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Oliver was silent, but what had I expected him to say?

“I hear music when I turn on the water,” I told him. “And now I’m seeing things, like, fairy dust or something. It started when I moved into this building. I thought that you were playing the song up here and then I listened at the other apartment doors, but it’s not you and it’s not anyone else. It’s me. It’s me going nuts. I had Carmen up to my apartment to test if she could hear it and she can’t. You can’t. No one can.”

I turned and left the kitchen, walking past him but keeping my head down. I felt like I was going to cry. Would I go for the rest of my life with this weird affliction? Would I—

“Kat.”

I hesitated, my hand on the front doorknob so I could leave. “What?”

He cleared his throat. “I may have heard something. Just then.”

“What?” I repeated. I turned and looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“When the water was running, I heard this.” He cleared his throat and then he hummed. It was a little bit of the song, the song!

“You heard it? You did? It wasn’t just me?” I switched from despondent to almost euphoric. “You really did?”

Oliver wasn’t looking at me. He went and sat down on his couch, one of several seating options because this room was fully furnished. I had another fleeting thought that he was going to have a much harder time moving out than I’d had moving in.

“Sit down,” he offered and I did. “I should have mentioned this to you before.”

“Mentioned what?” I asked. His chair was as sturdy as the one I’d put together with Carmen but much more comfortable.

“When you first came up here and accused me of playing loud music, I dismissed it as another reason that I didn’t want to live in an apartment building. Crazy neighbors,” he explained. “But then, I got back from a trip and found your note.”

“Right. And you went down to talk to me and said that the song wasn’t coming from you.”

“And you chased me back upstairs and tried to block my door from closing,” he continued, nodding.

“No, that was by accident, I just stuck out my foot...why is that important? I don’t understand where this is going,” I told him.

“You moved your foot, I shut the door, and I went to my kitchen believing that you were more than just an annoying neighbor. I thought that you were hearing thing because you had mental issues,” he said, phrasing it carefully. “But then I turned on the tap to get a drink.” He stopped and drew in a breath. He let it out again before he finished by saying, “I heard music.”

“You did?”

“I thought that it had to be coming from you, that you were taunting me or trying to annoy me. It worked, because I got very pissed off,” he said. “I went back down to your apartment and listened but I couldn’t hear anything from the hallway. This building was constructed so well.”

“That’s what everyone says,” I answered slowly. “And ever since then, you’ve been hearing the song.”

He nodded.

“I wrote that note to you while ago. Weeks ago.”

He nodded again. “I’ve heard it every day and it seems to be getting louder and louder. I couldn’t recognize it at first but now I know what it is. Hold on.” He walked back towards the bedroom and returned with a guitar. “This is one that my grandpa insisted I take from his collection,” he said, looking down at the instrument.

“Why do you need it?”

He needed to play it and when he did, I immediately recognized the music. That was what I heard coming out of my faucets, my shower head, and my toilet. It was the song!

Oliver rested his palm against the strings to quiet them. “It’s called ‘Always,’ written by Irving Berlin and released in 1925.”

“Always,” I echoed. That was the word that the singer had been repeating.

“There are so many later versions of it, Ella Fitzgerald to Frank Sinatra, but it was also a hit when it first came out.”

That was interesting, but not important at the moment. “You started hearing it weeks ago,” I reiterated. “Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

“I thought I was going crazy, too.”