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But still, the noise continues below my apartment: a loud clanging, a whirring sound I can’t seem to place. A drill, maybe?
Is someone using a drill to break my locks?
Grabbing the bat tighter, I pad toward the front door, opening it and propping it with a colorful door stop my best friend Hattie painted for me when she tired of me calling her at all hours to have her bring my spare key. Not long after moving in, I replaced the door and put in a safety lock, so when the door closes, it locks automatically.
The door stop is hideous, but every time I look at it, I can’t help but laugh a bit.
Not today, though. Today, sleep-fogged adrenaline is raging in my veins as I take the first step out of my apartment onto the landing connecting the apartment across the way from me and the stairway that separates the building in two.
On my side is my apartment on top of my tattoo shop, Coleman Ink. The once donut shop next door hasn’t been in business for three months.
But as I walk down the first few steps, bat gripped and ready, it clicks.
The sound isn’t coming from my shop.
It’s from next door.
It’s the banging of pans, not the sound of intruders.
The whirl of a mixer, not a drill.
The sign next to my business for the past month flashes in my mind, connecting the last dots in my sleep-addled brain.
A pink sign with girly cursive words in bright white, light- and dark-pink stripes adorning the awning over her front door.
Libby’s Bakery - coming soon!
And then a date below that.
A date that, if I pull up my mental calendar, I’m pretty sure is today.
The bakery is opening today.
And between the loud, shitty as fuck music and the banging, it’s clear the employees are getting busy.
My tattooed hand scrubs down my face before combing my hair back.
Jesus, fuck.
I hope to God this isn’t the norm.
While the shop doesn’t stay open past ten most nights, I’m not an early riser. I go to bed late, charcoal and oil paints and designs melding in my mind, keeping me up deep into the night.
Visions that won’t let me rest if I don’t get them down onto paper leach from my exhausted veins until I can give into sleep.
The Muse is a real bitch that way, if you ask me.
I crafted my life around my art and around the lifestyle that allows me to create, brushing off the responsibility of the family construction business in favor of art and tattoos.
I’m about to head back upstairs and throw a pillow over my head, praying I can fall back asleep, when the singing starts.
It starts, and it startsloud, cresting over the sound of the mixer running, pans clambering, and music blasting.
This is where one might assume I’m going to say it was magical. That the singing was like that of an angel, drawing me to the door of the bakery like some kind of moth drawn by flame.
No.
The singing sounds like a dying cat.
