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I just thought people were having loud sex next door.

"Law and Order" was telling me all about the fundamental problems with outsourcing criminal detention facilities when I heard a man screaming from the apartment that shares the wall with the one I'm sitting behind now--the one in the living room. "Oh God, Oh God... Oh GOD!" I heard. Like I said, I thought it was a loud guy getting his swerve on. I could barely hear a woman, she faintly moaned and I took that for what I took that for.

He kept saying it over and over again, "Oh God, Oh God, Oh God!" After a while I thought it was a drunk person screaming "Olga, Olga!" It was that or someone was having trouble finishing what he started. I put my ear to the wall and immediately feared a knife sticking through with slasher-movie speed, piercing the side of my head, leaving a gruesome crime scene in the apartment next to another, slightly more gruesome crime scene.

Then I heard the sirens. There were several of them. "Law and Order" was still on, but the fictional drama paled in comparison to what was unfolding outside. I pulled back the curtain, not enough to be conspicuous, but enough to witness the scene developing. In the fore was a single ambulance, surrounded by four police cruisers. A man was unloading a gurney, and talking on a walkie-talkie. After an officer approached, they entered the apartment. When the ambulance man came back out he said some medical/police jargon into the walkie-talkie along with the words "confirmed stabbing."


I saw a group of people: police, medical professionals, maybe some guys from the off-track betting place--I don't know, wheeling the gurney with someone lying on it into the ambulance. I could barely see the victim, but there was certainly a fair amount of red.


After the victim was loaded up, the ambulance and one of the police cruisers began to leave. Thinking this was it, I admired the speed of the New York Police Department, and went back to "Law and Order." I checked back after the show ended and saw a large group of police officers and detectives standing outside my building, talking, laughing, slapping their knees. I had to wonder what was so damn funny. They weren't surly like I've come to expect from Elliot Stabler and Ice-T.

Along with the large groups of law enforcement professionals I saw a new police cruiser in the prominent position the ambulance previously occupied. This cruiser had an officer posted outside who occasionally shined his flashlight into the backseat of the car, as if to make sure the suspect was still there, or something. Damn. I really wanted to see the suspect.

I wanted to see if he looked like "just another guy," if he was someone I might have seen before, if he had distinguishing traits that would clue me in to future stabbers I may come across.

The groups of police officers are still there, but much smaller. There was just some yelling outside, but it was just the standard Staten Island douchebag yelling you may hear on any given Wednesday night. The officers were un-fazed.

No one has come to the door yet, to ask questions. I hope they don't, and I hope they do. I want to know everything about the attempted murder next door, I want to know if this sort of thing happens more than I might realize. Not because I'm neurotic, because I'm nosy.