The escalation ladder climbed higher. She started parking her beige Prius directly across from the foot of my driveway, making it impossible for delivery trucks to turn in. It wasn't illegal, technically, but it was wildly inconvenient. When I asked her to move it, she claimed her driveway was being resurfaced by invisible workmen and she had nowhere else to put it.
Then came the noise complaints. We were strictly adhering to the 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. window. But at 8:01 a.m., like clockwork, if a hammer hit a nail, Brenda was outside screaming about noise ordinances. She would stand on her lawn with a decibel-meter app on her phone, shaking it at the workers.
"Eighty-five decibels!" she would shriek over the sound of a tile saw. "That is assault on my eardrums!"
Tony, bless his heart, tried to handle it with grace for the first month. He'd nod, apologize, and tell the guys to keep it down, which is impossible when you're demolishing a kitchen. But everyone has a breaking point. Tony's came on a humid Thursday in July.
They were framing out the new bay window in the living room, the very window that was currently letting in the night air. It required nail guns. The compressor was loud. It was 2:00 p.m. on a weekday. Perfectly legal.
Brenda burst out of her front door like a cork from a shaken champagne bottle. She wasn't wearing her usual floral camouflage. She was in a bathrobe, her hair in curlers, looking like a deranged angry-housewife Halloween costume.
"Stop it! Stop it right now!" she screamed, marching onto my lawn.
Tony stepped out of the framing. He was sweating, covered in sawdust, and holding a nail gun. He looked terrifying.
"Ma'am, you need to get off the property. It's a construction site. No hard hat."
"I don't need a hard hat. I need peace," she bellowed, getting right into his personal space. She poked his massive bicep with a sharp finger. "You are terrorizing me. This noise is unacceptable. My cat is having palpitations."
Tony looked down at her finger on his arm, then back to her face. His voice dropped an octave. "Lady, touch me again and I call the cops for assault. We are working. Get off the grass."
She gasped, clutching her pearls. She was literally wearing pearls with a bathrobe. "Are you threatening me? Did you hear that, Jack?" she yelled toward the house, knowing I was inside. "Your gorilla just threatened my life."
I came outside, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Brenda, go home. They're working. It's 2:00 p.m."
"I am calling the police. I am calling the mayor. I know people." She was vibrating with rage.
"Call whoever you want. Just do it from your own yard," I said, exhausted.
She retreated, spitting venom. The cops did show up an hour later. It was Officer Miller, a man whose slump-shouldered posture suggested he'd dealt with one too many Brendas in his career. He listened to her hysterical rant about sonic warfare and aggressive posturing by laborers, then listened to me and Tony explain we were building a window.
"Ma'am," Officer Miller sighed, hitching up his belt. "They have permits. It's daytime. Construction makes noise. Unless they start playing death metal at 3:00 a.m., there's nothing I can do. Stop calling 911 for this."
Brenda looked like she'd been slapped with a wet fish. The law wasn't on her side. Impossible. She glared at me with eyes that promised retribution.
It wasn't the I'm-going-to-write-a-sternly-worded-letter-to-the-HOA kind of look. It was the I'm-going-to-burn-your-world-down look. The crew packed up around 5:30 p.m. Tony clapped me on the shoulder.
"She's going to blow a gasket, boss. Watch your back."
I figured she'd just call code enforcement again, or maybe throw dog poop over the fence, which she had done twice already. I wasn't expecting domestic terrorism.
I spent the rest of the evening cleaning up dust and settling in for some late-night gaming in my makeshift bedroom. I had headphones on, deep in a virtual dungeon slaying goblins, when I felt the vibration through the floorboards. Then came the sound: crash, tinkle, thud. It wasn't subtle. It sounded like the sky had fallen into my living room.
I ripped off my headphones, heart rate spiking. My first thought was that a support beam had failed and the second floor was now on the first floor. I grabbed the baseball bat I kept by the bed, more for peace of mind than any actual skill, and crept into the hallway.
The lights didn't work in the living room yet, so I flipped on my phone flashlight. The beam cut through the darkness, illuminating a haze of dust hanging in the air. I rounded the corner and gasped. The beautiful, expensive, brand-new custom bay window that Tony and the guys had spent three days framing and installing was gone.
Well, the glass was gone. It was currently carpeting my hardwood floors in a shimmering layer of razor-sharp diamonds. And there, sitting in the middle of my expensive Persian rug, one of the few nice things I owned that wasn't covered in dust sheets, was the brick.
I stepped carefully over the glass, my blood running cold. I prodded the brick with the bat. It was a standard red building brick, heavy and rough. Taped to the top with excessive amounts of Scotch tape was a piece of lined notebook paper.
I gingerly peeled it off. In jagged, angry, all-caps handwriting executed in thick black marker, it read: "STOP THE NOISE OR ELSE. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING. SATAN'S SPAWN."
I stared at the note. "Satan's spawn? Really? That was her best shot?"
My shock quickly morphed into a cold, hard rage. This wasn't funny anymore. This wasn't a quirky neighbor dispute. This was property damage. This was a threat. This was a felony.
I looked out the gaping hole where my window used to be. Brenda's house was dark, silent, innocent. But here's the thing about me: I'm a tech guy. I'm paranoid about security.
Before I even moved a single box into this house, before Tony swung the first hammer, I installed a state-of-the-art 4K night-vision, motion-activated security camera system covering every square inch of my property's perimeter. I pulled up the app on my phone. My hands were shaking, but not from fear anymore. From anticipation.
I scrolled back ten minutes. There it was: 11:08 p.m. The camera above the garage captured the side yard perfectly in eerie green night vision. A figure emerged from the side door of Brenda's house. It was unmistakably her.
She was wearing the same bathrobe from earlier, the curlers still bobbing in her hair, looking like a tactical-assault grandmother. She was carrying something heavy in both hands, cradling it against her chest. She crept across her lawn, scanning the street like a commando behind enemy lines.
She reached the low hedges that separated our properties. Then, with a grunt I could hear through the camera's microphone, she wound up. It wasn't a graceful throw. It was a two-handed heave, like she was tossing a medicine ball. The brick sailed out of frame.
A split second later, the audio picked up the horrific, satisfying crash of glass shattering. On screen, Brenda didn't run. She stood there for a moment, hands on her hips, admiring her handiwork. She gave a sharp nod of satisfaction, then turned and scurried back into her house like a victorious rodent.
I saved the clip to my phone. Then I saved it to the cloud. Then I emailed it to myself twice.