I remove two notes that I find in the pocket of my cardigan hanging over the back of my chair.

There’s more bread in the freezer.

You always loved to dance.

A muted thump from next door wakes me. Then, a cough. A voice. A woman’s. Displeased but assertive. She must live next door. The apartment beside me. I thought it was empty. I thought the last tenants moved out. My mouth is dry, and I’m thirsty. It’s still dark now, and I wonder how much longer until morning.

Most nights my sleep feels feeble and flimsy but full of troubled dreams. I have a reoccurring dream of being in the park near my apartment. I don’t go there much anymore, but I used to walk there almost every morning before work. I loved seeing the huge, old trees, how the first light from the rising sun made the grass look like a moving painting. I would sit on a bench and feel the breeze on my face. But I had to get there at the right time or I’d miss it. It would never last long. That’s what made it special.

In the dream, I’m trying to get there, to the park, to the bench, but people keep stopping me on the way. It’s frustrating and frantic. It’s getting lighter and brighter, and I know I’m not going to make it. I wake up, fall asleep, wake up, fall asleep in an endless cycle until my room is filled with daylight. The dreams come and go. I never look at my clock until I’m up and out of bed.

Once, he told me I should try painting a landscape, as an exercise. He said portraits are so specific and small. He said I should expand my areas of interest, challenge myself, acknowledge a grander scale. So I painted some of the trees from the park to appease him.

He saw the first piece when I was halfway through it. He studied it, taking his glasses down from the top of his head, and said: “I don’t see trees, Penny. Not at all. This is not an insult. I’m just encouraging you to try painting more sincerely. To paint what you actually see.”

I never did finish that painting.

I roll over and flip on the soft bedside lamp. I run my hand along my forearm. There’s a bruise there, and the spot is sensitive to the touch. I don’t think I had this bruise when I went to bed, so how did I get it?

“We can’t stop it now,” the voice says from the other side of the wall.

“I know that,” a deeper voice replies.

I stop rubbing my arm. I’m listening. I’ve been hearing these voices from next door more and more, usually at night. They’re only sounds, disembodied tones, but they are real. Voices aren’t sounds like the cars and buses and sirens from outside. These ones have a distinctive impact on me. The sounds of humans.