A Day in the 'Hood

Yesterday music blared out of a black station wagon parked in front of Rosie's Variety store (Rosie moved out last week after twenty years, but it's still the Rosie building). I was just heading down the street with Lily, so I asked the young man to turn it down because the people next door sleep days and work nights. He said okay, but didn't do anything. Today he was blaring music out of his wagon again, all the doors and the back wide open, car as boom box. He ran into the building when he saw me. When I closed his car door to mute the sound he came out on the porch overhead with his friend. He called me a bitch, threatened to spit on me, and said he'd call the cops for touching his property. I asked you yesterday, I said, and I am asking you again now, turn it down please, people are sleeping. I repeated the digits of his license plate over and over in my head like a new mantra as I turned back inside to call the police. I gave them all the details. I still hadn't walked Lily. I went out the back way to avoid my loud neighbor and walked the few miles to Harris Pond and back. When I got home, the black wagon and its owner were gone, but his friend was out on the sidewalk with all his belongings. Apparently he was moving out of his apartment.