211

The first thing we noticed was the snoring.

All the bedrooms in our building have high windows that open onto the rear exterior walkway that provides access to the units.  The living rooms all face the ocean, and the bedrooms are all in the back.  Because of this, the management endeavors to enforce quite hours between 10-6 so that residents' sleep is not disturbed.

Some situations are unavoidable.  We understand that.  Like last Saturday morning when we heard some sort of alarm going off at 5:00 in the morning.  Then some shouting.  Then someone yelling into the night, "Shut up!"  Then the alarm again.  Someone was stuck in the elevator, which is just a couple of units down from our bedroom window.  More shouts.  Firemen arriving.  The drama played itself out for a couple of hours.

But the snoring was another story.  A few nights ago, we were both awakened from our sleep by the sound of a chainsaw going off intermittently.  It was apparently the guy in the unit next door.

Fast forward to Tuesday.  I had gone back mid-day to the condo to write a couple of emails to my children.  As I opened the door from the stairway to our floor (we never use the elevator after the incident last Saturday), I came face to face with a woman who was about to open the same door.  I said hello, whereupon she looked intently into my face for a moment, then said, "Are you in 211?"  What a strange question, I thought.

"No," I replied.

"Lucky you," she said, then moved past me down the stairs.

WTF?  I wondered if she was a cleaning woman.  Was 211 somehow undesirable?  I was baffled, but walked on down the walkway, noticing on my way that 211 is right next door to our unit (#210), but otherwise not thinking about it.  

Until the night before last.

I was awakened around 1:30 by the sound of a man and a woman talking in a normal voice, apparently quite close by.  I was wearing my ear plugs, and was focused on trying not to hear them, rather than on what they were saying.  I eventually was able to get back to sleep.

The following morning, while Mark and I were having coffee on the balcony, he nonchalantly asked, "So, did you hear the couple having sex next door last night?  When I shook my head and replied that I had only heard talking at around 1:30, he responded, "Yeah - around midnight."  "'Ooooh.  Aaaahh.  Oooooh.  Aaaaah,'" Mark mimicked the woman's voice.  "They were really going at it.  Then again around 2:00.  Same thing:  'Ooooh.  Aaaahh.  Ooooh.  Aaaaahh."

I was glad that I'd only heard the talking.

Then I remembered the woman in the stairwell, telling me I was lucky I wasn't in 211.  Perhaps she was on the lookout and was ready to give me a piece of her mind.  Perhaps she's in 212.

As I write this, on Thursday morning, Mark's still in bed.  I took some sleep aids last night, after we went to bed at 8:45 p.m. (yes, you read that correctly), yet was again awakened by talking at 1:00.  I'll be curious to find out from Mark, when he gets up, whether the couple had sex again last night.