, was it?
Pete Streeter also heard the paper hit. When it suited him, Streeter occupied the apartment above Louisa Brannigan’s. He had his own entrance, his own on-street parking, and his own hot water heater, but he didn’t have his own paper delivery. Ordinarily, Streeter didn’t give a fig about the morning paper, but there was a movie review he wanted to read this particular day, so he padded down a flight of stairs and snatched Louisa Brannigan’s paper.
His door clicked closed a moment before hers was carefully opened. If he’d known Louisa, he might have smiled at the colorful cursing coming from the front porch, but he didn’t know Louisa, so he took himself upstairs, oblivious to the outrage he’d aroused.
He spread the paper on the scarred, butcher-block kitchen table and drained half a cup of industrial strength, scalding hot sludge from a twenty-five-cup coffee urn. He grunted at the movie review and shuffled off to his bedroom for a pack of cigarettes. When he got to the bedroom, he remembered he’d given up smoking.
He muttered a few satisfyingly crude phrases and scowled at his cat. Scowling at the cat was one of those gestures of habit that neither man nor feline took seriously. In truth, the cat was Pete’s best friend.
Louisa narrowed her eyes and glared at the door next to hers. It was him. The oaf had stolen her paper. She’d never met him. Didn’t know what he looked like. What she knew was that he came skulking in at all hours of the night, and that he played his music too loud. He leaked disgusting cooking smells into the heating system, left his laundry in the basement washer and dryer for days at a time, and more often than not parked his car in her parking space. She hated him with the sort of passion only forced cohabitation could produce. The man was scum.
She should bang on his door and demand her paper back, she thought. But what if he wouldn’t give it to her? What then? She could hardly duke it out with him. He was probably large and hairy. And she couldn’t prove that he had her paper, could she? It wasn’t as if there were witnesses.
All right, so she could do without a paper for one crummy morning. After all, she was late and probably didn’t have time to read the paper, anyway. Right? Wrong. She’d allocated herself five minutes. Five lousy minutes, and the creep upstairs was reading her paper on her time. What was worse, he was getting away with it because deep down inside she was a wimp. She was afraid of the big, hairy slob who lived on the second floor.
“Ugh,” she said. “I hate being a wimp. I hate being a wimp!”
Okay, that does it, she told herself. She was not going to be intimidated by a man who thought fried onions and Spam were the base of the food pyramid. She thumped on his door with her fist, and then she gave it a kick. “I know you’re in there!” she yelled. “And I know you’re reading my paper!”
Pete looked up from the sports section and frowned. It was seven-thirty in the morning and some rude person was raising holy hell on his front porch.
“This used to be such a perfect neighborhood,” he said to his cat. “One block from the Metro stop, three blocks from the zoo, reasonable rent for Washington, D.C.” He shook his head. “Now look at what it’s come to…weirdos hammering on my door at seven-thirty in the morning.”
A shrill