There had been a mix-up in Thisbe’s residence application and, instead of the modern all-girls block close to the library she had signed up for, she’d been placed in a remote co-ed in an ancient hall with paper thin walls – and worse, there was a crack in her wall that the superintendents still hadn’t fixed. They had said they’d sort it in a week. This was why, though Thisbe hadn’t met her （clearly dickhead） neighbour a month into the term, she knew exactly who he was. ‘Pyramus’， she would hear them moan, late at night, cushioned among giggles. ‘Py （bang） Ra （bang） Mus （bang）！ Open up, you fuckboi-dickhead-mother-fucker!’ she would hear screamed outside of her door, at almost any time, really, from highly irate and clearly heart-broken voices. Thisbe would hear the click and creak of his door yawning open and, within minutes, no – seconds, no – milliseconds, the growls and curses would turn into mews and sweet concessions, the anger would subside and the storm would pass, calmed by a low, level voice. Reasonable, considered, smoothing away all perceived indiscretions and hiccups. Babe, baby, boo.
He was like some kind of Bad Bitch Whisperer. And they were all bad bitches, have no doubt. Once one of his visitors banged on her door, and Thisbe had the privilege of seeing Pyramus’s type. Immaculate, Rihanna-lite, edgy. Tight abs revealed under a cut-up Wu Tang shirt. An artistically decorated face, cheekbones that cast a shadow. A sleek, cropped haircut that Thisbe lacked the face shape or patience to sport. Many ear piercings. Tall. The girl had looked down at Thisbe through inky, feathery lashes and raised her eyebrows at Thisbe’s Global Gyaldem T-shirt （a large conference for young black women who seek to speak truth to power）， headscarf and bleary eyes before smiling sweetly. ‘Oh. Wrong room. Sorry.’ Because apparently it was inconceivable that Thisbe could have been one of his guests.
She banged on the wall between them. Three fisted pounds against the cracked plaster usually did it. For some reason, this time it took six. Within a few moments, the music reduced to a decibel that wasn’t quite so deafening, followed by the usual ‘My bad!’， except this time the ‘My bad’ sounded choked for some reason, the ‘My bad’ sounded bad. Thisbe thought to say something, but couldn’t think of what to say and, besides, he was a stranger and, besides, how could she presume she could detect his moods just because she was used to hearing his insincere apologies through the wall after he had kept her up. And not in the way he usually kept girls up either, this was far from pleasurable. Not that she, personally, would have liked to have been kept up by him in that way. Although she did take a sneak peek at his Insta-Twitter-Book or whatever, just by the by, because he’d come up on the side as a ‘suggested friend’ （no, thank you）， and he was handsome, if you liked that sort of thing. That sort of thing being, like, a sloping wicked-looking smile and the build of someone who only had to go to the gym twice a year to build physique. Smooth, buttery cinnamon skin like he was poured into form. His short black curls looked well acquainted with shea butter, like they had coffee together once or twice a week. Fulsome lips, somehow looking they were sculpted with a chisel and stuffed with angel-wing down. However, Thisbe was an evolved woman and therefore that sort of thing did not move her, she was only attracted to men when they met her on a certain holistic, spiritual, multi-dimensional level and even then—
She heard four loud bangs on her door. Thisbe swore under her breath . . . and then promptly became short of it. In a well-rehearsed minute, she leapt out of bed, slammed the light on, threw her headscarf off of the Senegalese twists piled high on her head, switched her T-shirt to a tank top, dabbed some lip balm （with a soft sheen） on her lips, gargled some mouthwash and spat it out of her window.
She opened her door and smiled at the person on the other side of it.
‘Hey, Kazeem.’
Pyramus
Kazeem was a prick. Pyramus had it on good authority that Kazeem was fucking Kyla Reynolds, two floors down. Kyla Reynolds had grown up in Suffolk, wore Barbour jackets and, once, when Pyramus had put on his ‘Netflix and Chill’ playlist, she had asked why his taste had to be so ‘typical’， just as Usher’s ‘Can U Handle It?’ started playing. She proceeded to ask if he could switch to something more ‘interesting’， such as Mumford and Sons, which sounded like the name of an artisanal butchers in Kensington. But that was besides the point – Kazeem was a dog, and now he had taken to drunkenly stumbling into Pyramus’s neighbour’s room – what was her name? Phoebe? Nah, it was Thisbe. On one of the few times he’d seen her, he’d noticed she was wearing a gold chain with a T on it. It was late, and she was rushing somewhere, holding books, and he was ambling somewhere, holding booze. So anyway, he’d noticed Kazeem had decided to start stumbling into Thisbe’s room on indiscriminate days of the week.