i.

It is almost always when I am home alone that the people upstairs move their heavy furniture. I don't know for sure if they are moving furniture or some giant musical instruments. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter, since there are several concert halls in this neighbourhood. The man opposite us is a saxophonist who also plays the piano. I don't really know yet how many people live in the flat above ours. Their floor stutters and creaks as well. The evening we came home from my second spell in hospital, the power in the building was briefly cut. My husband opened the door and shouted, "Is everything okay?" Someone from down below jokingly replied, "Pay your bills!"
 
ii.

I read that a man was fined for leaving his cat on the street. His new flat in a foreign country was small and sometimes the arrogant cat did not allow him to stroke her. When he was reunited with the pet, he wept. Perhaps he was ashamed? The cat, for now, resourceful, meowed submissively, let him have her back. He didn't know about the play The Lieutenant of Inishmore. 
 
iii. 

Here's a story I won't forget: a middle-aged couple, both struggling independent scholars, moved into a studio flat with one big window. She loved watching people on the street, such as what clothes they were wearing. In the elegantly faint moonlight, was it cold outside or was it warm? What was the beautiful Asian woman living across the street reading? Were all serialised sex acts she witnessed pleasurable love making? 
 
iv.

He said even her emails have cliffhangers. She stood at the edge of the spiral staircase outside her flat, her blue wool scarf from her university days dangling. Like what T.S. Eliot said about poetry, her fiction and function was, with lots of luck, to take up less space.