At the intake desk, Deputy Deacon read the first three lines of Walter Rourke’s complaint, made a small sound with his tongue, and dropped the paper into the recycling bin beside his chair. The paper didn’t even reach the bottom. It sat on top of a crushed energy drink can.
Walter watched the paper land. He was eighty-two. His hands had started to tremble earlier in the day, but he kept them flat on the counter.
“Sir, this is not a hotel,” Deacon said. He had a phone jammed under his chin and a name tag with a corner lifting. “We don’t handle noise.”
“I handled it myself for six nights,” Walter said. “I wrote down the times. 2:14. 2:40. 3:05.”
“And I’m telling you to go home.”
Walter did not go home. He took a seat on the wooden bench beside the water cooler. The bench had a metal armrest. The vinyl on the cushion cracked when he sat. He could wait. Waiting was one of the only things he still did well.
His chest had a familiar soreness, so he opened the top button of his shirt. The station smelled like floor wax and burnt hazelnut coffee. Through the window, the number four bus passed on Warsaw Avenue, heading toward downtown Cincinnati.
He had ridden that bus that morning. The driver charged him seventy-five cents, the senior fare, and did not wait for him to sit before the doors hissed shut. Walter had grabbed a pole and counted the stops.
The night before had been the sixth in a row.
At 2:14 a.m., he woke to a bass line pushing through the wall of apartment 2B. It shook the pill bottle on his nightstand. A man laughed. A woman shouted the same line of a song three times.
Walter put on his brown cardigan and stepped into the hall. The light above the stairs flickered, then went out, then flickered again. He knocked with the flat of his hand.
A woman opened the door, a phone in one hand and a White Claw in the other. Her name was Kyla. She had moved in two months earlier. Her boyfriend, a man named Josh with a stomach that tested his gray T-shirt, stood behind her, barefoot, holding a beer.
“It’s after two,” Walter said. “I need to sleep.”
Kyla blew out a breath. Josh pointed at him with the neck of the beer bottle.
“Take a sleeping pill, Grandpa. This is America. I pay rent here.”
The door shut with enough force to make the deadbolt rattle. Walter stood on the concrete and listened to the music get louder through the door.
He had called the police twice before. The first time they arrived forty minutes later, after the apartment had fallen silent. The second time, a dispatcher told him to contact the property manager. The property manager sent an email: “We encourage neighbors to mediate.”
So Walter walked back inside his own apartment and took a nitroglycerin tablet from the bottle beside the sink. He washed it down with lukewarm water from the tap.
On the kitchen counter, next to the knife block, sat a photograph in a plastic sleeve. His son Kevin. Marine dress blues. Twenty-one years old.
Walter could still hear the conversation from the summer of 2003. He had been sitting where the toaster was now. Kevin stood by the window with an envelope from Officer Candidate School.
“You don’t have to prove anything to me,” Walter had said.
Kevin had not turned around. “Yeah, Dad. I do.”
Walter had said the thing that still kept him awake most nights. “Then go play soldier.”
Three months into the first deployment, two Marines in service uniforms knocked on the door. His wife made a sound Walter had never heard before, high and empty. The next seven years were just silence, unpaid medical bills, and the smell of a house that would not get better.
Twenty-one years later, Walter still carried the photo in the inside pocket of his coat.
At the station, the pain in his chest turned sharp.
He put a hand over his sternum and leaned forward. The bench made a sound like a paper bag being crushed. Somebody—maybe the officer at the water cooler—asked if he was okay.
Walter reached into his coat for the small bottle of pills. His fingers bumped the photograph. It slid out of the pocket and landed face up on the linoleum, next to the water cooler.
The door to the captain’s office swung open.
Captain Ray Delgado stepped out, a man in his mid-forties with a faded eagle and anchor tattoo on his left forearm. He had heard the commotion.
He saw the photo on the floor. He bent down, picked it up, and turned it over. On the back, in blue ink, someone had written: K. Rourke, 2nd Lt.
Delgado’s thumb moved over the face. He looked at Walter. Then he looked at the recycling bin, where the crumpled complaint still sat on top of the crushed can.
“Where did you get this?”
Walter’s voice came out thin. “That’s my son. Kevin.”
Delgado did not speak for a moment. Then he set the photo on the counter. He lowered himself onto one knee. The knee made a dry pop.
“He was my platoon commander. Camp Geronimo. A grenade came over a low wall. Kevin didn’t yell. He covered it.”
The deputy behind the desk had stopped chewing his gum. A female officer by the water cooler set her paper cup down without taking a drink.
Delgado looked up. “I’m alive because of your son.”
Walter’s chest still hurt, but he got the words out. “Then stand up and take my complaint.”
Delgado stood. He called across the room: “Get a unit to 2208 Maplewood, apartment 2B. Noise complaint. Now.”
He took a fresh form from the tray and slid it across the counter. Walter sat down on the bench and wrote in small, even letters. Name. Address. Dates. Times. Under “description of incident,” he wrote: “Loud music and shouting at 2:14 a.m. Repeated six nights.”
When he finished, he slid the form back. Delgado stamped it with a red ink pad and wrote the date across the bottom. Then he tore off the yellow copy and pushed it across.
Walter tapped the recycling bin with one finger. “The first one is still in there.”
Delgado looked at Deputy Deacon. “You’re off the desk. Write your own statement in my office. Now.”
Deacon’s mouth opened and closed. He reached for his name tag.
Walter folded the yellow copy in half and placed it in the inside pocket of his coat, next to the photograph. He walked out of the station and down the steps. The air outside felt warm for October.
The number four bus was already rounding Grove Street. Walter had exact change. Seventy-five cents.
He took a seat near the back. The yellow paper made a crisp sound when he unfolded it once. The report number ended in 214. Same as the time on the clock radio. He smoothed the paper against his knee. Then he opened his wallet and slid it behind his library card.
The driver called, “You good, sir?”
Walter said, “I am now.”
The bus rolled away from the curb, and the station’s blue sign disappeared from the window.
