by Rafe Haze
I never thought I’d become that New York housebound freak. The smelly, creepy, cat guy the neighbors all gossip about who lives in a dark hole constantly enshrouded in a mealy plaid bathrobe and a constant stale stench of old urine. Except I had no cats, and I don’t think any neighbors cared one flying fuck about my comings and goings—or rather my not comings and my not goings.
Perhaps the waiting for the Next is what eroded my desire to exit. Then my ability to exit. The gradual dismissal of all external stimulus, inch by inch, imprisoning me within a six-hundred and fifty square foot cell, enforced by loathing, fear, irritation, inordinate self-focus, and plain old plummeting of energy.
New York is a city whose very fabric is woven of smiles to the familiar corner store counter guy whose name you’ve never quite gotten. Of keeping half an eye out for the next musical you have to see. Of choosing between the expensive French-Argentinian cuisine and your favorite Thai joint around the corner. Of looking beyond the dog shit on the sidewalk to the twinkling lights a couple blocks down. Of smiling in spite of the freezing face-scraping wind as you sip your warm, mulled, hot apple cider in Bryant Park.
But my Manhattan monologue shifted restaurant-by-restaurant, dollar-by-dollar, subway ride-by-subway ride, block-by-block, toothy grin-by-toothy grin, until the balancing act became a wrestling match. New York’s infamous “bustle” became an onslaught of annoyances I couldn’t avoid. The seasonal delights every store and every theater shamelessly capitalized on became seasonal price hikes and overcrowding that robbed me of any delight.
I could see the new show starring Kelly O’Hara, but it’s all the same shit rehashed and priced higher. Couldn’t that fat fucker behind the counter stop making inane indecipherable small talk and take my fucking money before I smash his teeth in? If Mister Wallstreet Fuckface coughs without covering his pie hole one more time, I might torpedo his goddamn MacBook Air into the subway track and watch it explode on the third rail. Why go to the Thai Restaurant around the corner and risk another lovely bout of explosive diarrhea? Why push my way through the throng of umbrellas and spatially handicapped tourists just to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade when I can see it on television like every other sap across the country? Lighting the Rockefeller tree with Christmas lights? I give it a three. Setting it alight with a match? Ten.
Perhaps protecting everyone in New York from the vitriol of my silent monologue was the biggest catalyst for my initial resistance to leave the apartment. Perhaps it became a kind of social obligation to keep them from my self-acknowledged malaise of hatred, irritation, bitterness, and disappointment. Perhaps each encounter with New York’s eight million residents introduced one more opportunity to compare myself to someone infinitely and effortlessly more successful monetarily, creatively, emotionally, physically, everything-ly. Perhaps.
All I knew was that the hall became a trench of torture. I’d step onto the floor outside my door and my heart pole-vaulted into my Adam’s apple. I could literally see the veins on my wrist inflate and decrease with dizzying surges of blood, and someone with a hammer and a chisel began to gouge my forehead. Within seconds, my shirt would sag from soaking up sweat from every pore of my body. The door to the hall became an inexplicable trigger for hyperventilation and physical excruciation, a splitting headache, and a fucking larger pile of mildew-smelling, sweat-soaked laundry to hand wash. And then I quite literally stopped trying to go into the hall. Or anywhere.
The Dominican delivery guy from Yum Yum’s was fuming with one raised, thick, dark eyebrow and pursed white lips. He stiffly shoved the receipt through the eight-inch crack I’d conceded. I handed him a Ziploc bag containing nine dollars and twenty cents of coins and reached for the white plastic bag of Pad Thai Plop and Kung Crap Soup. He defiantly backed up twenty feet and placed the bag on the floor. He shot me a bitchy look and strode to the stairs.
Yappity yap yap.
Fuckity fuck fuck.
I guess I was eating the last of the Quaker oats tonight.
Chapter Four
December eighth turned to March eighth.
If there was a Next, it was hardly making an effort to seep its way into this hole of dazzling vitality. The utility bills now were underscored with red. Un-watered songs died in the drought. No more phone service. No more internet service. Johanna couldn’t contact me even if she wanted to, and it was more than plain she did not want to.
Disconnected. Totally disconnected.
I hadn’t heard the thumping music upstairs…since…God, I had no idea. A month? Six months? A year? I guess tweaking twinkie twat moved out. He probably hooked up with some Rockefeller Hilton Koch brother and was now living rent-free in a sparkling new loft west of the High Line in return for wearing twelve-hundred dollar distressed Boss jeans with a Velcro ass-flap for easy access by Daddy any time Daddy could get away from Wifey. Hoo-fucking-ray for Twinky Twat.
Tweaking Twinky Twat had a name...Nate…eh…something…
Roach in the sink.
Let it live or blend it into the disposal? I ran the water and flipped on the disposal. I let it run, growling furiously. On impulse, I took a shot glass and shoved it down the disposal just to hear the sound of it darting and banging, trapped within the metal walls, then resigning itself to being shaved with violent shrieking into slivers by the savage spinning metal blades, ground back into the sand it once was before someone melted it into hard fragile smoothness. Miraculously, the fucking roach climbed out of the disposal unscathed. With my bare palm…crack…squish.
I don’t feel anything.
The disposal continued to growl. My eye was caught by the light trying to pry into my cave between the cracks of the leveler blind in front of the sink. When was the last time any of the curtains or blinds had been opened? Since I moved in three years ago, I’d close them only when I was working simply to contain the banging on my piano keys and prevent my warbling from leaking to the courtyard or the neighbors. Then half a year ago, I kept them closed simply because opening and closing them every day became a hassle.
Neighbors. Curious word. It implies more than just proximity. Certainly the connotation of neighborly assumes some degree of watchfulness, friendliness, and interaction. But this was New York City. Those folks across the courtyard were the puppets who occupied the apartments of whatever windows you can see from yours. No more. Nobody cared for more, apart from entertainment. I don’t think the occupants I could see from my window across the courtyard were any more or less entertaining than any other apartment’s view.
In the building to the left at the top were the Couch Potatoes—a gay couple who did nothing every single evening of their smashingly glamorous life but plop their plump selves onto the couch with a plate of pasta and watch The Walking X Glee Revenge Dead Factor.
Underneath them lived Schlongzilla, a half black, half Brazilian, six-foot three, thirty-something guy perpetually dressing to go out to somewhere where one sees and is seen. His indispensable contribution to society could be reduced to one Saturday last summer when he spent no less than an hour and forty-five minutes in front of the mirror deliberating on whether or not to wear the distressed low-cut jeans, the boat-collared ribbed sweater, the paper-thin sky-blue hoodie that draped off his gigantic pecs and rear deltoid boulders with just the right waterfall fluidity, the kicky printed Airforce-sort-of T, or the metallic silver gangsta hightops. Then he grabbed his laundry bag and box of Tide detergent and headed out the door. An hour and forty-five minutes! For Christ’s sake, when you’ve got shoulders and hips that are broad and narrow enough to essentially give you the proportions of a six-foot three crucifix, everything hangs well on you.
To be fair, Schlongzilla served more purpose in this world than being one of New York’s walking coat hangers. He was, in fact, hung to his knee and didn’t care two shits which neighbors took notice. Every time Schongzilla received a phone call and then hurriedly bolted out the door with his collapsible massage table in tow, some Upper East Side wife could co
unt on some major migraine alleviation. If you’re hung like Saddlebred, you practically have a social obligation to prance like one too. That’s what Johanna used to say anyway.
In the brownstone directly in front of my window on the second story lived The Princess. She would have her hair up tight in a bun when she’d come home from work, and then let her hair down in a long, flowing perfect, Pre-Raphaelite mane. Her studio apartment was small and shimmering in white, with a four-poster bed draped in sheer white gauze, perfectly placed oversized white pillows, and glimmers of silver combs and frames and knickknacks on her silver mirrored dressing table. I’d watched her tentatively date and tentatively retreat into the safety of her shiny white palace at least four times since she moved in. She’d spend a sad two months reading alone on her white quilt, retrench, and paint that smile back on again for the next round.
Above her, occupying the top two floors of the brownstone, lived the Perfects. He was a dashing forty-something man with salt and pepper hair and the kind of body that requires working out three hours a day every day. She was a stunningly gorgeous brunette. He had a propensity for suits that would be quite at home in any Condé Nast magazine, and she wore chic dresses Johanna used to recognize from Parisian ready-to-wear runway shows. In fact, Johanna was quite familiar with Mrs. Perfect, recognizing her as the president of some competing luxury women’s design company. Mrs. Perfect had a name fashion folks all knew, but I never registered it. They had two rambunctious children under ten years old and an enormous apartment straight out of Architectural Digest. The household was rarely still during the week: chasing the son to sit him down for homework hour, calming the daughter’s anxious crying fits, excited family pizza nights. The family would disappear on Friday nights, so I assumed they’d weekend in Connecticut or Bucks County or the Hamptons. Frequently Mr. Perfect would stay home and work on the weekend alone. I supposed he was a CEO or a partner of a firm.
When Johanna would come over, she would often first check to see if the Perfects were home, then close our curtains if they were. I assumed the reason was that she didn’t want word spreading in her world that she was dating a slob like me. Correction: she did not want to curtail her future employment possibilities through any embarrassing associations.
In the building on the right at the top lived the Beached Whale, an enormous multi-chinned lady in her forties who ate popcorn every night on her side, propped on her forearm, watching television, until she’d fall asleep and spill the popcorn on the floor. I don’t think I ever saw her go out in the evening. Not once.
Below her lived the Broadway Dancer, milk-white and smooth with zero body fat and abdominal definition I could distinctly see across the courtyard. He had the energy of a whippet on Red Bull. When he was in a show, I only saw him in the afternoons. When he wasn’t, he would spend his evenings unselfconsciously in his underwear on the dark brown love seat sofa with his laptop in his lap and the television on for hours on end.
On the courtyard level below the Broadway Dancer lived the Little Old Man. Not an inch on him was unwrinkled or undarkened with liver spots. His body had shrunken as his bones retracted from muscular neglect, and his diminutive appearance was exaggerated by a growing hunched posture caused by his looking down at the ground all the time. I’d no idea how he survived alone, but I’d never seen a nurse enter or leave his apartment. I’d never seen a family member or friend enter or leave his apartment. Except…
Once a month, an old, bald, black man with a white mustache appeared at his doorway and handed the old man a bag full of cans of beef and chicken soup and a Ziploc bag of weed in exchange for a couple bills taken from a Chock Full O’Nuts coffee can kept below the sink next to a plunger. The handover was followed by a dispassionate handshake, and the black man would disappear until the next month.
Apart from a slow shuffling traverse to the bathroom to pee twice a day or to the stove in the tiny kitchenette to heat a can of soup over a gas flame, the Little Old man spent almost his entire existence under a maroon sheet in his bed, propped up by sagging yellowed pillows that held his head aloft to watch television and light up a joint. He never closed his curtains; he’d lived too many years to give a flying fuck if any neighbor saw his sagging skin wearily clinging to his frail frame, let alone his skeletal ass or stretched grey testicles.
Back when the curtains were opened, I’d placed a pillow on the right corner of the center window to block my view of the Little Old Man’s apartment. He did not disgust me, but I was irritated each and every time I spied him alone in that bed biding time on soup and pot until the end. I was irritated that he forced me to feel a stew of sadness, apprehension, anger, and compassion each and every time he came into view. He was one of New York’s survivors to be sure, but what a fucking solitary and protracted trophy he placed on his mantle.
It had been half a year at least since I’d last opened the thick heavy curtains and observed The Couch Potatoes, Schlongzilla, the Beached Whale, the Little Old Man, the Princess, or the Perfects. And, I suppose, it had been a year since any of them had observed me. Part of me was curious who had said “Screw this!” to this year’s rent jacks and who had endured. If you can’t pay the rent in New York, you’ll get booted and replaced in a matter of minutes by ambitious landlords. I was curious who remained, but drawing back the red curtain was more psychological adjustment than I could muster at that moment. But as the disposal continued to growl in a low continual anger, fate mustered it for me.
Knock knock.
Who managed to get past the street door buzzer to reach my door? Unless…oh, damn it! Please don’t let it be Mrs. Abraham and her yapping toy dog Minnie from down the hall.
Mrs. Abraham was in her seventies and had lived with her sister when I first moved in. The sister had Parkinson’s disease, and her condition was progressing rapidly. But Mrs. Abraham was warm and generous, knocking on my door with yappity yap yap to bring me foil-covered leftovers. At first, I enjoyed the idea of a friendly gabby neighbor who enjoyed sharing food and looking after each other. However, one evening I returned her casserole dish and encountered Mrs. Abraham dealing with her sister fidgeting epileptically on the mint-green carpet, drooling in a steady stream down her jaw. She inadvertently struck her sister in the mouth with her fist, but Mrs. Abraham ignored the split lip as she grabbed hold of her sister’s right hand and held it tightly. I did not know what to do except crouch next to Mrs. Abraham and take the sister’s other hand. The convulsions began to mellow, mellow, mellow, then stopped. Mrs. Abraham and I waited, holding the sister’s hands, listening in silence to the breathing until it resumed a steady calm rhythm.
Minnie stared in wide eyes at the procedure from atop the bright yellow couch, not yapping in my presence for the first time ever.
In the silence, the sister on the floor gently opened her eyes. She looked at me. Studied me. And then, with a wide smile that would be called radiant were it not for her teeth’s darkened, rotting state, pointed and said, “Look, Dinah! It’s Jack!”
Mrs. Abraham’s first name wasn’t Dinah, and mine wasn’t Jack.
Mrs. Abraham petted her sister’s forehead tenderly. She responded softly, “No, Lucy. It’s Phillip.”
I smiled, not knowing who the hell Phillip was either.
Then my heart froze as I realized the connection.
Jack, Phillip, Dinah, and Lucy were characters in the rust-brown hardback Enid Blyton Adventure books my brother and I had read as children after my mother’s parents handed them down to her. Since these books were immensely popular among our grandparent’s generation, it made absolute sense that Mrs. Abraham and her sister would have read them too. I had not thought about them for decades. I drew a sharp breath. My jaw stiffened. My teeth clenched.
“My name is…” I began to correct.
“…is Phillip.” Mrs. Abraham interrupted.
Okay, I could play along for the sake of the addled mind lying weak and confused on the floor, drooling, her grey hair unkempt and
tangled, her arthritic pointed finger, and her thin cracked lips smiling, assuaged gently by Mrs. Abraham with her soft patient green eyes and bleeding lip. But my blood was icy. Mrs. Abraham could have no knowledge as to why. At the time I could barely acknowledge why myself. The two smiled at each other, now comforted. I let go of her hand and departed, closing the door as silently as I could.
The sister died a month later.
Through no fault of her own, Mrs. Abraham had now become an elderly woman living alone in New York City, which meant she was a woman with tremendous needs. But I was still a writer with only one—to be left alone. I needed no maternal substitute, nor had I ever asked for one, and I needed the desserts from her kitchen even less. Most annoying was the mounting feeling of guilt and obligation to return her neighborliness, and those feelings evolved into a Pavlovian resentment every time I heard the knock on the door hailing another steaming foil-covered casserole dish of buttery guilt. Plus I began to imagine drop kicking Minnie to oblivion every time I heard it yappity yap yap when anyone padded his way past her door. But we were neighbors. I accepted her apple strudel once and would be plagued with accepting it until the day one of us kicked it first.
Knock knock.
Whoever knocked would not go away, apparently.
What was interesting was that there was no yappity yap yap leading up to these knocks, which only meant this visitor did not approach from the stairs. If it was not Mrs. Abraham, he or she would have had to come from Mrs. Abraham’s apartment, for there were only two apartments on our floor. I opened the door without asking whom.
Please, let it be a drug-thug with a shiny silver gun pointed at my forehead.
“You live here?”
“I opened the door.”
“Marzoli.”
He presented a card.
Sergeant Marzoli.
My hands did not move to accept the card.
