It was a warm night in June ― not warm enough for the air conditioner, which I don’t like, anyway, but enough to sleep naked with the bedcovers turned down. I’d taken a shower and toweled myself off lightly, leaving an airy film of moisture on my skin that kept me cool as it dried. My nipples were hard, and my cunt hair was damp, but sex was the last thing on my mind.

I’d had my bellyful of sex, and of men, and especially of my husband, who had announced one evening after dinner that the marriage was no longer fun. It wasn’t me, mind you. I was still very attractive ― pause ― for a woman in her 40s. But if we could maybe have more variety: swap with another couple, or experiment with polyamory, or he could get a video of me with another woman. You know, something.

Nothing. I was willing, but not game enough to suit him. A couple fast fucks on the living room floor with a few of his new “friends,” and my disgust was out in the open. He seemed genuinely hurt that I never came. So he went and got his kicks elsewhere, and I went and got an apartment. I could have taken him for the house, I suppose, but why? It held nothing for me, and it had belonged to his parents, anyway. I took from the marriage only what I had brought to it, minus my sense of self-worth.

It was hard to sleep. The apartment was still strange, every creak in the walls unsettling. My own body was strange, too. Sleeping naked had been a pleasure once, but in my unfamiliar new bed, distracted by every random swish of a passing car, I felt like I was still on display at one of my ex’s half-hearted orgies.

The crickets were happy enough, at least. Their chirping reached me from far outside, and if it didn’t lull me to sleep, it leached some of the poison from my mind. The tension in my limbs was beginning to soften when I heard a woman cry outside my window.

“Ugh!”

She sounded hurt. Naturally, I didn’t want to get involved. The neighborhood had seemed quiet and safe when I signed the lease, but who knew what dangers it contained?

While I was dithering, the cry came again, louder. The pain and fear were unmistakable. I couldn’t let myself become one of those neighbors who witness a crime and do nothing. I forced myself out of bed and went to the window, clutching a pillow to my breasts.

But there was no one outside. I lifted the screen, stuck my head out and looked down, and from side to side. No one, and nothing, in either direction.

My apartment was on the first floor, and the bedroom overlooked a blacktop driveway just wide enough to include a parking lane. Beyond was a strip of lawn marked off with a white rail fence, and beyond that, the brick side of a twin home, blank but for the small kitchen and bathroom windows. The driveway was bright beneath an amber spotlight on the back of my building. It was insane anyone would try an assault out in the open like that, but when it comes to sex, as I had learned, insanity is the norm.

I went to the dresser and picked up the phone. I felt foolish, standing naked in the dark, wondering if I should call the police. They tell you they would rather investigate ten false alarms than miss one real emergency. It’s what they get paid for. My thumb was on the 9 when the third cry came.

It wasn’t the woman. It was a man’s voice, and it wasn’t quite a cry. Whatever it was ― a grunt? a gruff sigh? ― it happened just as a mattress spring popped in the bedroom above my own. Finally, I knew what I’d been hearing. I put the phone in its cradle the phone and slunk back to bed.

Turns out I had moved into an echo chamber: The voices upstairs went out their bedroom window, hit the brick wall across the way and bounced back into my virgin ears. I’d become a bat, modeling my environment in sound, and I was about to be treated to an acoustical fuck.

And it embarrassed me ― not because I’d been forced into playing the spy, but because I realized just how quiet my ex and I had been. We’d turned inward as we worked toward climax. He’d hump me with his faced buried in the pillow beside my ear, and at most he’d give a satisfied sigh when he came, while I would quiver and bite my lip.

Not this pair. They knew just what they wanted, and just how much they wanted it. As I settled into bed, the guy’s voice took over, with a deep Muh! that reverberated through the walls, then a subdued Aw, fuck! The girl gave a squeaky giggle and said something about balls, and her boyfriend let out a protracted moan. She egged him on with a baby and a wet smack, and he egged on right back with a pleading There!

Don’t waste it, I thought. He must have read my mind through the plaster ceiling and hardwood floor, because the bed snuffled again, and she took over lead vocals. I heard nothing for a while, holding my breath, and then a soft Oh! followed by a firm command to Eat it.