They're Very Tall

    The ambulance pulled into the parking lot outside my building maybe twenty seconds after I walked in my front door. I live on the second floor, and a big picture window looks out of my living room down into that parking lot, and my view was excellent. It stopped, its lights flashing, and first one, then two, then three EMTs got out. The first one, the driver, walked up to the apartment below mine. One of my neighbors — not one of the ones who live downstairs — was sitting on a folding chair, waiting. She let the EMT in. A minute later, the other two had got a gurney out of the back of the ambulance. They got it unfolded, latched what looked like an oxygen tank to it, and began to push it towards the apartment downstairs.

    I called my mom, I guess because she seemed to be the person most likely to know the people downstairs. That was the idea, anyway; she’s met them a few times. Neither one of us could remember their names. They’re very tall. They live in Connecticut most of the year but they come out here to visit their grandkids in the summer. You can usually tell when they’re in town, because the 20-year-old luxury car that usually sits idle in their designated parking spot will disappear sometimes. Their grandkids are around a lot when they’re in town. Last winter one of them had to have heart surgery, and they stayed around for several months. I have to keep my TV quiet after about 11 when they’re in town, because my building was cheaply made in the 70s and they can hear everything.

    The EMTs didn’t appear to be in any hurry, and by the time whatever was going to happen had happened, I had got distracted somehow. I never saw who they wheeled out on that gurney, if it was anybody. By the time I went to let the cat out, about an hour later, the ambulance was gone. I haven’t figured out what happened yet.

    A couple of times today it has occurred to me that the people downstairs might be having one of those horrible days you never forget — the day someone dies, the day you go to the hospital, that kind of day. I was walking down the street earlier, approaching the parking lot, and I thought: Downstairs it’s something different. The last time I had a day like that was more than a year ago, and while I was alone in my apartment feeling shattered, the people upstairs were moving their furniture. I remember, I could hear them dragging it around most of the day. I didn’t have any coherent thoughts about that. Thinking about it now makes me lonely. Thinking about someone downstairs while I’m upstairs working feels lonely, too, and sad. But I’m not going down there.

    I mean, I don’t even know their names.