1. The first encounter

Steve is sitting in an armchair in his bedroom and doesn't dare to budge. He has moved the chair as close to the wall as possible and is leaning over the armrest, aiming his right ear towards the wall. With his eyes closed, he focuses on the sounds coming from the other side. He has turned off the AC in his room as well as his phone, to avoid any interruption of the acoustic event, he is hoping to witness anytime soon. So far he can only occasionally hear muffled voices from far away, but that, he knows, will change as soon as the couple approaches the room right behind the wall, which is the bedroom. The wall is thin enough to distinguish voices or the tone of a conversation. Even an occasional word can be guessed if said loud enough. These vague hints spur Steve's imagination as he tries to fathom what the incomprehensible conversation might be all about.

As soon as he heard the elevator arriving at his floor Steve had jumped up from his desk and run to the front door to check the hallway through the spyhole. Since his new neighbor had moved in, Steve was quite jumpy at certain hours of the day, when he knew she would be back from work or bring home a date. She had a lot of dates – and rightfully so. She was just stunning. The first time he met her, was the day she moved in. A couple of big men were struggling to get her bulky furniture up the stairs and she was carrying a heavy box in front of her. Resting on the box, pressed together by her arms left and right, were the biggest naturally wobbling breasts Steve had ever seen. And although they were covered by a black turtleneck sweater, they were still too immense to be concealed underneath it. Steve's pulse had skyrocketed instantly and just as his jaw was about to drop, she had spotted him. Just in time, Steve had managed to turn his gaping mouth into a broad smile and he had noticed her eyes for the first time. To his own astonishment, he noticed that he was already walking towards her, his hands stretched out towards the box. "Let me help you with these!" He blurted out a little too enthusiastically. Before she had a chance to notice his Freudian slip, Steve had already seized the box from her and robbed her heavy breasts of all support. They slipped off the box, slapped audibly against each other as they dropped, and threw the surprised woman off balance for a split second."Ouch, careful!" Embarrassed by his clumsiness, Steve had blushed. But the surprise on her face gave way to a relieved grateful smile. "Thank you, that's very kind." Her nicely manicured hand with the jingling bracelets on her wrist invited him into the empty apartment. "Just leave it over there, on the floor. I'll take care of it later." She said. "You are welcome." Steve stuttered nervously. "I'm Leanne, by the way. I guess I'm your new neighbor." She reached out for his hand. She was so beautiful. Her raven black hair fell over her shoulder in big heavy waves. Full lips, elegantly curved like pen stroke of Arabic calligraphy. Smooth tanned skin. And eyes, vivid and sparkling like the ocean over the Mariana Trench. Steve couldn't place her. She could have been Middle Eastern, Latin American, or southern European, maybe she was from another planet. He swallowed nervously and took her hand. It was not cold.

Next door they are still having dinner. Steve can hear the occasional clank and chink of dishes and cutlery. Their voices alternate in a pleasant regular rhythm that reveals their enjoyment. They laugh a lot, she a little more than him. Her laughter is resonant and light-hearted and Steve reaches out to the wall to feel this sound of joy with his fingertips. There is an air of vivacity and unconcern in their voices that suggests, that this is not a romantic dinner. Voices on romantic dates become softer and slower, the gaps between sentences increase as lovebirds approach the most intimate moment. No, this is friends talking. The kind of friends who know each other long and well enough to chat about even the most intimate things without any inhibitions. Whenever Steve observes such a profound relationship in others, he is always overcome with melancholy, filled with jealousy and envy, but above all shame. He knows such relationships only from memories. And to numb the gloomy feeling in his heart, he closes his eyes, puts his ear to the cold wall, and waits for the moment when the pleasure of others will take possession of his imagination and take him to a better place.

Her date is the first in the bedroom. Steve hears his belt buckle hitting the floor with a metallic clink. She is not with him yet, because they are talking loudly across the hall. Their voices now sound more casual, they seem to talk about everyday things. Maybe about whether she has to get up early tomorrow morning. Steve believes to recognize a "no" in the muffled sound sequence. Her date answers something and she laughs. Steve hears her naked feet approaching on the parquet floor. Her voice is now closer and Steve imagines her standing there, perhaps leaning against the door frame, looking at her half-naked friend. Perhaps she has just crossed her arms underneath her enormous bosom and is throwing him a seductive smile. But as her voice retreats again and he hears the gurgling of the water pipes, he concludes that she must have been standing there with a toothbrush in her mouth. So while she is still getting ready for bed in the bathroom, her guy makes himself comfortable in her creaking bed.

The sex is intense and ravenous. A wild thunderstorm of thuds, moans, and screams. The bed creaks and groans under the violent thrusts and it hits the wall so hard, Steve has to move his chair back to feel safe again. He hears his neighbor's nails scratching the wooden headboard, as she's leaning over it, holding on to it like her life depends on it. Kneeling on her bed, bent over, her upper body resting on the board, her face is probably almost touching the wall, just one foot away from where Steve is sitting and jerking off. He literally sees her in front of him, with clenched teeth and lust-twisted eyes, her wet hair in tangled strands on her sweaty face. The sharp slaps of a palm repeatedly rip the roaring storm like lightning, followed by a cascade of appreciative moans. Air hisses through fletched teeth as the rhythmic smacking of his groins against her ass picks up speed. But there are also other, duller and irregular thuds that bang against the headboard of the bed, which Steve wasn't familiar with when he heard them the first time. But to Steve's imagination, this sound could only come from his beautiful neighbor's huge pendulous breasts, which free-swingingly ram everything in their erratic trajectory.

Since Leanne moved in, Steve would frequently be an ear witness to such impressive natural phenomena. He didn't always get to check if it was the same visitor, but to him, it sounded so. After a short time, he had internalized the sounds from the neighboring apartment to such an extent that he could have made a replica of it based only on his auditory memory. He knew where the kitchen had to be, how the bathroom door sounded when it was closed. He could distinguish different kinds of seating furniture by the sound they made when someone sat down on them. He recognized habitual behavioral patterns of his neighbor by certain sequences of sounds. He knew, for example, that after work she would go into the bedroom in her shoes, let herself fall onto the bed with a loud sigh, then strip her shoes from her feet and throw them into the corner. Then she would usually plug a charging cable into the sockets next to her bed and put her cell phone on the nightstand. The latter had become clear to him when the cell phone began to ring and vibrate on the wooden surface of the nightstand. With the deductive skills that would have done credit to a Sherlock Holmes, Steve was indeed able to put together a coherent picture, at least in his imagination, based on many small acoustic details and the few things he knew about his neighbor. But since he had to fill the gaps with his imagination, he could not be sure that his image corresponded to reality.

In order to gather more hints and clues that could fuel his imagination, he used every opportunity that presented itself to get in touch with her. However, the idea of courting her like a true gentleman to win her heart did not occur to him. He had long since put her up on a pedestal far too high to even think about it. Even if she was the embodiment of all his desire, with what should he have balanced her value? What did he have to offer? And was it not simply a fact that something so perfect could never be reached? And so he chose the path that so many people choose when it came to a life they thought they could only dream of. Like all the readers of celebrity magazines, gossip magazines, travel magazines, and many other things, Steve chose the way to participate in the life of his neighbor. Quietly and secretly, making her completely his.