“How would you fill in this blank?” My mother is reading off a website set up to help AirHotel hosts make their spaces (as rooms or apartments are called) enticing. “ ‘Guests should stay at my place first and foremost because…’ ”
My dad looks up from the bar mitzvah video he’s editing at his workstation. Okay, it’s really just a laptop attached to a monitor and keyboard, but since he can’t afford to rent office space, we call it his workstation. And he’s editing some kid’s bar mitzvah video because the parents are loaded, and they hired him to shoot it and make a fancy montage and everything.
No, this isn’t my dad’s dream job. When he graduated film school his advisor told him that he was going to be the next Steven Spielberg. I don’t like to think about it too much because even though he says annoying things to me and gets all bent out of shape when I don’t remember to clear the table or something, I know he just wasn’t as lucky as some of his classmates. But he keeps at it, which is either really brave or really pathetic. I haven’t figured that out yet.
It really is true that they need the money, so I play along.
“Could you repeat the question?” my dad asks.
“ ‘Guests should stay at my place first and foremost because…’ ”
My dad takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “Hmm. How about…‘they will have a true Brooklyn experience in a warm family atmosphere’?”
My mother scrunches up her face. “It’s good, but I was thinking ‘it’s quiet and ideally located.’ ” She types both in.
“Any other questions?” I ask.
“ ‘My space is specifically suited to…’ ”
“ ‘People who think promises are things you don’t have to keep’?” I suggest.
“Ha ha,” my mom says. “I’m serious.”
I get up and head to my closet. “So am I.”
I pass my dad’s screen. There’s a scene with disco lights, a smoke machine, and people who look like they’re in their twenties dancing with kids.
“Who are those guys?” I ask.
“Those are entertainers hired by the parents to dance with kids and make everyone feel like it’s a party,” my dad responds.
“That’s their job?” I ask.
“Yep. And they earn a lot of money doing it.”
Now the camera is panning across the room—there’s an entire sushi bar set up, a hot dog stand, and a burger station. I let out a low whistle. “How much do you think the whole thing cost?”
My dad shakes his head. “Gotta be at least forty grand. The dad is an investment banker.”
That’s almost what it would have cost to send Jake to Cornell for a year without financial aid.
In case I didn’t mention it, I go to public school. When my friends are bar mitzvahed, there’s usually just a really nice party at their home.
My mother is not happy. “Could you guys please help here?” she grouses.
“I’m sorry,” my dad says. “Tell me again.”
“ ‘My space is specifically suited to…’ ”
“ ‘Couples and people visiting the city on college tours, or anyone who wants a true taste of Brooklyn’?” my dad offers.
My mom nods. “That’s really good. See? You have good ideas too! That’s a lot better than what I came up with.”
I know my mom so well. This is her way of getting Dad to engage.
I guess that’s what makes her a good wife. I wish she was as good a mom. Well, to me, at least.
That’s probably totally unfair, and she’d be very hurt if she heard me say it. So I don’t say it out loud, of course. But I do feel it.
Mom moves on. “Oh, dear. It says the room really needs to be uncluttered and simple-looking if we want good reviews. I think we have some shopping to do.”
I see my dad’s shoulders tense.
Mom has pulled up the Ikea website. That’s where we get most of our furniture. And looking at the photos on the AirHotel website, we’re not alone.
She walks into Jake’s old room and starts making a list.
“Remember, we’re on a budget…,” my father calls from his workstation.
Next stop: Ikea, the Magic Kingdom of Brooklyn Bedrooms!
When most families go to Ikea, they pile into the car and head over.
For us, it’s not so easy. We don’t own a car, so we borrow my grandparents’ from out in the suburbs.
It’s not too far to drive to Ikea. We find a space in the garage and head upstairs. I love Ikea. The little fake rooms, with all those perfect accessories and cool prints on the walls. I would love to live there.
But today is different, since we’re here to decorate the room that was supposed to be mine. I guess all Jake’s worldly possessions are going to go somewhere else. We’re even getting a new bed, because his is kind of beat up.
I can’t help myself.
“So if we have the money to buy all this stuff,” I say, “why do we need to rent out the room?”
My mother bends down. “Danny,” she says.
I guess I should mention that my folks are kind of tall, and Jake is too. I still haven’t hit my growth spurt, or so the doctor said at my last checkup. Maybe I’ll always be short.
Anyhow, my mom is a lot taller than I am, so she has to bend over to look straight into my eyes. “This is going on our credit card. We’re just hoping that the people who stay will pay enough.”
I pick up a drinking glass that looks expensive but costs only $1.99. “So you’re gambling.”
My dad is putting six of the $1.99 glasses in our cart. “No, it’s an investment.”
We load up on everything the AirHotel site says will help us get good reviews from our “guests,” even stuff that isn’t for the bedroom: a fabric shower curtain with a liner, a cute area rug, a toilet seat (A new toilet seat? Really?), a framed print of something abstract and Swedish, and new silverware.
“We can get the hair dryer at the drugstore,” Mom says.
“What the heck do we need a hair dryer for?”
“I was reading on the site about a guy who had four girls staying at his house and he didn’t have one. These are the little things people care about.”
I kind of stopped listening after the “four girls staying at his house” part. I cannot imagine a weirder situation than sharing our apartment with four girls.
“So you’re saying that we could have four girls—” I begin.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” my dad says.
Whew.
“Maybe two, three at the most, if one sleeps on the couch in the living room,” he adds.
I am hating this more and more.
We get all the numbers for the bed and the new nightstand. We’re even getting a new desk. These are large things that have to be picked up downstairs. Before we leave, we go to the restaurant and have lunch.
This is always my favorite part of visiting the Brooklyn Ikea. It’s like a little picture of Brooklyn, with all these people from different cultures eating together. You’ll see a Jamaican family with a baby, and next to them a Chinese family with four older girls and a little boy. And over there, an Indian family buying stuff for their daughter to go to college (yes, I’m nosy and look in people’s carts). There’s a pair of newlyweds, the cliché Midwestern couple. You can hear like a dozen different languages, but everyone is saying the same thing. Cranky babies are the same in any language. Tired parents snapping at each other don’t need a translation. When the newlyweds start bickering about which end table to buy, I see the parents in each group exchange knowing smiles.
I order the same thing every time: Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes. I see it on trays around the room, all of us from practically every country on the globe, eating Swedish meatballs.
That’s Brooklyn for you. I
mean, there are plenty of neighborhoods in Brooklyn where you’ll see only one ethnic group or another, but when we get together in one place, somehow we all get along.
Well, everyone except my mom. She orders a salad, because she thinks it’s healthier and feels the need to say this out loud every time. I guess that’s another Brooklyn for you (the annoying one).
It’s a little weird to be here without Jake, and not to be talking about him and college and everything. But Mom is too busy making sure she’s got everything on her checklist and Dad is worrying about the traffic going back.
We get everything we need into the car and head home. The bed alone is really heavy (even though it’s in pieces), so Dad has arranged for our super to help bring it upstairs to our apartment. When I say “our super” it sounds like he’s our personal superhero. In a way he is. But he’s really just the superintendent of the building. Which means when anything goes wrong in the apartment, he’s the one to call.
Gabriel is a really cool guy. Even though my dad didn’t ask, he’s brought his tools. He knows my dad isn’t the greatest at building things.
Like I said, our personal superhero.
Mom and I start unpacking the new stuff for the kitchen. She looks at her list. She loves lists. I don’t think anything gives her as much joy as crossing stuff off a list. I think she makes lists sometimes just to be able to cross stuff off.
“We need to make an appointment with the photographer,” she says to herself.
“Why can’t we just take the pictures ourselves?” I ask.
“Well, we could. Some people do. But these people do it for a living. They know how to make rooms look bigger. They have all these tricks to make it look as nice as possible.”
“Sounds expensive,” I say.
“Actually, AirHotel provides it for free,” my mom says.
“Great. Some guy is going to come over and make the place look perfect for groups of girls to come stay with us.”
“I wish you wouldn’t fixate on that girl thing. I never should have mentioned it.” My mom is sounding irritated. Not at herself. At me.
I walk by the room that should have been mine and see that Gabriel and my dad are assembling the bed frame.
All of a sudden, as I stand in the door, a chill comes over me. Like there’s a drop in the temperature. Like someone just turned on an air conditioner. But like I mentioned, we haven’t gotten one yet. And it’s early September.
I rub my arms. “Do you feel that?”
My dad doesn’t look up from holding the frame in place so Gabriel can tighten the nuts holding it together. “Feel what?”
“It got cold all of a sudden,” I say.
Gabriel is drenched in sweat. He rubs his T-shirt sleeve against his forehead and laughs. “Not here, man. If you got some cold air I wish you’d share it with me.”
My mom calls from the kitchen. “Are you okay? Do you think you’re coming down with something? I can take your temperature.”
I step out of the doorway and I’m hot again. “No, I’m okay. Guess I just imagined it.”
But I didn’t. It was like the doorway was a different temperature from the rest of the room. Weird.
“Hey, you never know. Maybe no one will be interested. Then your parents give up on the whole idea, and you get a pretty sweet room, right?”
That’s Gus’s take on what’s happened to me.
I am sitting with my two best friends at lunch on the first day of school. Normally we’d be talking about our classes, who we got as teachers, who changed over the summer—you know, the usual stuff. But this AirHotel thing obviously takes priority.
“I wouldn’t count on it. You live on a pretty desirable street,” says Nat. As usual, she makes more sense than Gus. Nat is short for Natalie. But no one calls her Natalie except teachers and her parents.
Gus takes a bite of his sloppy joe. Unfortunately, over the summer, the cafeteria people (notice I don’t call them cooks because I’m pretty sure they didn’t cook this stuff—it was made in a lab somewhere for them to reheat and torture kids with) didn’t decide to magically improve the quality of the food they serve. Gus doesn’t seem to mind. He’s already hit his growth spurt. I remember learning in science that hummingbirds have to eat two or three times their body weight daily to live. Someone should tell Gus he’s not a hummingbird. He’s like five foot nine and his voice is already changing.
Nat digs into her lunch. She never has to eat the school lunch. She brings hers from home. Well, not home exactly. The Haddads have had a store on Atlantic Avenue serving Middle Eastern and other specialty foods for almost a hundred years. So Nat brings in homemade hummus, falafel, and fresh-baked pita. I would be incredibly jealous, except that she always brings enough to share.
She offers me some of the foil-wrapped pita bread, made just this morning. I tear off a piece of the still-warm pita and dip it into the hummus. Like always, the lid is emblazoned with HADDAD’S—SINCE 1905.
Believe me, there is nothing like Haddad’s hummus. It’s completely different from that junk you get at a grocery store, where all you taste is lemon and garlic. This is smooth, almost sweet, and melts on your tongue.
Gus looks over wistfully. “I wish my dad would let me bring stuff from the store.”
Gus’s dad owns Baublitz Butcher Shop on Court Street. They’ve been there even longer than Nat’s family. Both my friends have families that have been in the neighborhood for generations, which I think is kind of cool.
Nat looks at me, her black eyebrows joining together in concentration. “Maybe the AirHotel isn’t such a bad thing.”
“Four girls—” I start.
“Would you just get off that?” she says, irritated. “It’s not going to happen. This is Brooklyn. Think of who is actually going to stay there.”
“I dunno. I could get into four girls staying at our house if they were cute enough,” says Gus.
“Shut up. You’re gross,” groans Nat. “You have yucky meat grease all over your face.”
Gus wipes his face with a napkin. “I was just trying to make the best of the situation.” He brightens. “Here’s an idea. When people come to visit, sit on the couch in the living room in your underwear, picking your belly button. They’ll be so grossed out, they’ll leave bad reviews.”
Gus is full of ideas. They’re just not usually very good.
“My parents would really appreciate that,” I said. “Before they killed me.”
Nat harrumphs. “Look, I think you should give this a chance. It’s a way to meet people from all sorts of backgrounds and show them the best of Brooklyn.”
“But it’s just that a promise is a promise,” I start. They’ve heard this a million times from me by now.
“Yeah, it stinks,” says Gus, “but you gotta accept it. You know, like I said, make the best of it.”
I turn to Nat. “So you really think it could be a good experience?”
She looks me full in the face. I hadn’t really noticed how much older she looks now. I guess she had her growth spurt too. She could pass for fourteen, easy. “Yes. I think you should look at this as a real opportunity.”
I tear off another piece of pita. “So if it was you, you’d welcome it?”
Nat laughs. “Me? No way. I’d hate it. I’d be furious at my parents.”
I love walking home after school. It’s one of my favorite things about Brooklyn: you can walk places. No waiting around for your parents to pick you up in the minivan. Okay, that’s not true. There are lots of kids whose parents drive them to soccer practice and dance class and whatever, just like in the suburbs. But most of my friends don’t do those kinds of things. (It’s the private school kids who do.) If we have to go anywhere, we take the subway or bus.
Lucky for me, Nat and Gus moved on to the same middle school. Nat is smart enough that she
got into one of those public schools for gifted kids, but she decided to stay in the neighborhood. In her opinion, those kids are stuck-up and think they’re better than everybody else. Her parents weren’t happy. Their culture puts a lot of importance on getting the best education you can get. Nat told them Jake went to our middle school and got into Cornell, so that made them feel better. I told you she’s smart.
Gus and me, we don’t really have a choice. I mean, I’m not stupid or anything, but at the same time I’m not one of the smart kids, the ones who get the math problems done in half the time, or figure out that the owl in some short story or poem we read is a symbol of death or something like that. I thought it was just an owl. So sue me.
Anyhow, I’m heading home, and it’s one of those early fall days where Brooklyn looks particularly great, especially our neighborhood, where the houses are all small brownstones with stoops and big parlor windows. The sun is putting deep shadows on all the buildings, bringing out the dark reds of the bricks and the dusky greens of the rooftops. Hey, that’s not bad. Maybe it symbolizes something.
It’s no surprise when a block from my house I get stopped by this young guy in a baseball cap holding a walkie-talkie. I know from experience what’s going on.
“Just a minute, bro,” he says, holding up a hand to block my way.
I look up the street and see a huge film crew. There’s a camera on a crane, director’s chairs, a food service truck, and trailers where the actors get their makeup and hair done.
They’re doing a take, so I can’t cross the street or I’ll be in the scene.
Most places, if they’re shooting a movie in your neighborhood it would be a big deal, with all the kids and old people hanging around. It would be all anyone talked about for days.
Here, it’s just another Monday.
You’ve probably seen my building in a hundred movies, TV shows, and commercials. It’s just so “charming” and such a “typical city street” that someone is shooting something every week, or so it seems.
The Ghost in Apartment 2R Page 2
