My body hurts as I stretch, the ache of too much booze, too much salt, and the crushing stress of my life falling apart. The beer can tumbles to the floor, but I hold the photo album to my chest protectively. After a few seconds of letting the bleariness fade, I lean it back to see what page it’s open to—a picture of “the grandparents,” an elderly couple with dark skin. He’s bald, and her hair is silver-white and close-cropped. In this photo, developed on heavy stock paper and with a white frame around it, they’re dressed in their Sunday finest outside a big church that looks like the one a few streets over.

The pictures are mostly from this neighborhood. My neighborhood, I guess—mine and Kim’s—even though I mostly feel the way I do with this photo album: like a creep looking in at other people’s lives from the outside.

The pictures are old—most spanning the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies. The people are Black, like most of my neighbors, and they wear neatly hemmed dresses and stylish suits, with their hair flat and shiny in some photos and puffed out in Afros in the later pages. A wedding photo showing the grandparents before they were grandparents. Young grandpa going off to war. Laughing with young grandma upon his return. Babies upon babies. Friends and family. Beach trips.

It’s kind of weird, how often I flip through this album of other people’s memories I found atop a pile of trash while walking the streets in the middle of the night, but the people in these photos look perfect, happy, and full of love. It’s the closest I’ve gotten to any of those things in a long time, maybe ever, but it was so unremarkable to someone on this street that they left it out on garbage night.

The hammering that awakened me starts up again—absurdly relentless, as if a Looney Tunes character broke in and is banging a mallet against a wall for the chaotic joy of it. It’s a homing beacon giving the location of the person I once thought would bring me perfection, happiness, and love. I press my palms against my ears, trying to drown out what’s become my millennial version of “The Tell-Tale Heart”—“The Renovation-Crazed Girlfriend.”

Or ex-girlfriend?

It’s complicated.

The idea that Kim and I once thought we liked each other enough to buy a home together makes me cringe. The fact that I thought she’d never figure out I was the kind of item to be left out on garbage night, something no one should pick up, bands shame across my shoulder blades.

I climb out of bed and take a few heavy steps over to the window. One good thing about being stuck in this shitty apartment? It gives me a great view of half the street—the whole street if I shove my head out. I can see who comes and goes, what patterns people fall into without realizing it, and when I’m really bored, what my neighbors do in the privacy of their own homes.

Mr. Perkins, the nice old guy from across the street, shuffles past a window in his living room. He’s one of my favorite people on the street to watch: he’s out there every day, reliable and friendly. Consistent. It’s around the dog’s feeding time, and in a few minutes Mr. Perkins will take him out for the first of many walks. I admire his ability to stick to a strict schedule while also seeming to be puttering around at his leisure. He always chats when our paths cross, even inviting me to local events that I never attend because it would be awkward to go without Kim.

My gaze drops down to the whir of motion I’ve been saving for last—she’s sweeping the sidewalk in front of her house. The woman from the brownstone tour. The Interrupter.

Until a few weeks ago, she’d leave her house in business casual every morning, and then return in the afternoon. Now she has a cup of coffee on her stoop before heading to the community garden down the street with gardening supplies—maybe she’s out of a job, too. Because her curtains are so sheer when she turns on her lights that they’re basically useless, I know she often enjoys a glass of wine and, sometimes, twerking in front of the mirror in her living room.

After a few glasses of wine, the twerking sometimes dissolves into tears. I avert my gaze more often than not when that happens, but I’ve raised my beer bottle in silent solidarity, too.

I’ve made up countless backstories for her. She’s taking online classes, since she’s often tapping away studiously at her laptop, and once she graduates she’ll find a job that makes her happy, if such a thing exists. She’s a dedicated gardener because she’s the kind of person who loves making things grow—a nurturer.

I make up things about the future, too, like what might happen if I ring her bell the next time she starts to twerk—or to cry. Concocting a fantasy where I save a beautiful damsel in distress, or have sex with her, is way more satisfying than dealing with reality.

Outside the window, three neighborhood kids speed past on their bikes and she calls out greetings to them, followed by a warning to watch out for cars in the intersection as they continue on.

Terry, the shithead who lives next door to the Interrupter, walks out of his house with his shithead dog. It bounds down the stairs while barking at the kids on bikes and gets caught short by its leash because the Interrupter is bending over to pick something up and Terry’s busy ogling her ass.

The hammering restarts in earnest downstairs.

Sweat beads on my temples, my chest, my back, and when it rolls into my ass crack, I sigh deeply and peel my arm from the chipped paint of the window frame. I’m pretty sure whoever owned this house in the past cooked meals up here in the summer because this apartment also functions as an oven.

And you’re the turkey that voluntarily stepped into it.

I leave the apartment with a change of clothes and three-in-one body wash, shampoo, and conditioner rolled up in a towel, then trudge through the wallpaper-stripped hallways and down two flights of yet-to-be-varnished hardwood stairs.

My shower hasn’t worked for weeks. My first Brooklyn summer has mostly been spent sweltering in this attic apartment, marinating in beer fumes and hangover funk until I’m grody enough to slink downstairs for a shower.

I could try repairing it, for the tenth time, but somehow each time I do, a new problem appears. I was the man of the house growing up, in between Mom’s boyfriends, and I’ve worked construction jobs between more lucrative gigs. And yet . . .

“Must be gremlins,” Kim had shouted over her shoulder a week ago as she took a power sander to a brand-new table to make it look old. “Or maybe you’re actually fucking things up when you think you’re fixing them?”

Story of my life.

The path to the bathroom on the main floor is clear since Kim is currently busy with her demented hammering, so I slide into the shower and wash quickly, efficiently, like I’m in a prison shower and can’t drop my guard.

Afterward, no longer smelling like stale IPA and flop sweat, I steel myself and walk into the kitchen.

Half the cabinet doors are off their hinges and a thin layer of sawdust covers the floor and the other flat surfaces. Kim is wearing a ratty but expensive tank top and yoga pants with cat paws all over them, even though she thinks cats are parasites; her hair is up in a messy bun on top of her head, and her expression is solemn and focused. For a second, it feels like a year ago, before things had gone bad, when I found her “concentration” face so damn sexy she had to shut the door on me while scrolling through real estate listings.

A lot can change in a year. Not the door shutting in my face, though now it’s more like three doors and two stories.

She has her iPad holder with the extensible neck clamped to the counter, and she’s squinting at the screen, scrubbing her finger up and up and up over the smooth glass, leaving trails in the sawdust.

I can guess what she’s looking at. Two apps were clocking the most usage on her devices last time I was privy to that info: OurHood, a kind of virtual neighborhood watch that’s fascinating in its ability to turn any activity into something sinister, and Boomtown, the home renovation and decoration app for people like us—or like her, rather. Wealthy millennials who buy and DIY for fun and profit because they plan to sell the houses they buy on the cheap in “emerging communities.”

When we’d scored an advanced viewing for this place, I told her I liked the vintage feel of the kitchen, with its dark wood cabinets and stained-glass windows. Apparently, what I thought was cool, she considered gauche.

This is the third time she’s repainted the cabinets, the last attempt a hideous peach color buffed with rose gold. Half the house is in various stages of “work in process,” and I’m no longer consulted on projects.

Her interest in me dropped drastically over the course of the home-buying process, though she kept insisting things were fine. Me losing my job shortly after the move was the cherry on the shit cake that’s our relationship now. That she doesn’t know the real reason for my unemployment? I guess that’s the decorative icing; it spells out At least you tried.

I should be glad things didn’t turn out worse than my relationship foundering on the rocks, but I’ve never been one to focus on the brighter side.

“Good morning.” I try to sound pleasant, not like someone who’s considered gathering up all her expensive gold jewelry and touring pawnshops in the tri-state area.