The gray walls were smudged and thin; every sound carried from room to room. Perhaps the man next door would stay out all night as he occasionally did. But no sooner had she dropped her pocketbook on the three-legged maple table than she heard his voice, rumbling, thick and heated, filling her own room with foreign intonation. She stood motionless, waiting for the sound of the first blow, the dog’s yelp, the man’s rising cries, the tumble of movement as the dog ran about the room, trying, she guessed, to hide itself beneath and behind furniture, and the man’s heavy tread on the floor. The dog’s scream gained something of human anguish even as the man’s shout dropped into animal growls—there were thumps as things fell, crashes of objects thrown against the wall, then a small whimper but whether from the man or the dog, she couldn’t tell. Then it began all over again. Annie flung herself against the wall, beating it with her fists, crying, “Stop! Stop! Oh, God! Stop!”

Total silence.

Then the sound of a heavy object dragged across the floor. A trunk? Then another frenzied yelp, a thud, the sound of a man sobbing grievously.

Annie ran out into the corridor and banged against the man’s door, her fists sore, her heart beating violently in her throat. Movement within the room ceased. In her mind, she struck the man’s head until it burst open.

Now he had begun to sing; it was something in German.

“Liebe…liebe,” he crooned over and over. She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see a woman observing her from a half-opened door a few yards away. The woman took a few steps toward Annie, one arm reaching back as though to protect the vulnerability of her own half-glimpsed room.

“Mind your own business, you crooked fool!” she snarled. “Go to your room this instant, I say!”

“He’s torturing a dog!” Annie cried.

“There isn’t any dog,” the woman spat out scornfully. “He makes both voices. Like a ventriloquist. He’s a dog ventriloquist specialist.”

“You’re lying to me!” Annie said furiously. “I can hear the dog!”

“He’s working up a little turn,” the woman said in a flat voice. “For stage, screen, and radio. There never was a dog.” She shook a thin finger at Annie. “Stop persecuting us!” she cried. Annie fled to her room. There wasn’t any noise from next door, only a radio playing somewhere, a car shifting gears out on the street. She ate an orange she found in the cupboard near the sink. It was huge, tasteless, nearly dry.