by Alix Ohlin
There was a bad smell inside the front door. The landlord, wanting to make life unpleasant for those in the rent-stabilized apartments, had suspended superintendent services. Nothing was cleaned, there were no functioning lightbulbs in the stairwell, there was no one to call in case of an emergency. In the corner, just below the mailboxes, was a pile of what Anne took to be discarded clothes until she realized, with a start, that it was a person.
Whoever it was shifted slightly beneath a brown wool blanket and a green army coat that were somehow twisted together in a kind of shelter. Outside it was damp and blustery, the kind of freezing cold that slips through zippers and buttons to get at your skin, even into your muscles. She let him be.
The next day, though, he was still there. The grandmothers in the building—almost all the apartments were rented by little old ladies—had clustered anxiously on the landings, whispering. Of course the super wouldn’t answer his phone or buzzer, so one of the old ladies had called the police. “They laughed in my face, those rat bastards,” she said. “Said they had more important things to do.” Other tenants, probably nervous about their own status in the building or the country, slipped past without so much as a glance.
Anne, theoretically, should have done the same thing. She was living in an illegal sublet with no proof that she belonged there, and only Larry’s fear of confrontation kept him from kicking her out. But she could handle him. She jumped right into the conversation.
Soon the intruder in the lobby had drawn the residents together, like survivors of a storm. For the next two days, as Anne went into and out of the building, she would meet her neighbors’ eyes with a shrug and a smile, and they’d shrug and smile back.
In all this time the guy beneath the blanket didn’t show his face, though the smell of urine started wafting up the stairwell. When the tenants met now, they scrunched their noses in distaste and hurried into their apartments as quickly as possible, disgusted and afraid.
Finally, Mrs. Bondarchuk, the one who had called the police, clutched Anne’s arm outside her door and drew her into the kitchen. “You’ve got to do something.”
“Me? What about the super? Or the cops?”
Mrs. Bondarchuk shot her a scornful look. “You don’t think they have other things to do?”
“Sure, but what am I supposed to do?”
Mrs. Bondarchuk was a tiny Ukrainian lady, barely five feet tall, but her wrinkled face was powerfully insistent. Her short hair was dyed a lurid, unconvincing red. Until recently, she had refused to acknowledge Anne’s presence, but her new friendliness came at a price. “You go talk to them,” she said firmly. “You’re a young person.” The logic of this was self-evident to her. “You go talk.”
“All right,” Anne said. “Fine.”
She went downstairs and stood next to the pile without any idea what sort of creature was hidden beneath it. “Excuse me,” she finally said.
There was neither answer nor movement in the pile, and the smell was rank. It had been four days.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t stay here. You have to leave.”
No answer. Was he asleep? Passed out on drugs?
“I know it’s cold out,” she said. “But there are places, right? I mean, shelters. They’ll feed you, and give you a shower and stuff. You have options.”
As she said it, she remembered someone speaking those last three words to her, You have options, when she was very young, and the way a voice had risen up inside her, silent but stubborn, that said, No, I don’t.
The pile, however, said nothing. Defeated, she turned on her heel and went back to her apartment.
What put the situation over the edge was the shit. She left for rehearsal and when she came back, three hours later, a few pages of the New York Times Arts section were neatly folded into quarters in the opposite corner of the entryway. The smell was unmistakable.
“Jesus Christ,” she said. “Are you kidding me?”
Taking a deep breath and holding it, she grabbed one edge of the wool blanket and pulled. Whoever was underneath—both underneath and inside and twisted around, it seemed—pulled back, and for a minute it was like a tug of war. Anne wanted to give up, because holding this filthy blanket was grossing her out, but then the other person gave in and she reeled backward, almost stumbling flat on her ass, and when the blanket dropped from her hand, she saw to her shock that it was a girl. Blond, teenage, stocky, her round cheeks constellated with pimples.
“I need some food,” the girl said, then burrowed into the green army coat and pulled her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arm around them. It was as if she were anchoring herself to the floor, folding herself into a packet as neat and small as the newspaper. She smelled like mold and garbage, like something discarded and left to rot.
“I’m hungry,” the girl insisted. Then, as if reading Anne’s mind, she added, “And I stink. Can I use your shower? I feel kind of disgusting.”
She was so matter-of-fact, so unapologetic, that Anne was speechless. She had been picturing a man, older, maybe a vet, somewhat or completely out of his mind, homeless for a long time. A teenage runaway—a girl who could shit in a building and then curl up asleep next to it—had never occurred to her.
“If I bring you upstairs and let you shower,” she said, “will you go to one of the shelters? I’ll help you get there.”
The girl gazed at her, the expression in her eyes impossible to read. “I’m starving,” she said.
“I have some food,” Anne said. “Okay?”
The girl struggled heavily to her feet, gathering her coat around her. She looked sleepy, and willing, if not happy, to follow her upstairs. As they passed Mrs. Bondarchuk’s door, Anne knocked lightly to let her know what was happening—though she didn’t doubt that the old lady was already peering through the keyhole. You owe me one, she thought.
The girl stepped into the apartment as if it were hers. She was wearing dirty jeans, sneakers, and a blue sweater, and Anne had only a moment to guess at her age—fifteen, maybe sixteen?—before she went into the bathroom and closed the door, without asking directions or permission. After a minute, Anne heard the shower running.
“Okay,” she said out loud. She went into the kitchen and set out bread and peanut butter and jelly. Not caring much about food herself, she hardly ever cooked, and her cupboards held little beyond takeout menus and leftover packets of soy sauce. In the other apartments in the building, the little old ladies spent their days simmering soups and boiling potatoes, wanting to have something on hand in case their families stopped by (though they rarely did), always smelling up the hallways with their traditionally prepared recipes. Probably the girl wished one of them had taken her in.
Anne started to make a sandwich, then realized the girl would need clean clothes when she got out of the shower. She rummaged through her dresser for some rarely worn sweatpants and oversized T-shirts—the girl was much heavier than Anne. Then she went into the bathroom and said, “I’m putting some clothes on the toilet,” but she got no response from the shadow behind the shower curtain. Back in the living room, she waited. All these actions were unaccustomed. She never had houseguests; when men came over, she gave them what they wanted—time with her in bed—and never thought about whether they were hungry, or thirsty, or uncomfortable. If they needed a drink of water, they could get it themselves. If the girl was planning to steal from her, too bad, since Anne didn’t have anything worth stealing. There were advantages to living an unbuilt life.
A few minutes after the water stopped, the girl came out wearing the sweatpants and several T-shirts layered one over the other. Anne couldn’t help noticing that her breasts were enormous, pendulous, beneath the shirts. Her body looked like a woman’s, but her face was chubby, childlike, round. Eyeing the peanut butter, the girl sat down on the kitchen stool. She made herself a sandwich, ate it, then made herself another. Halfway through this one she said, “Milk?”
Anne shook her head, regret washing over her. Why had s
he let this person—this animal—into her apartment?
While the girl kept eating, Anne went into the bathroom and stuffed the reeking clothes into a plastic garbage bag, wincing when she saw that her shampoo, conditioner, exfoliating scrub, and lotion were all uncapped and messy. Those products were expensive, an investment in her looks.
“I’m going downstairs to put your stuff in the laundry,” she said. When she got back upstairs, the girl was fast asleep in her bed.
She slept poorly on her uncomfortable couch. She had never been one for good deeds. She wasn’t selfish—just self-contained. She liked to stay within her own borders. Yet in the morning, for some reason, she dragged herself to the deli and came back with orange juice and donuts. The girl looked like a donut eater. She sat sipping black coffee on the couch until the girl woke up around ten and wandered into the living room, apparently surprised to see Anne there.
“Don’t you have to go to work?” she said. She had a slight accent, not quite midwestern but broad, the consonants slurry and soft, like she was from the country.
“Not today.” Anne studied the girl’s slow, lumbering slide down onto the stool, noting how her face, creased from sleep, remained inert, as if frozen during a boring dream. The closest thing to an expression Anne had yet seen washed over the girl’s face at the sight of the donuts. She pulled the box toward her and started chewing on one, powdered sugar smudging the tip of her nose.
“What’s your name?”
Without a word, the girl picked up a second donut.
Anne stood up, snatched the donut out of her hand, and threw it, along with the rest of the box, into the garbage, then stood there with her arms folded, playing the disapproving mother.
The girl chewed, swallowed.
Get out, Anne thought.
“Hilary.”
If, at this point, the girl had said nothing more, Anne would have pinched her ear and marched her to the door, or called the police, anything to get her out of the apartment and her life.
But she said, “Are you an actress or model or something? You’re, like, gorgeous.”
Even while recognizing this as flattery, Anne found herself pleased. “I’m in the theater,” she said.
The girl grimaced. “I could never do that,” she said. “Too fat, too ugly.”
“You’re not,” Anne said mechanically. She had this conversation with other actresses almost every day, I’m so fat leading to No you’re not, you’re emaciated, I’m so ugly to No you’re not, you’re gorgeous. It was a call-and-response pattern, rhythmic and codified, like birdsong.
The girl accepted this insincerity and moved on. “Are you in a play right now?”
“In rehearsals. I play an Irish peasant woman during the potato famine. You know about the potato famine? I wind up prostituting myself in exchange for food for my family.”
“Prostituting yourself?” Hilary said, putting her elbows on the kitchen counter. Her large breasts rested on the counter like lumps of bread dough.
Anne nodded. In fact the prostitution was more implied than seen; she only had a few lines, but to make things interesting she had embroidered the character’s backstory. She’d spent so much time on this that she now felt the character had the tragic richness of a starring role. She was the center of the play, its crucial beating heart, but she was the only one who knew it. “Actually, if you wanted to be helpful, you could run some lines with me,” she said, feeling generous. “Then we can figure out the shelter situation.”
While she fished the script out of her bag, Hilary retrieved the donuts from the trash. She inhaled another one, drank some orange juice, then held out her hand for the pages. “Ready,” she said.
Hilary had a surprisingly clear voice and didn’t seem to tire of reading the lines over and over again. Once they started, Anne lowered herself into the character as if into a swimming pool: the water was cold at first, uncomfortable but bracing; then gradually, as the muscles warmed, the temperature turned out to be perfect, and the laps went by in strong, sure strokes, the body now fully engaged. She forgot everything else. It was only in these moments of concentration and release that she felt she could shed her own skin and slip free.
Suddenly it was noon.
“Shit,” Anne said, “I have to go. I’m supposed to meet the costume designer in fifteen minutes. Listen, Hilary.” It was the first time she’d called the girl by her name, but the effect was nil, the round face as inert as ever.
Then Hilary suddenly said, “The bathroom’s disgusting.”
“What?”
“I can clean it, while you’re at your meeting. The toilet, the bathtub, the floor. I can do all that.” Her voice was urgent and quick. She would neither plead nor act desperate, Anne could tell, but she would bargain.
In the days and months to come, she’d question her decision again and again. She couldn’t even remember what was going through her mind: it was as if she had blacked out and come to after the choice had been made. But the fact that she couldn’t explain it to herself was maybe as good a reason to do something as she’d ever had. Sometimes you needed to surprise yourself with randomness, to prove you have depths that even you can’t understand.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m not giving you a key, so you have to stay here. Eat whatever you want, not that you’ll find much food. I really don’t have any stuff for you to steal, but you still better not take anything. If I find anything gone when I come back, I’ll call the cops.”
“I don’t steal,” Hilary said.
“Sure you don’t. I’ll be back at five.”
When she left the apartment, she forgot about the girl completely—her name, her predicament, even her shit in the lobby. It wasn’t that she was naive or trusting; only that nothing was as real to her as herself.
After the meeting with the costume designer was rehearsal, and after that she had a drink with a guy who was putting together a production of Equus with a female cast, to be staged in a parking garage by the Manhattan Bridge. She walked home through Chinatown. On the steps of a church a man was selling shoes he’d collected from who knows where, lined up in obedient pairs as if they belonged to some invisible congregation. She picked out a pair of black pointy-toed heels with rhinestone clips. They smelled faintly of sweat and smoke or fire and the leather was creased, but they fit perfectly. As a child she had played dress-up in her mother’s clothes, dreaming of the day when she’d be a beautiful, grown-up lady, and the sensation of wearing someone else’s castoffs reminded her of this childhood pleasure. She handed the man a five, and he said, “God bless you, sweet thing.”
It was only as she pulled open the outer door that she remembered Hilary. She’d left a stranger alone in her apartment all day. She had to be insane.
But the apartment was quiet. Hilary was curled up on the couch beneath a blanket, her stocky body surprisingly compact, and seeing her asleep somehow changed everything. Anne had been planning to charge in and kick her out, but instead found herself slipping off her boots and setting her bag down quietly, so as not to disturb.
Then she thought, What the hell am I doing?
She turned on the lights and served herself a plate of noodles she’d picked up at Panda Kitchen, eating at the counter. When Hilary stirred, moving tectonically to an upright position, Anne wondered if she was on drugs.
“Could I have some?” Hilary said.
Anne didn’t eat much; she always had leftovers. “All right.”
Seeming to sense her mood, Hilary took some lo mein and carried her plate back to the couch. She was like an animal, observing unspoken, intuitive protocols of distance.
Anne, suddenly exhausted, put her plate in the sink and went into the bedroom, where the sheets had been changed. In the bathroom, the toothpaste blobs were gone from the sink, the bathtub was unstreaked, and everything smelled faintly of bleach. She crawled into bed and lay there listening for disruptive sounds—Hilary tossing or snoring or even breathing too loudly. Outside she heard traf
fic, horns, voices; but inside, nothing at all.
She didn’t kick her out the next day, or the day after that, and gradually they became strange, unlikely roommates. The shelter was never discussed. Hilary cleaned and sometimes cooked. She fixed the bedroom window that had gotten stuck, did the laundry, even swept the stairwells and changed the lightbulbs on the landings. Mrs. Bondarchuk, who didn’t realize where Hilary had come from, decided she was Anne’s cousin, and they didn’t correct her. The other old ladies in the building began saying hello to her and were friendlier to Anne as well, as if they had found her somehow alarming when she was on her own.
Anne went to rehearsals, to work, and out for drinks, never once asking Hilary what she did during the day besides housework. After a while, she gave Hilary a set of keys and started leaving out some cash, twenty bucks at a time, for groceries. Now when she came home there was milk and bread and fruit. She didn’t know what else Hilary ate, but the girl had already grown even stockier; she was definitely getting enough food somewhere. Her complexion had cleared up; her hair, shampooed regularly, was shinier, lighter, and she sometimes wore it in two braids. She looked scrubbed and healthy, like a milkmaid, and this farmgirl impression was reinforced when Anne, backstage for an audition one day, stumbled on an unlocked wardrobe room and brought back some baggy overalls and plaid shirts that Hilary wore without complaining or even asking where they came from.
Neither of them asked the other any questions. Anne assumed Hilary had run away from home, and in her experience, kids who did that usually had good reasons. And though Hilary had marched right into Anne’s apartment, she seemed to have a second sense about invading her privacy otherwise. When Anne came home from work she often went straight into the bedroom, and Hilary never bothered her. The few clothes Hilary now owned were kept in a milk crate beside the couch, with the blanket she slept under folded on top. Sometimes days would pass without them exchanging a single word.
