- He’s 19. And I also have a daughter.
Luckily for R., I wasn’t the type of a girl who starts crushing things with a baseball bat and smashing plates on a guy’s head; kids are kids, they are big, and why would I start hating him for having them?
- How old is your daughter?
- You’re gonna kill me if I tell you.
When R. is guilty, he always has that puppy look on his face, when they pee in the middle of the room and you step in it and start yelling. “Mommy, please don’t kill me! I know I’m guilty, but I love you so much!”
- Why would I kill you?
- She’s 25, - lowered head and puppy eyes. – Her birthday was in May.
You didn’t just pee in the middle of the room, you crapped right on my head, but guess what? I still love you, you little jerk!
- So she’s my age? Actually two months older than me?
- Yes…
- Well, what can I say? You’re a frigging pervert, but you are my little pervert, and I still love you.
R. is so happy; if he had a tail, he would wag it so fast, that he would look like a peacock.
- Mommy, I love you, I love you so much! You’re such an angel, you’re never mad at me…
- Oh, I am mad. I am mad that you didn’t tell me before, when I asked you if you had any kids.
- I know, mommy, I’m sorry! We just started dating back then and I was afraid you would leave me if I told you.
- So you decided to wait till I fell in love with you and get so used to being with you, and then you would drop the “kids” bomb on me.
- I’m sorry, mommy… But I love you so much, I can’t live without you!
- And they both live with you and your wife lives there too. Are you even divorced?
- I’m separated, mommy. And I live separately, I have my own apartment on the first floor, with my own entrance.
How did I know all that before? The only thing that I was wrong about was the dog. R. had a cat. And a goldfish that his son won for him at the State Fair.
- Well, you got yourself into this situation where you can’t say to any of my friends that you have kids. Because I already told them that you don’t, and I’ll look like an idiot if I tell them about your situation now. And my mom… she also doesn’t know. So make sure to keep your mouth shut. That’s the least you can do.
- Ok, mommy, I will.
And here I was. A home wrecker. A mistress. The other woman. Like I didn’t have enough labels being a stripper before! I knew he didn’t love his ex-wife, I wasn’t worried about her at all. He was with me half of the week, and she knew about me, later she was even texting some stuff like: “Are you still with your Russian girlfriend? I need you to go to the bank.” Later I was even laughing at it. One thing R. was right about: if he told me at the very beginning that he had a family, even though he wasn’t technically married anymore, I wouldn’t even start this relationship. But it was too late for me, I loved R. too much already to leave, he was my perfect match, my soul mate, and I couldn’t picture my future without him anymore. And they say you shouldn’t be with a person who you can live with, you should be with a person who you can’t live without. And I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing or not, but I let myself hope, that one day I will call him mine, and we’ll be living in a big house, my family – me, him and our kids, and a golden retriever of course. And a goldfish that our son will win for his daddy at the State Fair.
Chapter 23
Between my working and very busy personal life with R., I tried my best to find an apartment on my own. Since I really liked the area where I lived, I wanted to rent something as close to Mikky’s building as possible. So I bought local newspapers, opened Craigslist, took the number of a realtor from one of my drivers, who was good friends with him, and hoped for the best.
After a week of searching, I got pretty disappointed though. All the “renovated” apartments that I saw were as renovated as I was Catholic. Old floors, old bathrooms painted white, no a/c… But the prices were so high, that I seriously started considering renting an apartment in Manhattan as it would probably cost the same.
Luckily, or not so luckily, as it turned out later, when I called Mikky to complain about the whole real estate market, she told me to call one of her friends who just rented a good apartment for a nice price. Mikky had some problems with changing her passport in Russia and she told me not to be in a rush, as she would only come back in mid-October. This gave me some extra time, and I called her girlfriend Katie right away.
- Apartment is a sweet deal, - she told me. – But the realtor was really weird. Cursed in Russian a lot, and seemed like a real prick, but he knows his stuff.
- Sounds fine to me, - I laughed and put his number down.
He did sound like a prick, but he named 3 or 4 different apartments in the area right away, and one of them was a steal.
- It’s in Oceana, you know it’s an elite complex, right? $1500, all bills included except electric and internet; it’s furnished, just renovated, huge bedroom, balcony, dining area, doorman, gym and monitored parking. What do you say?
- I say let’s see it!
- Ok. We can’t see it tonight because the landlord lives upstate, but she comes tomorrow if you are free. And let’s say, 6.00 - 6.30 we meet in front of the building.
- Great! I’m there!
I dressed like a lady, put on my baby blue D&G silk top, pencil skirt, high heels (good thing I didn’t have to walk far), my Chanel bag and most important my confident look. I’m going to go and get that apartment! It was too bad that R. was busy working and couldn’t make it, but I was all ready to do it myself.
I should have turned away as soon as I saw them. The landlord, a middle aged Russian woman (I could tell even without talking to her), a tall, grey haired skinny man, who I guessed was my realtor, and a third guy. My sneaky Jewish agent who never gave me my deposit back, when I was looking for an apartment several months ago. I should have known how tight the Russian community in Brooklyn is, and how they all know each other, and how they all are sneaky bastards. Too bad I wanted that apartment so much, so I smiled and came up to them.
- Hi, I’m Mila.
Another biggest mistake of my life.
_______________
- I love it, I love it, I love it so much!!! – I was so excited telling Mikky about my “steal deal” when we were driving home from JFK.
- How about you, R.? Did you like it? – Mikky was so happy to be back home in New York, but she claimed that she forgot all the English in two months.
- I loved it! – R. smiles. – They have a balcony and I won’t have to smoke through the window anymore.
- How about not to smoke at all? – I asked him for a millionth time.
- I’ll quit eventually, mom!
- What a little jerk you are! – I roll my eyes at him, laughing. – Anyway, it’s really big, bright, as it’s on the seventh floor, the landlady seemed nice, I gave them the deposit and we signed the lease starting with October 10, but they have some problems with moving their mother-in-law out, so if it’s ok, I’ll stay with you for a week or so…
- Of course it’s ok! – Mikky’s such a doll! She always has my back. – Stay as long as you need to.
We didn’t know back then that I’ll have to stay way longer than that. First, the landlady called me and said that they moved the mother-in-law out and took her with them upstate; but mother-in-law’s boyfriend, who also lived there and wasn’t too happy about the eviction, started a law suit against them and now threatened to come and get them, that’s why she stayed in the apartment to monitor it. She told me that her court date was in a week, and if I could wait a little longer, that’s great, and if I can’t, she’ll understand and will give me my money back. I didn’t really have a choice since in that case I would lose $1500 that I paid to the realtor, so I agreed to wait.
Mikky left to Canada with Tony, and I was happy that I wasn’t such a burden now, as sharing a studi
o is not a good idea at all. After that week passed and I was supposed to move in, the landlady called me again and said that they postponed the hearings for a couple more weeks, but they are going to win for sure, and I will just have to wait a little bit more.
- I can’t wait anymore, - I started getting angry. – My friend who I live with now, and her boyfriend are coming back in two days and I will have to move out. I’ll have nowhere to go, what am I supposed to do?!
It wasn’t true of course, but I wanted to press her more so she would start doing something about the whole situation.
- Oh, you can move in right now. I’ll just stay in the living room, because they still can come and do something and I’m worried. So you can bring all you need and live here.
- I’m a bartender, I come back at 4 in the morning. – I said.
- That’s fine, I’m a journalist myself, I write for a newspaper upstate, so I’m up all night too.
Fudge!
- Where is my boyfriend going to stay? We were supposed to move in together.
- Oh, no problem, he can move in too.
Crap! You just can’t scare that woman. Only if we do move in and first night we are there we have our crazy sex, she’ll pack her bags right away and will never come back. But my mommy raised me well, so I just brought a couple of bags there but never stayed a night.
_______________
Every year in the beautiful state of New York in the beginning of June you will find a special handout in your mailbox, saying “It’s hurricane season.” Inside you will find a set of instructions of what to do and where to go in case of emergency. It tells you what to pack first, where you can find a shelter and provides you with the list of phone numbers of different emergency services. And also the centerfold of the handout shows a map of New York City with evacuation zones, so people who live in the high risk zone can be fully prepared for the evacuation.
What can you do if you live by the ocean? It just so happens that our beautiful city consists of several islands, and water is our worst enemy. But at the same time, people of New York got so used to all the “emergency evacuation” warnings during the hurricane season that no one really cares anymore. And almost every year, despite all the prognoses, the whole hurricane thing usually ends up in one or two heavy rain days.
Same thing happened in 2012. We got warned several times that this time it’s going to be different, that the storm is going to be one of the most destructive ones in the whole century…yeah, right, New Yorkers said, they all give us the same crap every year. So nobody left their houses, very few people moved their cars further from the water, “just in case”; those who had boats lifted their anchors, but nobody, no one expected to see what they saw the next morning.
I remember the day before the night when Sandy flooded our city, I called my mom to calm her down, laughing at the meteorologists.
- Don’t even worry, mom, it’s just very windy outside, that’s it. The birds can hardly fly.
- Are you sure? They are saying this time three different storms are going to collide.
- Oh, please! They always say that and nothing happens. Anyway, Mikky and I went shopping this morning to buy some food that can’t go bad without a fridge, you know, just in case if they turn the power off for a couple of days like last year. So we’re good.
- Do you have enough water? Fill the bathtub just in case.
- I don’t think we’re gonna have shortage of water, mom, but I will.
I was so right about the water! Mikky and I were watching it come from the safety of our seventh floor, and couldn’t believe that it actually reached our street.
- Look! It’s the water right there, at the intersection! – I pointed out the direction to Mikky. – It’s really water! See, the cars can’t go through, they are all turning away!
- No! Really? But where is it all coming from? – Mikky seemed to be as shocked as I was. – We’re pretty far from the ocean!
- I don’t know… From Emmons?
- From that little canal? Can’t be!
- But it’s coming, more and more! Look, people are getting out of that building, it’s up to their knees!
- They probably lived in a basement. But where are they going to go now? I’d rather stay in the building, I would just go up.
- How much water should Emmons have if it’s so flooded over here? – I still didn’t seem to understand the whole gravity of the situation, it all looked like one of those movies about the end of the world, but this time we were the actors.
- I don’t know… - Mikky checked her incoming text. – My friend Nicolas, who lives next to Petco, says they have water over there too.
- But it’s higher than us, don’t you think? – fighting with the wind, I tried to stick my head out of the window to see what’s going on to the right of our building, where Nicolas’s building was supposed to be. – Oh my God, Mikky! Look!! There’s water coming from that side too!
- Are you kidding me?!
In a matter of half an hour, maybe forty minutes, the water reached the entrance of our building. The cars couldn’t go through and their owners were getting out, just leaving them out there, and we saw the water reaching up to their hips. The wind was so strong, it was ripping off parts of the roofing from the houses across the street. We closed the window, as we were afraid that some parts flying out could easily get us. The electricity went off and all we heard was sirens, people screaming outside and our neighbors talking in the hall. Pretty soon the water left as fast as it came, and we went to sleep still sure that tomorrow we’ll get our power back and everything will be back to normal. Little did we know then.
Chapter 24
The next morning we ate everything that would have gone bad without the fridge, as the power was still off; we tried calling our families in Russia, but there was not even a little signal, so we put on our Uggs and decided to go outside to see the damages Sandy made.
It was not too bad on our street, just a lot of dirt everywhere. The super of our building was freaking out at the underground parking garage, as it got all flooded and they were trying to get to the insurance company to file the complaints for the cars. Owners of small businesses on the ground floors were all busy cleaning out the water and sand from their stores. Piles of garbage outside started growing bigger and bigger, as sanitation trucks were all busy helping out the streets that were hit the hardest.
We started noticing more and more destruction as we crossed the little bridge leading closer to Emmons Ave. We saw cars with broken windows, flooded inside; glass building hall doors broken; sand and dirt everywhere. But the worst picture was at Emmons itself, and only then we realized the consequences of the destructive force that hit the city a day ago. The wrecked cars were standing in the middle of the street and government services were trying to move some of them in order for the traffic to move again. No traffic lights were working, all windows on the ground and sometimes first floors were broken, fallen trees here and there, some of them crashed right on the cars parked nearby. We could see sailboats tops in the canal; the boats themselves were completely under water. And the canal itself, always so pretty and full of gorgeous swans and ducks, looked more like a huge dumpster filled with water.
As we walked further, we got more and more shocked by what we saw. All the cute little basement restaurants and cafes, the landmark of the Emmons avenue, were filled with ocean water up to their ceilings. Cars now, hit by the arriving fast water, were flipped over, some of them ended up on bushes, some just piled up with other cars, but all of them were destroyed and just left there by their owners, waiting for the insurance companies to come and mark them.
People were saying that before the power went down last night, several houses caught fire because of it. We didn’t see the houses, but we saw the burnt out electric shields at the pierce, right next to the big boats that survived the storm, but were damaged as well.
I asked Mikky to go further to Brighton to check out what the Oceana area
looked like, and also because my landlady called me and asked me to see if the apartment was ok. Sneaky bitch was hiding from the storm upstate. Oceana didn’t look any better. The entrance canopy of the building, which I was supposed to move in to, was torn apart and laying on the side. The windows on the ground floor, however, weren’t broken and when we entered inside, it didn’t look too bad: they must have already cleaned up. We had to walk seven floors in the pitch black darkness, helping ourselves only with our cell phone lights. The dark hall on our floor looked really creepy and immediately reminded me the scene from the movie “I am legend”: I was expecting to see ugly, flesh-eating zombies any minute now, and so was Mikky.
Finally, we opened the door to our apartment, and there was light. Relieved that we haven’t been eaten by zombies, we locked the door behind and looked around. Of course, nothing happened to the apartment since it was on the seventh floor, only a flipped chair on a balcony and unpleasant view from the window. It looked like the whole Brighton got wiped out and now all that was left was dirt, tree branches and seaweed everywhere… A very, very sad picture.
I called my landlady and told her that the apartment was ok. She asked me to pick up her mail as she was only going to come back in a couple of weeks to finalize her court issues, but it was never destined for me to move into that apartment though.
_______________
After two days of no electricity and no hot water, when our phones almost died, we had no other choice but to go to Mikky’s friend Nicolas, who had the power in his building. As soon as we plugged in our phones, I texted R. to ask him how he was doing in Staten Island. Luckily, in his area they weren’t hit too badly, and he was just finishing some cleaning up in his back yard.
Nicolas ordered a pizza and three of us were enjoying the little part of civilization left, such as TV, home delivery and opportunity to wash our hands in hot water. It’s funny how we don’t appreciate how good it is to have hot water or be able to turn the lights on when it gets dark outside, and how helpless we feel when it all suddenly disappears. I felt like a cave woman; a couple more weeks with no fridge would probably make me hunt for raccoons with a butcher knife.
The New York Doll Page 13
