Siren, n: 1. any of a group of female and partly human creatures in Greek mythology that lured mariners to destruction by singing; 2. a woman who sings with bewitching sweetness; 3. TEMPTRESS.

Thinking with the little head.

A tasteless cliché? An embarrassing condition where a man realizes he has too much in common with a rutting stag? Something I would expect myself to rise above?

All true. But I have spent the past two years of my life in an annoying apartment that, for lack of a better explanation, I moved into because of my little head. The farmer's daughter? No, this time it was the landlord's daughters, in Astoria, New York, home to the largest Greek population in America.

The story from the beginning. Two years ago, I found myself wanting to get out of my living situation in the Bronx. Despite the cheap rent and great landlord, I was tired of watching the neighborhood slowly but surely get worse. None of my white friends would visit me, and I was starting to feel isolated. It was time to go, but to where?

Astoria was the place. It was cheap, easily accessible to Manhattan (the only reason to live in any 718 neighborhood), plenty of hip young white folk I'd met over the years who had sung its praises as a "hidden jewel"--all of the things which should have made me suspicious. But I went and found a real estate agency filled with what I call "housing pimps." Mine was a middle-aged Italian woman who made Roseanne Barr seem like a subtle, emaciated beauty. She had a mustache and cell phone.

I saw a few one-bedroom apartments and was growing weary after three days of boxy, over-priced closets. Then the housing pimp took me to one that was a little cheaper than the others. Looked nice enough from the outside. Met the landlord--Leo, a nice Greek guy who was a dead ringer for Satch from the Bowery Boys, and his wife, Olympia, a pretty redhead, both in their late 30s. I checked out the place--the usual boxy railroad affair, facing the street--but with a rent $75 less than what I had been seeing, I found myself tempted. We went back to their apartment, which was directly behind the one we were in on the first floor, for some tea.

The usual friendly chatting ensued. And then she came out: Leo's 17-year-old daughter, Victoria. It was like that scene in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen where we first see Uma Thurman as Venus. Long, flowing red hair. Blue eyes. Pale skin, like a ghost. Frail, but well-built. Shy, but with a knowing way about her. She looked like the figurehead on a ship. Had I been a cartoon, my tongue would have rolled out like a red carpet. I took one look at her and signed the lease in my heart. I don't know if she was just flirting or genuinely interested, but the eye contact between us was of the kind usually reserved for potential bar romps. I couldn't stop glancing over at her and invariably found her looking back.

There was no lease to sign. Leo, like me and my old landlord in the Bronx, was a handshake man, and that's what we went on. I was a little worried that with the apartment being on the street, the noise would be too much. But, forget it, I thought: it's cheap, it's clean, and I like Leo and his family. (By the end of his visit, I met his 10-year-old son, whose name I never learned and was more like a family dog. And his other daughter, Athena, a pretty 15-year-old, who seemed more out-going but not as stunning as Victoria.)

Leo once told me why he avoided renting to single women: "Bill, thiss women, they are like honey biss. Honey biss, I tell you, making honey and driving the boy biss crazy. No good. No good. Too much. Too much. I no rent to them."

His explanation was all right with me--anything that gave me a chance to do my Humbert Humbert imitation with his insanely beautiful teenage daughters.

Everything was fine at first. The girls, as I called them, were always friendly in the hallway and tended to keep to themselves. I started noticing that the walls and floors of the apartment were too thin for my liking. I could hear everything in the hallway leading past my door, which had a wired-glass window, like in a medical office, meaning sound traveled even further through my apartment.

The girls were trendy dressers. Belly shirts and tight stretch pants, highlighting the curves of their gorgeous asses. For the uninitiated, there truly is something about Greek women, all the old stereotypes: passionate, often beautiful, maybe a little tacky, but possessing something so mysterious to outsiders, like me, that the more troubling aspects of their personalities become charming. One can forgive a lot with a Greek woman, it seems--at least I did.

Part of the girls' fashion trendiness also involved platform shoes. I think the girls were flat-footed to begin with, and the hallway had a marble floor. This was like hearing Clydesdales on speed charging through the hallway. Every night. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. Back and forth. Being neighborhood girls, they were constantly coming and going.

Usually when I went over to pay my rent, I sat with Leo, and often Olympia and the girls, to talk for an hour or two. This was always pleasant--Leo and I genuinely hit it off, as we were both working guys who simply didn't want to be bothered with anything. And, best of all, I got to watch the girls. Playing with their hair, stalking through the living room in their platforms, bending over to pick up items that didn't have to be picked up. The girls always seemed to hover around when I was over--I felt like Clint Eastwood in The Beguiled.

Sometimes we would talk, and that's when I got the lowdown on their lives. Victoria was doing well in school, the "golden" daughter, incredibly beautiful and college-bound, with a rich boyfriend. Athena was troubled. Due to non-attendance, she had flunked a grade and was dating guys she was meeting in her remedial programs: slovenly kids with sideways baseball hats and obnoxious wigger pretensions to burn. For all her problems, I found her to have street sense and a friendly way about her. There was clearly some tension between her and Victoria, most likely an inferiority complex.

This pattern never ended for both of them. Now 19, Victoria is going to college and seems to have a new boyfriend every month -- unfortunately, of the sideways hat variety. I don't even know if Athena is going to school anymore, as when I've been home during the day she's there. But her taste in men stays the same. I could often hear boyfriends-of-the-week in front of my apartment, blasting awful hip-hop and Greek pop music on their car stereos while they waited for the girls to clippety-clop out the marble hallway for a night of whatever. Leo's lecture about those "honey biss" was making more sense, as I heard the "boy biss" droning away in the street at night.

Ah, but Victoria. Like that 10CC song, I was not in love, but every time we spoke, I found myself remembering her smile, or turning to look at her, only to find her doing the same. I had many a "Bill, could you help me with this writing assignment" fantasy, often involving the rest of the family being away for the night, and Victoria in a diaphanous gown and make-up.

Things got worse as time went on. They'd often leave their apartment door open. The little boy would burst into the hallway, attacking a play friend, the sound of them tumbling against the door, screams and curses. The telephone ringing, so clearly that it could have been in my apartment. Olympia yelling at the girls. The sound of objects being thrown around. Victoria and Athena fighting constantly. A blaring TV set. Sooner or later, someone would realize that the door was open, and then slam it shut. Followed by more stomping in and out of the hallway. It was rare that I could go more than 15 minutes without hearing some extraneous noise in my apartment from them. I felt like I was living in a college dormitory.

I spent less time courting their presence, shutting myself off from their cacophonous world. Coming from a family of seven, I understood that families were noisy, but this was the noisiest one I had ever met. I saw less of Victoria, meaning that I was rapidly falling out of love with living there. This was just before Christmas.

When I came back from Christmas vacation, I heard something even worse. Leo had purposely left the apartment beneath mine open as a "chill out" space for him to go when the family got to be too much. Apparently, Victoria and Athena had a major blow-out while I was gone, and Victoria had simply moved into that apartment beneath mine.

This was the beginning of the end. Before then, I had seen her as a vision of beauty, if a bit troubled. When she moved in downstairs, I found out more about her. Every night, she got on the phone and bitched out whatever doomed bastard she was dating that week, usually at 11:15 p.m. She was generally castigating a guy for being insensitive. And here I thought guys who wore sideways baseball hats and blasted shitty music in the street were future psychologists. She would throw stuff around. Doors slammed every night. The staircase leading up to the hallway in front of their door became a gangway. Someone walking up or down it put out a sound similar to a hammer pounding on a board. Sometimes Athena would go down, and they'd invariably start fighting. Once, Athena came back up with a black eye, hysterical, yelling, "The bitch hit me! I can't take this anymore!"

I knew where she was coming from. It seemed that my Victoria had a temper like a blast furnace. One night, one of her suitors came over to argue with her, and, like a dimestore Brando, ended up smashing a garbage can against the gate outside our house. This drove her wild--she would have shot the guy if she had a gun.

I'd had it. Not to mention dealing with our neighbor. This old woman who was obsessed with garbage cans--she checked them at least 10 times a day. I could hear her outside my apartment, like a starving raccoon, clanking the cans around, looking inside them, slamming the lids down, then going back inside. Sometimes I saw her out front, always in a nightgown, clutching a framed picture of her dead husband in an army uniform, saying "Astoria ain't what it used to be" with a glazed look in her eye. She was a conversation vampire, stopping unsuspecting passers-by who'd respond to her friendly greeting and not letting them go for a good 15 minutes. Many a time she sucked every drop of patience from my liberal attention span.

After a few days down in her new place, Victoria took to blasting her stereo and inviting guys over (but never for the night). I countered by treating her and her guest, always some loud-mouthed kid, to an impromptu introduction to 70s punk music: The Sex Pistols, Pere Ubu, Suicide. Loud, abrasive music that becomes even more repulsive when heard at top volume through speakers placed face down on the floor. Every time I saw Victoria after that, we exchanged curt hellos, followed by a withering glance where she let me know how much she hated me for not tolerating her noise. (And, make no mistake, I'm pretty loose about such issues--she had been blasting music to the point where I was feeling the bass through the floor.)

That was the last straw. I moved out, about 15 blocks east, to a basement apartment much cheaper than my old place, not to mention that my only neighbors are an old Greek couple who live above me. It's as quiet as a church. The neighborhood isn't any better or worse, but the apartment surely is.

Still, I find myself missing the girls. Not the noise--just the sight of them. The day I moved out, March 31st, it was 70 degrees, a beautiful, summer-like day. Athena, as usual, wasn't in school and had their apartment door wide open, blasting some Top 40 crap on the stereo. She came out to sit with the babbling garbage-can lady in her nightgown with the picture of her dead husband and watch my brother and I slowly load my possessions into his pick-up truck. We couldn't get it all in one load, and the day took on a strange, dream-like quality as every time we came back, Athena would be there on the steps, like a siren on the rocks, looking at me with those sharp, smiling eyes.

Before the last load, Victoria pulled up in her car, back from college for the day, her long red hair pulled back in a knot. She, too, took her place on the steps. Every now and then I'd glance over and find her looking at me with those pale blue eyes, which she'd jerk away, like a lover who had been wronged but didn't want to walk away. When the pick-up truck pulled out, we gazed at each other for a long moment.

I don't think I understand what passed between us. Love? Hardly, especially after I took to antagonizing her with the stereo. I feel silly for that now, but it made sense at the time. Part genuine anger at her lack of manners, part jealousy. I can admit it.

Who knows, 15 blocks isn't a long way to go, and Leo's already invited me over to have tea and pastries, a big deal with Greek families in the neighborhood. I don't know what passed between Victoria and me, but I do know that as we exchanged that last mysterious look, I felt like a sailor, guiding his ship away from the rocks, glad to be alive, but heartbroken that I could not hear the sirens' song echoing in my ears, and have that beautiful face be the last I see before sinking beneath the waves.