At 10 AM, Mrs. Khoury said: “It used to be louder.”
The plumber looked at the radiator. He’d been kneeling for five minutes, testing the valve, and the sound seemed normal to him — a low hiss, the click of a thermostat cycling.
“It’s within spec,” he said.
She stood at the window, arms folded, watching the parking lot. Six spots sat empty. They were always empty now.
“The pipes,” she said. “When you turned the heat on, the whole building would bang. You could hear it up through the third floor.”
He checked a joint. “Water hammer. Not a good thing.”
“I know.”
A contractor had fixed that in 2019 — replaced the air chambers on the first floor. After that, the banging stopped. But other sounds had stopped too, sounds that had nothing to do with pipes. The Nassers’ television through the wall. The Kowalskis’ arguments, which were always about the dog but never about the dog. The woman in 4B whose name Mrs. Khoury never learned, who practiced cello on Wednesdays and played the same four bars until they sounded like weather.
The plumber stood up, brushed his knee. “Could be the expansion tank. I can take a look.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
He wrote on his clipboard: Tenant reports system quieter than expected. No malfunction found.