Reading · Diary of a Novel with Soman Chainani

In India, your neighbors are your extended family.

It’s part of living in big cities like Mumbai — everyone is in apartments and high-rise complexes, so you rely on your neighbors for everything from helping to raise your children to supplying missing ingredients for a recipe or cluing you in on the latest scandals and gossip. Doorbells rang incessantly when I was there as a kid: neighbors dropping by unannounced and no one thinking twice of it. Sometimes I’d be kidnapped with them when they left, their sons or daughters whisking me away to a higher-floor apartment to eat lunch or play ping-pong or watch Indian MTV.

I love this way of living. The idea of a building being a multi-celled organism is just so rich and warm-hearted and appealing. It reminds me of being a college student, the dorm a hub of activity. It keeps you young as you get older. You’re never forgotten. You never have to be lonely. Home becomes a hive, a locus of endlessly replenishing family.

(It’s also why, I suspect, India did well during COVID — buildings would seamlessly designate one person to do the shopping for the entire complex, letting everyone else shelter safely in place.)

For my two decades in New York, I tried to be friends with my neighbors, Mumbai Style, but without much luck. The old lady I was nice to my first few months at 183 Sullivan Street started to bang on her ceiling anytime I watched a movie or listened to music, even at the lowest volume. At 115th and Manhattan during film school, people in the building wouldn’t look at you, let alone talk to you. In a small walk-up I lived in on 83rd, the first-floor neighbors tried to enlist me in an interbuilding war with the 3rd-floor residents to get rid of the second-floor occupant, who they accused of being “evil” and a “criminal” (I stayed out of it). Then, when I moved west to another building on 83rd, a pipe exploded and soaked half the apartments in the building, leading to silent resentment between the people whose units were uninhabitable and those who carried on with life as usual (I was in the second group).

Still, I held out hope that one day I’d find neighbors that felt like family.

And then I did.

It was 2022. A building on the west side of Manhattan.

I lived in 17A and they lived in 17B immediately next door.

They were an astonishingly beautiful couple — let’s call them Gia and Jared.

They had a Doberman and that’s how we came to be friends, because I used to babysit Douggie, a friend’s French bulldog, and the interactions between the Frenchie and the Doberman were too ridiculous not to comment on (the Doberman was utterly terrified of the Frenchie; the Frenchie would bark out of its skin, angling for a fight.)

Gia and I bonded fast and intensely. I was single at the time; she was recently married to Jared. We’d hang out in their apartment when he wasn’t home. We’d walk the Doberman together. We went to dinner at fancy restaurants. Seeing her in the hall gave me a little spike of freshman-year pleasure, the feeling of community and home.

She told me she’d met Jared when she was working retail at a jeans store. They’d flirted while she helped him find a pair — then he came back later and left his number for her. She was older than him by about 5 years. He was the breadwinner, though she’d found a good job too. She was in the process of getting her tattoos removed, since Jared wasn’t fond of them.

This was all I knew about Jared at first. I learned other little details over time, but each one contributed to the feeling that he was AI made. Tall, supermodel attractive, with a fancy tech job, a nighttime soccer league, plus strong cooking skills since he was the one that usually made dinner. (I remember the show they were watching together and he was very into — Severance.)

But I never spent time with Jared until one day when I was with Gia in her apartment and he came home. He looked startled to see me, but she and I carried on talking — the building gossip at the time was about a guard named Carl, who’d gotten his ex-girlfriend sent to prison and now wanted her back, and having found out I was a writer, kept pressuring me to help him pen love notes to her. (My response: “I’m not sure any writer can help you get back a girl that you sent to jail.”)

Jared seemed uninterested in the gossip. Nor did he seem to care when Gia mentioned that I’d been dating a farmer in St. Louis and might be getting serious with him. Instead, Jared acted like I wasn’t there. I remember feeling a bit of flop sweat. I was in his apartment and he clearly wanted me gone. Did he know I’d been there many times before? Did he know I existed at all? At this point, the cue should have been to leave. Even if Gia seemed eager for me to stay.

Then a story came up — I think Jared started it. Did you tell him about [X]? he asked. Gia’s face darkened.

Apparently, they’d made friends with a couple recently and had gone out to dinner with them. At the dinner, one of the two in the couple allegedly made racist comments. Gia hadn’t been sure how to handle it in the moment or even now, but it was clear Jared had already severed ties with them and never wanted to see them again.

I had no idea how to react to this story. I must have changed the subject to whatever Jared was making for dinner, because he was already dragging pots and pans out. I remember pulling up a video going viral that day and showing it to them, one of Paula Patton making her mother’s favorite chicken recipe while a TikTok commentator dragged every single step of it.

I was giggling watching it again.

Jared was stonefaced.

Gia smiled but said nothing.

I yawned and said I’d better go and headed back to my place.

A few days passed.

I texted Gia —

Farmer is coming into NYC in 3 weeks. Want to do couple’s date?

She responded an hour later:

Oh actually Jared says we are getting very busy and that in 3 weeks we will be even busier.

Uhhh okay, I thought. But ignored it.

Then I saw them in the hall the next day with their Doberman. They were coming off the elevator; I was walking on. “Hey! How’s it going?” I chimed.

Jared looked through me like I wasn’t there. Gia stared right at me, but said nothing.

The elevator doors closed.

My heart still pounds thinking of that moment.

What happened?

Same question I had then that I have now.

At first, I tried to tell myself it was a one-off — that maybe they’d had a fight or something, that they weren’t in a position to engage.

But I saw them again a couple days later. Same cold stares.

It continued. Each time the same encounter. It didn’t matter if they were together or alone. Neither would acknowledge me.

My mind kept going back to that night in their apartment. Had I done something wrong? I played out every scenario – Jared thinking I was just pretending to be gay to go after Gia… me not being more aggressively in their corner about cutting off the supposedly racist friend… the Paula Patton cooking video somehow triggering a nerve or making them feel uncomfortable… But none of it made sense. In every situation, I came back to the story Jared told about cutting off a new-friend couple… and yet I ended up the one who was cut off.

Months went on this way. I stopped trying to smile at them or engage.

Only twice did Gia break character.

Once when her mother was visiting and I was opening my door at the same time. Her mother smiled at me sweetly. Gia made a face and forced herself to introduce her mother and I told her how happy I was to be living next to her daughter. Gia clenched another smile. When her mother left a few days later, she went back to not acknowledging me.

Weeks later, I was waiting for the elevator.

The door swung open in the hall — “HEY!”

A voice screamed.

I ignored it.

“HEY!”

I turned around. Gia.

“Do you have electricity in your apartment?” she demanded.

“Yes?” I said.

She groaned and slammed her door.

There was only one other interaction.

I was walking down the street and happened to look up. There was a veterinary clinic on the second floor of a building and she was in the window with the Doberman. I gave a little wave before I could stop myself. This time, she offered a half-hearted smile in return. For the first time there was emotion there: sadness. Like whatever had happened between us, she regretted.

For months after, the couple in 17B continued acting like I was a stranger. Only the dog gave me proof that I was once an intimate, since he tried to cuddle up every time he saw me. Otherwise, it was like we’d never met.

After Christmas that year, I moved to St. Louis.

I never saw Gia or Jared again.

It’s been 3 years and yet this story has such a hold on me. I can feel my skin flushed, my heart sinking writing this. Like I’m ashamed of it, though I still don’t know what I’m supposed to be ashamed of.

Maybe it’s because there’s no answer to the mystery in 17B.

One day I was a friend, the next I wasn’t.

For a kid who grew up gay and afraid I was made all wrong, that feeling of being rejected for no reason at all brings up all kinds of toxic sludge.

To have it happen again in adulthood, without explanation, without resolution, still sits with me in the center of my chest.

It’s why I’m no longer into neighbors. I’ve never tried to make friends with anyone in my St. Louis building, despite being here for more than 3 years. I don’t go to the monthly social events. I don’t start up conversations in the elevator. I don’t seek out connections. When I’m home, I keep entirely to myself.

It’s unlike me. More than unlike me: it’s incompatible with what I want. And yet, 17B is still too fresh a wound, with no signs of healing.

Every once in a while, I bring it up to Farmer Partner, who just shakes his head and says the same thing: “You were a threat.”

“To who?” I always say.

“To everything,” he says.

And that might be the closest to an answer I ever get.

Your turn.

Any mysteries which you never solved?

No. 119: I’m Not Into My Neighbors

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