The Complex Read Online Free PDF Page A

children, loud music, or teenagers squealing their tires in the parking lot—these things constitute nonsense, and nonsense is not to be tolerated. Mrs. Carlucci believes you should be respectful of your neighbors at all times. Don’t get involved with their business. Don’t be a snoop or a gossip. Be friendly. Say hello. Stay on good terms. Don’t be disruptive or a nuisance. Don’t drive like a maniac through the parking lot. Carry your trash to the dumpsters between buildings A and B, rather than letting it sit outside your door. Clean up your dog poop. Keep the volume on your television and radio at a responsible level. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Don’t engage in nonsense.
    So, when she hears the screams and the car alarm, her first reaction isn’t panic or fear. Instead, she is angry. While some of the other buildings in the complex have rowdy tenants, the D-building has always been relatively quiet and peaceful. She doesn’t really know any of her neighbors that well—not like the old days, when she was a young girl, and everybody on the street knew everybody else. Those days are gone. These days, a person is lucky if they get a nod of acknowledgement when passing by a neighbor outside. Neighbors aren’t really neighbors anymore. They’re strangers, for the most part.
    She knows the young girl next door. Stephanie is her name. Mrs. Carlucci isn’t sure, but she thinks Stephanie might be one of those Trans people she’s seen on the TV. And if so, that’s okay. As long as she’s not hurting anybody else, she can be whatever she wants to be. Still, Mrs. Carlucci sometimes gets nervous around Stephanie, because she’s unsure how to refer to Stephanie, or whether or not she should inquire about the process. She would like to. She would very much like to understand it more. But she’s not sure if asking Stephanie about it would be polite.
    She also knows the man three apartments down. His name is Sam. Mrs. Carlucci isn’t sure what he does for a living, but he never seems to go to work. Maybe he works from home, or perhaps he has an inheritance—although, if he’s living here at the Pine Village complex, it must not be much of one. Sam always inquires about her cats, which is nice. He recently had his dog put to sleep, and was quite upset. Poor man. Mrs. Carlucci made sure to buy him a sympathy card. She knows how devastated she would feel if something happened to one of her four cats—Princess, Queenie, King, and Hannibal. King came to her as a stray, a black-and-white Maine Coon kitten who showed up beneath her car one summer morning. Princess and Queenie are shelter adoptees, she took in as kittens. Hannibal is also a shelter adoptee, although he came to her as an adult. His previous owners—a young couple and their daughter—all died in a house fire. Mrs. Carlucci has done her best to make him feel at home, and he seems to tolerate both her and the other cats, but sometimes, late at night, he sits on the sill of the living room window and stares out into the dark, and she is certain he misses his other owners.
    Mrs. Carlucci worries a lot about her cats. She fears what will happen to them when she is gone, and at her age, that’s more of an inevitability than a possibility. Her doctor says she is in good health, and jokes that she will outlive him, but her doctor is prone to nonsense, and Mrs. Carlucci doesn’t like him very much. She preferred her old physician, Dr. Hammond, but he passed away five years ago. Most of her friends have also passed. These days, it’s just her and her cats. One day soon, it will just be the cats. What will become of them? Will one of the neighbors take them in?
    In the apartments below her, accessible from the other side of the building, there is a nice young married couple that always smile and nod, but she doesn’t know their names. And, of course, there’s Mr. Hicks, a widower or a bachelor. She can’t be sure which. He is friendly with