by Gary Beck
He finished his statement by saying, "We had a one-year legal sublet. I showed the lease to the landlord and he refused to accept it. He threatened and harassed us and told us he would get rid of us, one way or another. I suspect the fire was his doing."
The landlord screamed and cursed at Peter, while his lawyer tried to calm him. One of the fire marshals ordered a ten-minute recess and Beth and Peter walked into the hall to get away from the landlord’s abuse.
The hearing resumed and they called Beth to testify. She couldn’t add much to Peter’s story, but she insisted that she was very careful in the kitchen and would never risk the lives of her children by neglecting all safety procedures.
"We ended up in a homeless shelter because of him. Now he’s trying to blame us."
The fire marshals deliberated for a few minutes, then announced that although the precise cause of the fire had not been determined, it was still considered of suspicious origin. They would examine further evidence, then reconvene the following week on Wednesday, January 31st, at 10:00 a.m., Peter asked the fire marshal when he would be able to get into his apartment but was told not before the next hearing. The landlord approached Peter with obviously false good will and offered to forego any claim of damages, if he would vacate the apartment. Peter was furious and told him that they would have him arrested on charges of arson after the hearing and stormed off.
Once Peter calmed down he mentioned the consequences of the hearing, "We have to wait another week until the cause of the fire is resolved, then who knows how long it’ll take the landlord to repair the damage and replace the kitchen appliances. Unless we take him to court, he could stall for months."
"What if the fire marshal determines that he’s responsible?"
"I hope he goes to jail."
"So do I, Peter, but what will that mean for us?"
"I don’t know. Maybe he’ll make a deal and fix the apartment right away, but don’t count on it."
"So we’ll be at the hotel for a while."
"It looks that way."
"I guess it wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t for those hoodlums upstairs."
"There’s nothing we can do about them, so let’s worry about our other problems."
"Speaking of worry, this is the first time I’ve left Andy alone with a stranger. I hope he’s all right."
"I don’t think Miss Lily’s a stranger anymore. Why don’t you call her on the cell phone? That’s why we got them."
After Miss Lily got over being startled by the ringing phone, she assured Beth that the children were happily playing Xman games.
Beth and Peter were alone together for the first time in weeks. "What shall we do, rent a hotel room?" Peter asked.
She smacked him playfully, "Very funny…. Look. There’s a music store. Can we go in?"
"Sure."
Beth rushed to the pianos, eyes bright with excitement and went straight to a Steinway concert grand. She sat down and ran her fingers lovingly cross the keyboard, then started a Chopin étude. A salesman appeared by remote control and asked if he could help them. Peter filibustered for a few minutes to give Beth time to finish the piece. She sat there in a trance and the salesman asked her if she was interested in the instrument.
"Yes. I’m just not sure it would fit in our hotel suite. What do you think, darling?"
"I’m not sure either. We’ll have to measure."
"We’ll just have to come back in a few days."
"Do you want to know the price?"
"Not really. My husband will take care of that." She skipped out of the store, feeling happy for the moment. "I don’t know how I’ll do it yet, but I have to get access to a piano."
They took the subway uptown and Beth got off at 28th Street, while Peter went on to work. When she got to the hotel, she stopped at the social worker’s office and knocked repeatedly, but there was no answer. She tried to peek through the mail slot, but couldn’t see anything, so she yelled in a deep voice, "I’ll be back."
Kiesha had just returned from school and she told Beth and Miss Lily her schedule; "Monday and Tuesday eight thirty to two thirty, Wednesday and Thursday eight thirty to twelve thirty, and no classes on Friday." She bubbled over about her classes: English literature, black history, math and two technical computer courses. She was particularly excited about being in a learning environment again. She went on and on about W.E.B. DuBois, a famous black activist who she had never heard of before.
"He was really cool. He helped found the NAACP and advocated education as the route of advancement for black people. I’ll tell you more about him when I read the next book. How did your hearing go?"
"Not great. The landlord’s blaming us and we have to go back next week. I don’t know what’ll happen."
"Don’t worry, missy. Things’ll work out. You’ll see."
Friday afternoon they made an extravagant purchase at the thrift shop; a small black and white TV for ten dollars. They set it up in Miss Lily’s room and actually got a picture just in time to see footage of a massive earthquake in India. Thousands were killed, thousands were missing and tens of thousands were homeless and destitute.
Kiesha was glued to the screen. "Wow. I thought we were bad off. What’s going to happen to all those people?"
"We just gotta hope they ain’t got no Giuliani over there in India," Miss Lily said, "cause he don’t care what happens to the poor."
Beth was surprised by her vehemence, "Why do you dislike Giuliani so much?"
"Cause he the biggest mouth in New York. I know a mayor can’t change everythin’, but he’s supposed to be for all the people. If big mouth Giuliani was a decent man he’d speak up for the poor, not just them rich real estate people. But he be gone soon and maybe Freddie Ferrer be more human."
"What makes you think Ferrer will be the next mayor?" Beth asked.
"Chile, he minority, but slick. People ready for someone different after mayor hypocrite."
The group attentively watched the earthquake disaster in India for the next few days, as the death toll rose and rose. By Sunday more than ten thousand people were dead. The number of missing was so high that thousands more were presumed dead. The stories of survivors were heart rending and the heroic efforts of ill-equipped rescuers were inspiring. The children weren’t interested in the tragedy far away. It was too remote from their day to day problems. The adults couldn’t help but be thankful that they lived in America.
Hector expressed what they were all feeling. "We complain about what happened to us, but at least there’s a system in place to help us, however bad it may be. Thousands of those Indians are going to die of disease or famine, after they survived the earthquake."
Peter nodded agreement, "When a disaster happens in America, we have a lot more resources to deal with it. What happened to us taught me a vital lesson; we have to be more self-reliant." No one disputed that.
Before they went to bed Sunday night, Peter and Hector put padlocks on all four doors. This made the group feel a little more secure than leaving the rooms only locked with the keys. They also discussed the ongoing late-night concerts and the commotion upstairs. They couldn’t come up with any new solutions to the problem and decided to ignore the disturbance, despite their growing fatigue from loss of sleep. Their biggest concern was for the children, who were increasingly waking up when the music and screaming got louder. It hadn’t affected their school performance yet, but it was obvious that sooner or later something had to change.
Miss Lily reminded them, "We know what kind of trash are up there carryin’ on. We try to do somethin’ about them; they could come after us and hurt the children. We can’t risk that. I know it’s keepin’ us awake, but we’re better off than we were at the E.A.U."
"What are we going to do about the kids?" Hector asked. "They’re losing too much sleep and getting cranky. How long can we go on like this?"
"Chile, as long as we have to."
Monday morning, while Peter and Hector were at work and Kiesha
was at school, Beth and Miss Lily took the younger children with them and went food shopping. On the way to the supermarket on Third Avenue and 25th Street, they passed another thrift store. It looked better maintained than the one they had been going to, and Miss Lily suggested they go there the next day. Later, when they went back to the hotel, they stopped at the social worker’s office and knocked, but no one answered.
Miss Lily called through the door, "I hope you ain’t turned into a pool of butter, like in ‘Little Black Sambo."
Beth cracked up with laughter. Somehow the incongruity of Miss Lily saying that kept her amused for the rest of the day. Miss Lily did have to tell the story of ‘Little Black Sambo’ to the children, who kept asking her to explain how a tiger could turn into a pool of butter. Miss Lily’s explanations were less than satisfactory, and the children were just beginning to explore the scientific method of spinning rapidly, when the call to lunch diverted them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The next afternoon while Beth was at the thrift shop, there was an attempted break-in. Miss Lily was reading to the younger children, when she heard a loud noise next door. She cautiously opened her door and saw two young black men trying to force open the padlock. She quietly went back into her room and called 911 on her cell phone and reported a break-in. By the time the police arrived, the robbers were long gone. The officers from the 13th precinct were very courteous, but informed Miss Lily that unless she could identify the men, they couldn’t do anything. She told them about the late night disturbances and the drug dealing and prostitution that went on.
The officers sympathized with her and the younger one, a baby-face blond who looked as if he should still be in high school, told her, "We know all about what they’re doing up there. If we could catch them in the act, we’d lock them up, but they have lookouts with cell phones who warn them we’re coming."
"So what should I do if they come back?"
"Call 911, ma’am. We’ll respond quickly."
That evening, the group discussed the latest incident and how to secure their rooms. The best idea they could come up with was to install police locks, as soon as they could afford them. They did decide that when Miss Lily was alone with the children she should keep her door locked. Peter was still hoping to get additional cots from the indifferent management, so when the Singh clone ignored his complaint, he didn’t lose his temper and walked away without an argument.
He saw Ephraim nod approvingly and stopped to chat. "Hi, Ephraim. How are you?"
"Pretty good, for a old man. You was smart not to fight with one of them Singhs. They get back at you one way or another if you bother them."
"I’m beginning to realize that, but aren’t they supposed to help the residents?"
"It don’t work that way." He was just about to explain, when a young black man in a full-length fur coat and tyrolean hat came in the lobby.
"Let’s go to the deli and get some coffee."
"Sure."
They went to the deli across the street and when they got their coffee containers, Peter attempted to pay.
"I don’t let nobody pay for me. I been independent all my life and I ain’t about to change."
"Sorry, Ephraim. I didn’t mean to offend you."
"No offense taken. I got my social security and my pension from the transit workers union. I pays my own way."
"I understand. What are you doing at the King Charles, if you have a good income?"
"I had to come here account of my granddaughter, Precious. She was livin’ with me in my house in Brooklyn and her boyfriend started beatin’ on her. I called the cops and they arrested him, but she wouldn’t press charges, so they let him go. He kept comin’ around and botherin’ her, and one night when we was out someone broke in and trashed the place. I know it was him but we couldn’t prove anythin’, so the cops couldn’t do nothin’. Then he phoned her one night and said he was goin’ to kill her, so we had to get out of there."
Ephraim paused as he calmly told the story.
"How did you end up in The King Charles?" Peter asked.
"We went to this emergency shelter in Brooklyn for victims of domestic violence, but they only took women. They sent us to this office in the Bronx that wasn’t too nice, and we were there for a while. They shuttled us back and forth to this motel on Boston Road in the Bronx. It was awful. They’d pick us up at night and bus us to the motel, where they’d do a full body search. I even saw them do it on children. It was humiliatin’. Then they sent us here. Most of the women here are victims of sexual abuse or domestic violence."
"How come I never see them?"
"They be so afraid that they almost never come out of their rooms."
"Do they have children?"
"Some of them, but most of them are too afraid to send them to school, in case their abusers find them."
"What’s going to happen to them?"
"They gotta wait for special relocation and maybe get an identity change. It takes a long time."
"What do they do until then?"
"They hides in their rooms and only comes out to get food."
Peter was beginning to get a picture of the homeless system that wasn’t pretty. Between his own experience and what he learned from his friends, it was a nightmare of uncaring social workers, indifferent bureaucrats and abusive guards. The people who came to the shelter system out of desperation were actually being punished for daring to be needy. He had laughed at first when he read that Giuliani launched another tirade about blasphemous art that insulted religion, because in a world of endless horrors it seemed consummately trivial. Now he wondered how that purported mayor of all the people could dare remain silent, while children were being destroyed, through no fault of their own save the curse of coincidence; being born to poverty. He couldn’t help but think how lucky he and Beth were, after hearing the terrible stories of anguish about people who suffered some kind of disaster, then were victimized by the system.
"What floor do you live on, Ephraim?"
"The fifth. They put us on the ninth floor when we first got here, but all that dirty stuff was going on above us, so we got them to give us another room."
"I thought the shelter system was full?"
"Nah. Only some of it. That motel we went to was only full because the drug dealers and prostitutes were busy all the time. The Charles is half empty."
"Don’t they lose a lot of money?"
"Nah. The city pays them 250 dollars a day for each of the rooms. They don’t lose nothin’."
"Then why are so many rooms empty?"
"They be real clever, these welfare hotel owners. The city pays them a fortune for the rooms, but nobody checks on the numbers of occupants. The Singhs get payoffs from those gangs upstairs, who got two whole floors. And sometimes they rent rooms to tourists who get a real shock when they find out what kind of place they’re in."
Even though it wasn’t funny, Peter had to laugh. "I can imagine. Mom and pop Midwest come to the big city for some fun and check into a war zone…. 250 dollars a day is a lot of money. Are you sure it’s that much?"
"Yeah."
"My family could live on Park Avenue for that amount."
Peter’s cell phone rang, startling him. It was Beth. "I was worried about you. I thought you were only going downstairs for a minute. I was afraid something happened to you."
"I’m sorry, honey. I started talking to one of our neighbors, Ephraim. You’ve seen him in the lobby and we went across the street and got coffee. I didn’t mean to worry you."
"Am I being too paranoid? I don’t know what to worry about anymore, so I worry about everything."
"I guess you’re becoming a New Yorker."
"Now that I’ve got a cell phone, I am a New Yorker. Are you coming upstairs soon?"
"As soon as I say goodnight to Ephraim…."
"I didn’t mean to get you into trouble with your wife."
"It was my fault. I should have phoned her. Can I ask you a question?"
"Yeah."
"Are there empty rooms on the fifth floor?"
"Yeah. Almost all of them."
"It must be a lot quieter than the seventh floor."
"I guess."
"Would you mind if my friends and I moved our families there?"
"Nah. It’d be nice to have some decent folk for neighbors."
"I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later."
The group was very interested when Peter told them about the vacancies on the fifth floor. "I don’t know if I’m up to another long distance move with all our possessions," Beth said teasingly.
Peter laughed, "Considering that everything we own fits in a plastic bag, you must have another reason to want to stay in this luxury suite."
"It’s the late-night concerts. I’ve grown dependent."
"Did this Ephraim guy say that it was quieter on the fifth floor?" Hector asked.
"Yes. And it makes sense. The further away we are from the noise, the better it is for us."
Everyone agreed that it was a good idea to move and Miss Lily summed it up, "It’ll be better for the children."
"We should tell Mr. Singh that we want to move tomorrow night. I’ll talk to him, with Kiesha and Hector," Beth said.
"If he asks how you know there are empty rooms on the floor," Peter said. "Don’t tell him that Ephraim told me. I don’t want to get him into trouble."
