No Lease on Life

by Lynne Tillman

  —You know, the cops never get right on it, Elizabeth said.

  —Yeah, they’re hanging out or practicing cop triage. I saw this rookie at the corner today, and both of us were standing near this crazy, he’s wearing farmer overalls, a tall, skinny loony dude, with a real long gray beard, a white guy, maybe fifty, and he’s talking to himself, and then he starts shouting, over and over, like he’s giving a sermon, somebody’s got to stand up for the character of the girls.

  Ernest was really amused by that. He repeated it. People repeat what they like.

  —Somebody’s got to stand up for the character of the girls.

  Two Greek women are in a field. One of them pulls an enormous carrot out of the ground. She says to the other woman, This reminds me of my husband. The other woman looks at the huge carrot. What, because of the length? No, she says. What, the circumference? she asks. No, the woman says, the dirt.

  Elizabeth wanted a quiet night and a relatively good super. People got a little of what they wanted. No one ever got enough.

  Across the street Frankie was closing the laundromat, pulling down the great, tired, yawning gate. Ernest and Elizabeth finished the last of the beer.

  —I hate calling the cops, she said.

  —I hate calling the City. Same difference, he said.

  It was past midnight when Elizabeth said good-night to Ernest. Roy was in bed, and she lay down next to him. They watched the end of a Honeymooners episode.

  One of these days, Alice, one of these days, POW, right in the kisser.

  Ralph Kramden threatened Alice, he never hit her. The morons were carousing in the background.

  —Hector’s been fired. We don’t have a super, Elizabeth said.

  —We never had a super. I’m going to sleep.

  —You are? How can you?

  —Easy.

  She hated him now.

  Elizabeth went to the window. Fatboy trotted over jauntily and stuck his nose through the gate. Elizabeth opened the police-approved window-gate doors, which she’d spent some real money on when they moved in, to prevent breakins by spidery fifth-story men and to allow her, Roy, and Fatboy to get out fast in case of a fire. She raised the window as high as it would go, then the two of them climbed through and settled on the fire escape. Fatboy was happy. She wished she were him.

  The morons were vocalizing, inventing their own brand of superrepellent sounds. Their whole existence was flawed.

  Two Polish-Americans go to Poland, to see their ancestral homeland. They sight-see all day and at night go to a bar. One of them says to the other, I think that’s the Pope. He points to a man at the end of the bar. The friend says, What would the Pope be doing here? I don’t know. He could be visiting Poland like us, says the first. He’s Polish. He could have come home, making a visit. I really think that’s him. You’re crazy, says the second. I’m going to ask him, the first one says. So he goes to the far end of the bar, and asks the man, Are you the Pope? The man looks at him and says, Fuck off. He walks back to his friend and tells him, I asked him if he was the Pope and he said, Fuck off. The friend says, So, I guess we’ll never know.

  Two of the morons rolled on the sidewalk, holding their sides, shitting themselves with goofy laughter. Three other morons and one veteran crustie looked on, bored.

  There is no super. I’ll murder them, one by one, she thought.

  The worst person, John Wayne Gacy, who painted clowns and performed sadistic tricks in a clown costume for children in hospitals, then buried thirty-six boys in a tunnel in his basement, or Jeffrey Dahmer, who dissected road-kills when he was a kid, then turned into a cannibal who ate boys because he wanted to keep them from leaving, or the woman who dropped her infant out the window, or the woman who thought her child was possessed by the devil, so she scalded her to death, cleansing her of evil, the worst person is understandable, only human. Some people’s wounds never heal. Cats let sick kittens die or kill them. The game was long over. The street jumpstarted and buzzed with an overflow of Knicks’ victory high. Someone might get lucky.

  A couple of the crusties on the church steps roused themselves from their stupor. They started hopping, whooping, and yipping. Elizabeth focused on the loudest moron. He was shrieking, throwing his fat head back and shrieking. She didn’t think they could see her. Suddenly the loudest moron glared defiantly at the windows of people trying to sleep and turned his boombox up, as loud as it would go. He blasted it. It was an act of civil war.

  Elizabeth lay down on the fire escape and went rigid. She kept her head low, her body flat, held herself back, and just stayed down.

  Drop dead. Stop it. Drop dead. Stop it. Drop dead, stupid. Doing nothing was her civil right, doing nothing was her civic duty. Nothing is hard to do.

  When Westley Dodd was little, he used to sit at his window and stare at the kids in the playground across the street. Dodd began exposing himself at thirteen, then he molested one hundred little boys, then he murdered three, took pictures of them. He confessed everything. He’d never been praised, he’d never been touched, he lived in an emotional desert, an emptiness, no one laid a hand on him for love or hate, and growing up as he watched the kids squealing in the school playground, all he could think about was how he wanted to hurt them. When he was arrested, he said he’d hoped to kill many more boys. He said he didn’t think he had any feelings abour anything.

  Elizabeth didn’t have the right profile to be a serial killer, she didn’t have a child to drop out a window, she had a lot of feelings, all her feelings were bad now, she had nothing against Fatboy.

  One of the morons leaped on a car and banged it with a quart bottle of beer. The bottle shattered and several windows across the street squealed open. The ancient black woman with a Chihuahua came to her window, she was wheelchairbound, but she had a portable phone. She’d call the cops. They’d get right on it, they’d say, then they’d put the phone down and grin contemptuously at each other in the station house.

  Last week an alarm pulsed and throbbed across the street on the top floor of the ancient black woman’s building. A thousand-watt bulb blazed and flashed on and off, while the alarm throbbed and sobbed. Elizabeth phoned.

  —There’s something weird going on across the street.

  —Yeah, we’ve had calls, we’ll send a car. We’ll get right on it.

  For another hour the light flashed and the alarm whined.

  Elizabeth phoned again.

  —Did you send a car?

  —Yeah, we sent a car. We didn’t see nothing.

  —The alarm’s still going, and the light’s still flashing.

  —We drove past and we didn’t see nothing.

  —Did you look up?

  They didn’t look up. They didn’t get out of the car. An apartment had been robbed and ransacked, the tenants were away, their alarm went off, the cops didn’t hear it or see it, they didn’t look up. They shouldn’t be cops.

  A man’s disgusted. He just wants out. So he decides to go to a local monastery. The head monk says he can enter, except he must agree to take a vow of silence. No one in the monastery is allowed to speak at all, except for two words on New Year’s Day. The man says fine. So he enters, and at the end of his first year, on New Year’s Day, the monk asks him if he has two words he wants to say. The man says, Fruit stinks. Then another year passes, and the monk asks the man if he has two words he wants to say. The man says, Bed hard. After the third year, on New Year’s Day, the monk asks the man, Do you have two words you want to say? The man says, I quit. The monk says, I’m not surprised. All you’ve done since you got here is complain.

  A moron bellowed. A crustie turned the volume up on her boombox. Now two were going full blast.

  Elizabeth climbed through the window, back into the apartment, and walked to the refrigerator. She took out a full carton of eggs and carried it to the window.

  Roy opened his eyes when she was nearly out the window.

  —What are you doing?

  —Nothing.r />
  —Don’t do it.

  —Don’t worry.

  She assumed her position and cradled a white egg in her hands.

  The man in the third-floor window watched Elizabeth. She was strange tonight, going in and out of the window. He usually turned off his light before he started watching her, the street. He didn’t think she knew he was there generally. Tonight she didn’t look like she cared. He didn’t know her name. Everyone on the block knew who she was because she was friendly. She was the kind of woman who sometimes didn’t close her blinds. Not that she walked around naked. She wasn’t a whore. She lived with a man. He saw the same guy there, not like some of the other women he watched, different men every night, the ten-dollar junkie whores on the block, like Jeanine, giving blow jobs in doorways, disgusting lowlife.

  The man in the third-floor window imagined getting a blow job from Jeanine. He got hot, then he got angry. He pictured blowing her away, the disgusting bitch, her mouth to his joint.

  A snail was crawling on a man’s newspaper. The man flicked it off and the snail went flying. Five years later, the man’s doorbell rang. He opened it, and the snail said, Hey, what was that all about?

  The crusties were jubilant.

  The fire escape hurt her ribs. Fatboy plopped himself on her ass. Elizabeth’s view was straight down to the fire escape below, which had a few sorry plants on it and a wet package of Raid Ant Bait. Kills the Queen. Kills the colony. She could set a trap of silent-killer food on the church steps and see the morons eat it and die in agony.

  In memoriam forget hope forget hopelessness forget innocence forget guilt forget lies forget truth forget good forget bad forget purity forget corruption forget vice forget virtue this is for you.

  Elizabeth angled her head and body. She took a different position and looked around without moving. Her vision, peripheral and otherwise, was one of her best features. Elizabeth relaxed and released the white egg from her hand. A mild, humid breeze carried it. The egg cracked and splattered in the gutter.

  Fatboy growled. The morons looked up. Elizabeth kept her head down, giggled, and whispered to Fatboy.

  —Somebody’s got to stand up for the character of the girls.

  She extended her arm. She dropped another egg from a different side of the fire escape. It popped and cracked on the sidewalk. The yolk and white flowed, and the morons looked nervous. The loudest one looked up in her direction. He didn’t see anything.

  The man in the third-floor window was still, like a polluted pond.

  The ancient black woman with the chihuahua was anxiously waiting for the cops. She took some notice of the white woman, but not much, it was just more craziness.

  Elizabeth didn’t care how she appeared to others. She saw herself.

  Yes this is a fatal mistake or maybe just bad judgment it’s no worse than fucking most of the guys I fucked no more stupid than trusting the people I have so it’s really dumb and I’ll be miserable it wasn’t my choice I’m not that free I’ll trade it all in the job the boyfriend the dog the friends the apartment and leave it all behind manacled and shackled by myself and I’ll enter the land of the damned the spoiled and damaged race past everyone who’s never risked anything stupid as this is they’ll catch it later on TV people like disease and failure at a distance if they can watch it on TV it makes them feel safe especially when things are out of control everyone wants control things are going down there’s no way to judge the speed of the fall no one admits the thrill the pleasure of giving up give it up give it up no one confesses to wanting to surrender be an untouchable who slinks along the streets a nobody who wallows in sublime degradation nobody’s a dirty word yes I’m guilty take me away I want to leave the block I’m guilty OK.

  When the cops arrived, the crusties would say someone was throwing eggs at them, that’s why they were whooping, hollering, and blasting their boomboxes. They were just reacting, defending themselves against a sick creature sniping at them from an indeterminate fire escape, they were only battling an unseen enemy.

  Elizabeth had an irresistible impulse to stand tall on the fire escape and address the block. She’d speak about the need for quiet. Abraham Lincoln spoke from the balcony of Cooper Union which wasn’t far from where she was now. He delivered his second inaugural address after the Civil War ended: “With malice toward none; with charity for all.”

  One month later he was assassinated.

  Elizabeth decided against standing up and being counted, she’d lie low and go uncounted. She wondered if statistically you were more likely to be murdered if you gave speeches. If you gave speeches in the wrong places, at the back of the bus, or acted inappropriately anywhere, you could be institutionalized, if you weren’t already.

  A Puerto Rican father comes home and doesn’t see his daughter, but he finds her vibrator. The next night she comes home and finds him sitting at the kitchen table, drinking. Her vibrator is on the table opposite him. What’re you doing? she asks. I’m having a drink with my son-in-law, he says.

  Being appropriate was boring. She dropped two eggs together. The eggs, light as feathers, gathered speed as they went down. Gravity did its work flawlessly. The eggs hit hard on impact. They could hurt somebody. She hadn’t thought about that before. Everything’s a learning experience.

  One of the crusties mooned the block. His ass was dirty, like his face.

  Keep your big ass your big noise your big nose your big stink your big eyes your big lies keep your shit to yourself.

  If the morons spotted where the eggs came from and spotted her dropping them, they’d be waiting for her tomorrow, like the plot of the scariest TV movie she’d ever seen, about a ten-year-old girl who sees a murder committed outside her school building. The little girl’s dreaming out the window of her classroom and sees the murder in the distance, on a small hill, and the murderer suddenly looks in her direction after he’s done it and sees her seeing him, and she knows he sees her, and she knows he’ll be waiting for her after school, and she doesn’t tell anyone. She’s trapped in the school at 3 P.M. when everyone else goes home, and she’s alone.

  That was a long time ago. Elizabeth was eight. She turned off the TV before the end of the movie. Her mother had left her on her own and told Elizabeth she was her own baby-sitter.

  It was pathetic. She was her own baby-sitter.

  If the morons saw her, Elizabeth would alert the block. She wouldn’t be like that little girl. She’d call Larry and Helen, she’d wake Roy, who’d probably tell her she was being stupid and to go back to sleep, and she’d fight the urge to kill him, which was inappropriate, she had to keep her attention on the real problems and enemies, and she’d alert Ernest, Herbert the deaf tenant, the acerbic super, Paulie, Gisela, Jeanine, and Frankie, and Ricardo, the whole neighborhood, she’d make up flyers, wheatpaste them on buildings, hand them out, she’d make it clear that she was being persecuted by the morons and crusties. She wouldn’t be quiet, she wouldn’t go quietly, she wouldn’t fight alone.

  Probably the young super would join the crusties and morons and take his stale revenge.

  What were Kurt Cobain’s last words?

  Hole’s gonna be big.

  Elizabeth tossed another egg. It flew into the street, sailing on a bigger, wetter breeze. It cracked on the side of a passing car. The car slowed down a little then speeded up. Probably the driver saw the morons. Fatboy jumped up and barked. Elizabeth gagged him. She crouched beside him on the fire escape. She was wearing black, it wasn’t planned, it was perfect.

  She held her breath and her position, she was crouched and rounded like a basketball.

  The ancient black woman phoned the cops again and stuck her body farther out the window. Elizabeth saw her speaking on the phone.

  The ancient black woman would say:

  —There’s a crazy woman throwing eggs, and there are some unruly young people making noise. Please do something. I’m old, I live alone, I have a bad heart.

  When the cops arrived, and the
y came to Elizabeth’s door, and woke Roy, who’d be enraged, Elizabeth would say:

  —The morons saw an egg or two drop over the side of my fire escape, by accident, and tomorrow they’re going to come and get me.

  The cop’s eyes would narrow in contempt.

  —Why’d you have eggs on the fire escape?

  She’d have to go into it, her history, the story of the block, her night, her day, the last twenty-four hours, how she was driven to this act. She’d need backing from others, like Ernest. She’d have to mount a strong case, defend herself. Her heart was beating wildly, it was like a caged animal.

  No I’ve never been in trouble with the law just a little I mean I never went to jail yes I lead a normal life I guess yes I’ve got a job part-time I had a few beers yes I’ve done coke grass speed no I told you I’m not high now I had a few beers yes I get along with people ask anyone in the neighborhood I don’t have many enemies some I do I have some yes I like men I live with one what’s that got to do with anything I don’t think of those morons like that are you kidding no I hate needles I hate the blood and poking around in veins yes I have a temper I said I’m not on anything yes I vote what a question no I’m not married I was a little out of control I didn’t murder anyone sure I thought about it wouldn’t you no I’m not crazy maybe temporarily it was an impulse I couldn’t stop no I don’t believe in what I did it’s not a matter of belief I just did it I’m not a member of anything a good life good sex is going to change this are you kidding are you guys going to keep them quiet every night I’m not a vigilante I didn’t take any law into my own hands you must be kidding eggs yes I’m not saying it was right I don’t care if it was right these morons don’t care about anyone on the block they rob me of my sleep I’m robbed of my dreams no don’t tell me about other people I’m not other people are we through now.

  She’d explain that she corrected errors for a living, she came from a relatively stable family, there’d been more than enough food on the table, they had more than one table, they had a dining room, a den, a kitchen, a basement, and there were many tables, even a ping-pong table, she was a pretty good player. She’d admit that everyone bothered her eventually.