17 Greenwich

A Bird In The Hand...

2011-11-22T16:27:00.001-08:00

Jefferson’s sister had a puppy named Ms. Swiggles that now lived with Jefferson and would until his sister’s world tour by yacht was completed in May. Ms. Swiggles was a nice puppy as puppies go, never ate shoes or barked incessantly or did any of the other irritating things puppies are famous for. She did, however, periodically let out a yelp. The kind most dogs reserve for moments in which their tails are being stepped on, though Ms. Swiggles would let one rip while sitting contentedly on the couch, not being stepped on or even looked at.

After a couple of weeks of mind-shatteringly loud unexpected yelping, Jefferson began to get sideways looks. Lucy rushed up to Ms. Swiggles and pet her, though she seemed to be looking for signs of abuse as she gently ran her fingers through Ms. Swiggles’ fur and felt around her neck. Ms. Swiggles wagged her tail and remained silent until Lucy seemed contented and walked away.

Soon after Lucy’s check-up, Esther tried to play vet, pretending to love dogs (she did not) so that she could examine Ms. Swiggles and give Jefferson unsolicited nutritional advice based on things she knew about cats. Ms. Swiggles passed her test, but that was not enough to discourage Aggie from further intervention. She bit the bullet and offered to take Ms. Swiggles in, claiming halfheartedly that interaction with animals was good for Lidia. Jefferson confusedly declined but said that he would be happy to lend Ms. Swiggles out to anybody in need of company. Aggie gave him a judgmental look, after all she had given him an easy out, but decided against taking him up on the offer because of the effort required. What was she, a pound?

Soon, the building-wide concern for Ms. Swiggles was all anybody could talk about in the hallways. Neighbors passed each other with pleasant smiles for once, asking for updates on the dog situation and passing well wishes along to them and theirs when it seemed appropriate. Esther got several free cat-sitting offers out of the ordeal and Emery was encouraged to buy a parakeet by a building very much in need of a happy animal story. Aggie even offered to bird-sit should the responsibility become too taxing for flaky old Emery to handle alone.

When Ms. Swiggles and the parakeet disappeared on the same spring day, Esther decided that it was time for an intervention. Busting open Jefferson’s door using a lock-picking technique she had learned from a mischievous soldier while serving as an army nurse, she demanded to know where Jefferson had put the dog and the parakeet. He explained that the dog was gone; had never been his and was too annoying to invite back after the months he had spent absorbing judgmental stares and angry whispers. But a parakeet? That he’d never heard of or seen.

Esther was convinced he was lying. That as a known animal hater he had stolen Emery’s precious parakeet and sold it on the black market to finance his champagne swigging and whatnot. Yet that day as she arrived home, she noticed her cats pawing at something in the corner. A dead bird.

Overcome with guilt, she did what any sensible person would. She laid it at Jefferson’s doorstep with a note that said, “THIS bird.”

He owed her anyway. After all, she had been listening to that damn dog yowl away for months.

Crooked Bean

2011-11-14T17:09:00.000-08:00

The morning that Bean woke up with a crook in his neck, he did not think much of it. Presumably he had slept in a weird position and would be fine within several minutes.

When the crook did not go away until later in the day, after he downed several aspirin, he simply assumed he was coming down with something and resolved to get to bed early that night.

When it came time to make the decision between watching Letterman and getting enough rest, Bean put it off the early bedtime. He felt he had earned an evening of comedy and superficial celebrity interviews by putting in a full day with a crook in a neck.

The next morning his neck felt find but Bean could not move his left leg. It was stuck between asleep-ness and painfulness and no amount of blood flow seemed to restore its functionality. Aggie was already up with Lidia, flitting around the house and exclaiming things from corners near and far.

Bean attempted to speak her name, assuming his voice would be weak due to all his inexplicable sleep injury. To his surprise, his voice was loud a clear. His shock at hearing himself bolted him into an upright position and when Aggie finally came in to check on him there seemed to be nothing wrong.

“My leg is not working.”

“It looks fine,” she said absentmindedly, kissing his knee as if he were a toddler and continuing on her way.

Standing up proved challenging but Bean did the best he could, hobbling over to his dresser and pulling out a pair of sweatpants. Wearing slacks did not seem like an option in his injured state. He managed to dress himself while lying on his back, then rolled up again to hobble into the living room.

Lidia tore by him, only inches from his malfunctioning leg, the moment he stepped out of his bedroom. There were a precarious couple of seconds, but he caught the end of a freestanding bookshelf to steady himself. The bookshelf did the trick briefly until it too lost control and began to tip. Bean finally tipped as well, falling over a fluffy chair’s armrest and landing with his chin to his chest and his working leg curled into his forehead. His non-working leg was holding the bookshelf at bay as volumes of antique “for show” books showered onto the floor.

Aggie came wandering in, but instead of rushing to Bean’s aid she stood with her hands on her hips and waited until she felt enough time had passed that Bean had learned a lesson. Then, carefully, she pushed the bookshelf back onto its base, pulled Bean up by the arms, and said, “I hope you’re planning to clean this up.” Nervously, he did as he was told, hoping to avoid future mom-eyes from his child’s mother. Those were the worst.

Letterman that night seemed every more necessary, so he again put off getting enough sleep to clear his mind.

The next morning Bean woke up with a sore neck again.

“You know what, Aggie? I’m just going to stay in today,” he said, turning over carefully. “Because I don’t think I’ll ever get up the nerve to actually skip Letterman.”

Aggie pounded him on the back. “It’s your turn with Lidia, idiot. Get up.”

So he did as he was told. And as he raised his head he noticed the pain was gone.

“Aggie, hit me again.”

Without question she hit him again. All the parts were in working order. Violence, as it turns out, is sometimes the answer.

Super Mini-Board

2011-11-10T10:15:00.000-08:00

The first mini-board was formed in response to a mini-problem: the plumbing was going and the board needed to identify a go-to plumber that residents could call if (really when) their pipes leaked. This mini-board consisted of Emery, Aggie, and Liseli, all people who had no interest in plumbing or understanding of pipes and water. One renter, Benjamin, had been thrown on the panel the pad the numbers and was tasked with doing all the work. They had a small operating budget, which went to buying doughnuts for their meetings and padding their incomes, but no plumber was ever located. Nobody had ever asked for any financial records, so when the building was audited and the records were finally requested, each member drafted up several fake plumbing receipts, all of which named Benjamin as the plumber, and that was that.

A second mini-board was formed to deal with the rodent situation, which was only getting worse as construction dragged on across the street. Nobody volunteered for that mini-board so the only person on it was the person who suggested it, Lucy. Thanks to her stellar negotiating skills, it had a very large operating budget and no oversight. When the audit came up, Lucy also seemed to have no receipts, but her apartment was an island of rodent-free living. She drafted up a receipt for a fake exterminator named Giuseppe that had, on paper, treated the entire building. Paradoxically Giuseppe was a real person, the person behind all the construction and therefore responsible for the rodent presence in the first place. Luckily, the auditors did not an interest in irony.

A third mini-board was formed as a protest move to challenge the leadership of Phil Hertz on the regular board. It contained Morty and, on paper Emery too. Luckily this mini-board had never met, so when it was asked for it’s receipts the only thing that got thrown in was a dry cleaning bill, which was summarily tossed aside by the auditors.

After the audit, in order to deal with the mini-boards’ lack of financial oversight, Mr. Hertz and Mr. Lamb from next door decided to form a super board that would be responsible for managing the mini-boards. To do this successfully, the super-board ultimately became the board that could dole out funds to residents, and was co-chaired by the board presidents. Informally called “finance” by residents, the super-board was now the go-to body for dealing with everything from block parties to personal Christmas parties to parking tickets. It was the law, or at least it could pay off the law.

The number of mini-boards began to skyrocket as soon as rumors of the weak-willed nature of the super-board leadership got around. There were now mini-boards for Alcohol, Chips, Beer (often clashed with the Alcohol board), Paint Supplies, Bike Racks, and Exercise Machines. These mini-boards made regular presentations to the super-board about their need for funds, which become so overwhelming that an assessment was levied on the shareholders and the regular board, elected by the shareholders, was powerless to stop it.

After the assessment, a mini-board was formed called Stop Future Assessments and another called No More Mini-Boards. In response, a Mini-Boards Are Great mini-board was started by Jefferson, whose champagne-swigging parties were benefitting greatly from the funds he had been requesting through his personal mini-board, Jefferson’s Party Bureau. Quelly from 19 had joined the Mini-Boards Are Great mini-board as a way to meet Jefferson, and soon Liseli began to attend their meetings to keep an eye on the situation and ensure that Jefferson was not seeing Quelly behind her back (though he was also not seeing her behind Quelly’s back either).

Residents had to come down on one side or another of the mini-boards issue, and soon political parties with newsletters and fundraising calls had formed. Esther had donated $10 to Mo More Mini-Boards, which created some tension between her and Morty, a staunch Stop Future Assessments supporter. The two mini-boards had similar aims but clashed regularly over political strategy.

It was when Lucy pointed out that the political mini-boards were not alleviating the problem and instead were taking even more money out of resident’s pockets that Stop Future Assessments and No More Mini-Boards decided to come together. The continued to ask for money but reasoned that at least there would only be one party representing the anti-assessment vote.

It took everybody by surprise when an auditor came around and asked the now powerless regular board of 19 for receipts. By the next day, word had spread that there was to be no talk of mini-boards until the audit was over and that the super-board was temporarily suspended until 17 and 19 could separate their finances sufficiently enough to please the auditor.

No More Assessments/Mini-Boards was temporarily disbanded and all evidence of it, the flyers, postage meter, and typewriter, was put into a closet in the basement. Jefferson also ceased to operate Mini-Boards Are Great, and Liseli was sorry to see her excuse to meet with him go, though she was happy to know she would not have to see the backstabbing Quelly anymore.

The first regular board meeting post-super-board was awkward to say the least. After a few painful minutes of sitting around, Emery finally raised the question that was on everybody’s mind.

“What do we do here again?”

Last Call for Comments

2011-11-09T11:53:00.000-08:00

A bitter battle over the level of tint in the front door’s window was finally pushed aside after Mr. Hertz offered to do an presentation on window tint’s relationship to crime at the next meeting, and a last call was made for announcements. The board meeting had been going strong for a good two hours and the call for announcements was more a formality than anything else, but Turtle approached the makeshift podium and began to speak.

“I wanted to broach the idea of putting a deck onto our roof.”

“A public deck?” Jefferson asked. This was an idea he had raised several months ago to no avail. “I’ve been saying that for a while. It’d be nice, right? To have a deck."

“A private deck. For my apartment.”

“That’s not what I was talking about,” Jefferson clarified.

“Are you looking for permission?” Mr. Hertz inquired.

“Well I think it’s only fair that the board pay for some of the expenses. It will make the building seem more exclusive after all. I’m basically handing you all free money if I do this. Your apartment values will skyrocket.” Mr. Turtle had a history of claiming that certain things would make apartment values skyrocket, none of which were true. “I’ve already spoken with Mr. Merryman.” A fake friendly wave was launched to a figure in the back of the meeting. ”He seems very supportive of the idea, which is convenient since he owns the roof.”

“It sounds like you are the one asking for free money,” Morty chimed in. “Why doesn’t Merryman pay for the deck?”

“Don’t you understand this will enrich the lives of all residents? What kind of building has private roof decks? A luxury building, that’s what.”

“Luxury buildings have communal roof decks.”

“I am offering you the chance to live in a building with a penthouse suite.” To which the meeting dissipated into giggles.

Jefferson was usually on board with Turtle’s crazy plans, but he finally had the chance to be the voice of reason and he took it, “Putting a bow on a pig doesn’t mean it doesn’t eat mud.”

Morty smirked. “What my misquoting friend is trying to say,” he chimed in, “It that you are wrong and your idea is stupid.” And that, it seemed, was enough to settle it.

“Also,” Lucy added, glad to be an adult in this building for moments like this, “your apartment is a dump and no amount of decks is going to change that.”

To which Mr. Turtle had only one reply, “No your apartment is a dump.”

Mr. Hertz called the meeting there. “I expect everybody to carefully consider the window tint issue and I hope that nobody will carefully consider Turtle’s presentation. See you in a month.”

The Varied Responsibilities of a Board President

2011-11-07T11:19:00.000-08:00

Ms. Alden had been 97, lived alone, and was still the #1 source of fresh-baked cookies during neighborhood birthdays. She died at 3:13am. Her meowing cat had alerted neighbors that something was amiss. Mr. Lamb had called an ambulance by 7am.

Deaths in the neighborhood always forced Morty to ponder his own mortality. Thinking that he might die made him want to eat steak, though according to his doctor eating steak could cause him to die too.

Esther rarely considered her own mortality because dying was not an option for her right now. It would not be fair to the cats. Still, deaths was annoying to her it its own way. It required sending flowers to strangers and the flower store shopkeeper was on her list for having made a favorable comment about Reagan three years ago.

Emery felt theoretically sad to hear that Ms. Alden had died, but in times like this he found himself unable to speak in anything but pithy maxims. He began a card that read, “I’m sorry for your terrible loss. This is a sad day.” It occurred to him that, should somebody he loved die, an impersonal card like this might be more annoying than not getting a card. He began again. “Thinking of you on this sad day.” Nope, not any better. He decided to call Esther and go in on her card.

Lucy had known Ms. Alden for her entire life and the loss felt like the death of a grandmother, albeit one she had not been close to (Ms. Alden was a good neighbor, but she had contained a slightly old-school bigoted edge…). Still, Lucy had eaten at least 500 birthday cookies between her and all of her cousins and was certain that making Ms. Alden’s cookies would make her feel better. She put all of the ingredients on the counter, whipped herself into a frenzy, then invited Emery down to taste-test with her. Emery was so happy to have a way to help that he went to Mr. Hertz first and demanded that the handover of a birthday cookies from his most recent birthday, which had just passed two days prior. Mr. Hertz obliged, and Emery and Lucy set out to make cookies, none of which ended up tasting like the sample cookie. By cookie 5 the task was becoming maddening and they quit before hitting on the correct combination of ingredients.

Bean and Aggie had only met Ms. Alden once, and didn’t like her. Because he was seen (in his own eyes) as somebody who did not beat around the bush, he did not mince words when he told Aggie how we felt about her death. “Whatever, it’s fine. I need coffee.”

Mr. Hertz did not find out that Ms. Alden was dead until a week later, when he tried to return a piece of mail that had mistakenly come to him. It was not unusual for he, who spent his entire life sitting at a local coffee shop, to somehow still miss out on major gossip.

Though late, however, he was the only person who made it to the florist, found a card, and laid a rose at 19’s door. To save face he blamed the rose on Lucy, then signed his card to the family with his names of all of his neighbors, leaving his at the bottom. His responsibilities as Board President were varied, after all. Varied but important.

How Morty Inherited a Cat

2011-11-03T10:30:00.001-07:00

Esther’s cat was beginning to meow a lot.

Bert had been a kind of unsuspecting cat. One that never made a peep and lived under her bed for the most part, coming out only to slop up some food and scratch at a corner of the couch. One day while waiting for food, Bert burst out with a series of very loud, somewhat harrowing meows, and never stopped. He meowed all night, he meowed whenever Esther made a move of any sort. He meowed at sounds from the street. He meowed at the other cats. He was a one-man meowing band of sorts, an oddly fitting soundtrack for the apartment.

When the meowing did not stop, Esther became concerned that Bert was trying to tell her something so she took him to the vet. The vet said he probably just had some cat issues on his mind, perhaps a battle for territory with her other cats. Or that he was going batty in his old age. This gave her an idea.

Morty was no good with cats, this was well known by residents of 17. Still, he was the ceremonial caretaker of Esther’s cats when she was out of town. All that meant was that he got credit for their continued survival. In reality, a series of other neighbors had to stop by the actually feed and caretake, usually Emery, Benjamin, and Alby. Sometimes Lucy got drafted when they ran out of other options. Liseli had been on that list at one time but I become very deft at avoiding cat-related responsibilities.

When Esther brought Bert to Morty, the two immediately began to stare each other down. Bert's meow’s took on a much harsher tone and Morty grumbled unintelligibly in response. So Bert upped his game, taking a swipe at Morty’s arm. At that Morty got up and grumbled his way into the kitchen, where he proceeded to pour himself some milk. Bert followed, then followed Morty back to his seat and jealously watched him drink the milk, eyes growing wide. Leaving the empty milk glass on the table, Morty moved over to the couch, where Bert jumped into his lap and began to purr.

“I don’t even like Milk,” he muttered.

Esther was aghast. She liked to think of herself as a bit of a cat whisperer but there was just no accounting for Bert's behavior at the moment.

“You have a masochistic cat,” Morty replied to her look of amazement. “Deal with it.”

A Mobile Home

2011-11-01T12:19:00.000-07:00

Mr. Hertz had a daughter that he didn’t like to talk about. She was 39 (how did she get so old?) and lived in Reno, NV. To Mr. Hertz’s mind, that was about as embarrassing as having her live in a rusty trailer next to his apartment. She worked in the business office of a casino, number fixing and completing other disreputable business tasks, and had been known to call him around the holidays to suggest that she could use a cash infusion from his retirement fund. He had been known to suggest that she go **** herself around the holidays, when the full weight of his familial failures really set in and bubbled into a bitter depression that was followed by aimless anger.

Hertz’s jealously of Morty was palpable. Morty’s proximity and tacit approval to his former step-son Emery was deeply moving to Hertz, but also a constant reminder of what he lacked with his own flesh-and-blood daughter. He wished to tacitly if not overtly be able to approve of Magda. (He had, however, stuck her with the name Magda. That was his first mistake.)

Magda showed up at his door on an unsuspecting Tuesday. Hertz was understandably shaken, sure that she was there to rob him before the holidays and take him out with the trash. Instead, fighting back tears, she stated her case right at the door, certain (correctly) that Hertz would not let her in otherwise.

“Robert has left me and taken the trailer with him.” (He KNEW it. A trailer in Reno.) “I had nowhere to turn. Mom is at a yoga retreat and Johnny (her ne’er-do-well half-brother) is in jail again on drug charges. I just need a place to stay for a few nights while I figure out where to go.”

A long-dormant fatherly instinct kicked in. He asked a question directly related to her safety: “How did you get to New York?”

“I hitch-hiked with this guy Saul. He was coming to New York to visit his younger sister, who is in a nursing home somewhere on Long Island. Hicksville I think.”

“Saul?”

“He was old.”

“You hitch-hiked with an elderly man named Saul?”

“It seemed safer than trusting a trucker.”

He stepped aside, granting her entry into the cramped apartment. “Do not touch anything.”

“How am I going to sit down?”

He pointed to one, somewhat dusty chair. “You can touch that chair.”

“What about if I want to sleep?”

“You can sleep in the chair.”

“I can’t. Dad, can’t you just cut me a little slack?”

Calling him Dad was a bit forward, Hertz thought. A little too familiar. “Phil. And I’ll let you touch the couch when I’m in my room and can’t see you.”

Magda nodded an approval of the arrangement. Sighing, she put her bag down next to the allowed chair. “Dad…Phil….Why are you so angry at me? I just got here.”

Hertz looked around the overcrowded, dusty apartment and thought of his ex-wife at her yoga retreat, calmly meditating and posing, knowing her daughter was other there thinking about her. He thought about Morty fondly calling Emery a putz in the hallway. And then, he thought about his own life, empty of people aside from his companions at Krispin’s and empty of activities aside from his board president responsibilities. “I’m not angry.” With some more thought, he added, “I am jealous. It’s a different situation entirely.”

He got up, put on some shoes. “I’m going to take a walk. Feel free to use the couch while I’m gone.” It would have to start with small graces. And she was out of Reno. That was progress.

Before leaving, he looked back, catching Magda from the back. He somewhat lumpy, hunched shape. She was, similarly, without people or activities. She had done him one better; she was without even an apartment. “I hope you’ll consider staying in this area when you sort your affairs out. Reno is really far away.” Maybe one day proximity could create fondness. Tear through the bitterness at being slowly abandoned by every member of his family. Eventually.

Magda smiled. “I’m done with the west.” And with that she curled up on the couch and closed her eyes.

Holding On

2011-10-31T10:25:00.000-07:00

Esther had been holding the phone for 40 minutes and she had to pee. Having been raised at a time of great propriety and respect for the telephone, she was not willing to consider taking the phone with her into the bathroom, nor was she willing to consider hanging up. She needed a babysitter. Humming along to the hold music, which was a muzak version of Hallelujah, she walked downstairs and knocked on Morty’s door.

“I need you to watch my telephone.”

“From here?”

“I have cordless.”

“When did you get cordless?,” he asked, voice tinged with jealousy.

She jabbed the phone into his hand. “I’ll be back soon.”

“What if somebody answers?”

“Chat them up until I get back.” And with that she took off.

“Cordless and she didn’t even tell me,” he muttered to himself, walking towards his couch.

Within seven minutes, the hold music was getting to him. It was infuriating music; meandering, unnecessarily slow, bizarrely jazzy. It made Beethovan’s 5^th boring. Actively boring. It was creating more boredom in the world by it’s very presence on this telephone. He began to pace in a dreamlike state, desperate for Esther to return.

When Morty’s own phone rang, it overwhelmed his senses. The confusion of hearing a ring while we was already holding a receiver to his ear was transferred into anger when he finally picked up.

“Hey Morty, quick question.”

“Emery, you putz, I need you to come down here and watch Esther’s phone.”

“Well that’s actually what I needed to talk to you about. I can’t come down there because I’ve locked myself into my apartment.”

“You’re a putz, do you know that? Locked yourself in? That’s not even possible.”

“My doorknob fell off while I was trying to open it.”

“That would only happen to a putz like you.” But the idea of taking the phone on an adventure was appealing. If he exposed it to a little more of the world, maybe it would discover a new kind of music. So, phone still at his ear, he got into the elevator and went upstairs. The signal somehow survived the trip from one floor below Esther to one floor above.

Esther, meanwhile, was enjoying life without the phone. It was relaxing in the bathroom, no muzak playing, not impending conversation with an overly-officious person unable to answer simple questions because of “company policy.” She took her time, washed her hands at a leisurely pace. When she got back down to Morty’s and he was gone, she wasn’t concerned. It was a gift, this time away from the telephone. She began to clean up the kitchen, putting away his dishes. When she was done straightening up, she went back home, all but forgetting her impending phone call.

When Emery arrived with the phone in hand, he looked perplexed. “Is this yours?"

“I don’t know, is it?”

“Morty shoved it into my hands and ran downstairs. He literally ran. Even with his bad knee.”

“He’s a putz.” She grabbed the phone, only to find it disconnected. “Did you do this? Did you hang up?” He voice was rising. A look of anger was fomenting out of her wrinkled features.

“Well, yeah. I didn't know what it was.”

Bristling, she dialed the number again, handed the phone to Emery, and kicked him out.

“Call me when somebody answers.”

“But I'll have your phone.”

That last breath of logic didn't phase her because she had already slammed the door in his face. Sinking into a chair, smiled a partially evil smile as she heard Morty's door open downstairs and heard a faint scream of exasperation as Emery handed him the phone.

A Turtle for Halloween

2011-10-28T15:09:00.000-07:00

The last time Mr. Turtle had dressed in costume was 1984, but this year that would have to change. An important business contact had invited him to a party at a palatial estate on Long Island, a party that would make the difference between business and non business in the coming year. As a relative Halloween virgin, Turtle was unsure of where to start. He first visited some local costume shops only to find that they were geared exclusively towards men wishing to dress in varying degrees of drag. He then checked the aisles of a Rite Aid, but this close to the holiday all that was left in adult sizes was a collection of cat ear headbands.

There was a lot of pressure to think of something brilliant. The costume would have to be a just-right combination of serious and entertaining. It had to walk a line that would make Turtle, a Dilbert, appear fun-loving while still grounded in reality and prepared for a year of unflinchingly brain-crushing work. Having this sense about the costume was the only non-negotiable. Otherwise, he could be anything. The combination of this self-imposed mandate and virtually endless series of options was brain-crushing enough to make him wonder whether he deserved this potential business account in the first place.

When it became clear that the costume would have to be homemade, Turtle immediately thought of being a calculator. He had a thing for computation and a cardboard box, so ostensibly this was an easy solution. He drew some squares onto the box, which had originally housed his state-of-the-art flatscreen tv (with remote!). He lovingly stenciled numbers onto the squares, and balanced the box against a wall when he was done.

The project looked astoundingly over-simplified. As if he was the kind of person who could not be bothered to add the pi symbol to his costume. So, he set about turning his run-of-the-mill calculator into a scientific calculator, using his 1978, brick-like contraption as a model.

It was not until he was finished and out of room that he realized he had forgotten to add the parenthesis buttons. Without those, the calculator would not be very functional and his business contacts might worry that he was not capable of complicated arithmetic, let alone graphing functions and higher math. The whole project had been a waste. The box had to be removed immediately or it would haunt him all the way until the party.

Setting the project by the trash downstairs, he walked back towards the elevator, passing Lidia and Aggie. Both of them were dressed in very fashionable if not preemptively worn ladybug costumes, Lidia holding a mountain of candy in a plastic pumpkin bucket. They were taunting him with their stares at he, an un-costumed plebian, retreated to his un-festive apartment and left them to eat their candy and pose as bugs.

Back upstairs, Turtle passed the night in panic. It was not until the next morning, when he saw Emery sneaking back from a night out wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, that he had an idea. A tee-shirt. Something so simple. He put on a pair of slacks and dug into his dresser down past the starched button-downs, to a tee-shirt he remembered receiving from a vendor. He put it on. Presto! Casual Turtle was on the scene. Costume complete.

That night, Turtle took a car service into the wilds of Long Island. He arrived glowing with confidence, assuming that nobody would have trouble spotting the joke. “It’s a tee shirt!” he exclaimed to the security guard at the house’s front door. “Get it?”

The man opened the door hesitantly. Once inside Turtle found his future business associate dressed as a female lounge singer.

“It’s a tee-shirt! Get it?” he exclaimed with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

“Get what?” the man replied, smoothing his wig hair. “I don’t think I do. Did you not know this was a costume party?”

Consulting With Creative Types

2011-10-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

Liseli froze in the hallway, listening to what sounded like four different women entering and exiting Jefferson’s apartment at ten minute intervals. Though she was just back from the supermarket and had perishables in her bag that desperately needed refrigeration, the fear that she would miss something important was preventing her from opening her door. Plus, if she moved now it would be highly suspicious since nobody had seen her come in 40 minutes ago.

Downstairs Jefferson was just ushering out his fourth consultant, a slight blond woman named Eleanor Ferris. His sister had given him a list of idly employed wealthy wives who consulted on a variety of matters in their free time, generally for huge sums of money that passed between them as each hired the other to give advice on some matter or another. Most offered a free first consultation to new customers of the right breeding, of which there never were any.

The list offered women with expertise on a variety of subjects, and Jefferson had decided to up his game with the ladies and have a very heterosexual, masculine home and self makeover day. He booked a food consultant, a fitness consultant, a design consultant, and a wardrobe consultant all for the same day, hoping that the four hours of advice would do him well. When the first lady exited her cab and saw what she was working with, with the drab lobby at 17 Greenwich appearing roughly equivalent to an abandoned lot in her eyes, she called the other ladies. They agreed to each pop in so as not to ruin their relationship with Jefferson’s sister, but stay no longer than a few minutes. This was all for free, after all. As a result, his consultants went about giving their advice at breakneck speed, rushing out as Jefferson smiled and pretended he’d be in touch.

As Eleanor Ferris made her escape, a noise from above caused her to look up. Liseli had finally given up on staying still and with her first step in 40 minutes, tripped on the long-broken floor tile at the top of the stairs. A spark of recognition ran through Eleanor’s eyes. “Liseli Knobson?”

Liseli put down her food bags and tiptoed downstairs to face Jefferson and the female voice. Seeing the woman that the voice was coming from did not clarify things any further.

“It’s me. Ellie. From Jelly Falls.”

“Jelly Falls?”

“The amusement park. In Ohio.”

Liseli had spent a good ten yeas attempting to forget the summer she worked at Jelly Falls as a doughnut dipper. The entire summer had been a montage of her discovering herself covered in powdered sugar at inopportune moments. “Sorry, I don’t remember.”

“Of course you remember. We both were going after Jay Schmoot. The football player. God, I miss those days.”

“Who are you now?” It was a fair question. Ellie Pinker, a name she now vaguely recalled, was wearing a mink coat and hobnobbing with the likes of Jefferson Morble, ne’er-do-well son of fortune.

“I’m Eleanor Ferris now,” she said with no indication that Liseli’s question was odd or out of line. She was a different bird now, after all. A rich bird.

“Why are you here?” In times like this Liseli’s social skills diminished considerably. She hoped Jefferson wasn’t paying too much attention.

“Oh I consult now. When I’m not managing things at home. It’s so busy over there. Those Park Avenue moms are always cooking up something to do.” She smiled good-naturedly. “What about you? I always thought you would be an artist or something. You were so creative.”

“Creative” in Ohio was code for spacey and weird. If there was one thing Liseli did remember about her childhood, it was that. “I’m a dancer at a contemporary company in SoHo.” “Creative” - check.

“Oh wow. An artist. Just like we thought. Do you perform? I’d love to see you.”

This was when Liseli remembered another thing about Ellie Pinker. Before working at Jelly Falls together and backstabbing their way through the summer over their love of Jay Schmoot, they had also gotten into a very raucous fist-fight at a birthday party in second grade. Liseli had broken Ellie’s tooth. She could see the patched tooth still, slightly discolored along the crack.

“I do perform. I’d love to see you there,” she said through a smile. Then, without offering up any further information she turned back to the stairs and marched away.

“What company?,” Ellie called after her.

Liseli kept walking, swopped up her groceries, and finally found the strength to open her front door and leave Jefferson there, staring at the empty stairs, wondering if he should make this up to her.

Safely inside her apartment, Liseli examined the scar on her forehead that had caused the broken tooth. It was still red, still pretty gruesome, but she definitely had won the fight.

The Winter Reprieve

2011-10-26T11:32:00.001-07:00

Time. That was all Emery had and he knew it was supposed to be a luxury but it didn’t seem all that lavish to have nothing to do for hours on end except stare at your navel and contemplate your failed career. And frankly, even his ability to contemplate his excess of time was falling apart. He contemplated in a less-focused manner every day, losing a small percentage of brain function for each second he spent unable to activate his mind.

Attempting to give his schedule some shape, he made it a goal to take a walk every day at noon. With this imposing block stuck into his daily schedule, he was forced to get out of bed by 11. Then, the time before noon could be spent getting everything ready for the walk. Most days that amounted to simply putting on shoes and getting dressed, which was challenging enough.

Initially, the length of the walk was determined by the afternoon schedule, which on most days was free and clear. On those days, if Emery returned from his noon walk unusually early, he started taking a second walk later in the day. As the weather began to cool down he found himself unable to tolerate the single long noon walk anymore and began to rely more heavily on the two walk schedule, which eventually had to be broken into a three walk system with scheduled warmth stops along the way. By December he was working his way towards a five walk program.

Soon the walking began taking up much more time than working. Emery’s day consisted of hours of walking/stopping in warmth spots, and eventually he started to worry about staying out too long on his first walk because it would push the time of his second walk back so far and he’d find himself taking his fifth walk at midnight. He began to turn down social engagements and free meals because they would interrupt his walking schedule, leaving him without food most nights. One day he realized he had been starving for a full week.

The first day off from walking was a small luxury. Just a little vacation to give him some time to rest. The next day he decided that, as the rest of the world was taking two-day weekends, he could certainly afford a second holiday. By day three he had forgotten to set an alarm and found himself waking up at 12:30, half an hour into his first walk’s scheduled time. He decided to stay in rather than push his schedule back. By day four he was back where he had started, sitting on the couch, losing brain function and worrying that his life was amounting to nothing. By day five his worries had become so abstract as to no longer be all that worrying. Instead they just sat in the pit of his stomach, causing baseless anxiety. His winter reprieve was over.

Urban Theory Meets Capitalism

2011-10-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

Morty loved his mountain of books. They were stacked in every crevice, every nook, on top of every table, radiator, even kitchen appliance in his snug little apartment. He liked to think he was literary and that the books indicated this fact to visitors, who would see the clutter on his radiator and know it was safe to mention Nabokov.

Still, as in most matters, Esther’s opinion was more important than Morty’s and what the books were starting to indicate to her, Morty’s only human visitor in some time, was that the apartment was a dusty mess. Dangerous, even. Six years ago, after five years of insisting he clean the place, she had taken matters into her own hands and hired Lucy’s cousin Manuela to come in and dust while Morty was out and his Workers Party meetings. They were now a year into that arrangement and Morty still had no idea that his apartment was being dusted behind his back. Manuela was desperate to break it off, had been since week two when a water bug had come flying out of a Shakespeare volume, and began claiming that the excessive number of books creating an excessive number of crannies, hoping to at least get a raise.

Esther was certainly not willing to pay even more to clean Morty’s apartment, so she hatched another plan and began the great book removal project. Instead of dusting, Esther asked Manuela to visit twice a week, during Morty’s meetings, and take 5 books at a time out of the apartment. Classic novels were to go first, since Morty had almost definitely read those. Then literary criticism books, followed up books about science and architecture. Within three months they had made headway in the kitchen, removed all flammable objects from the radiators, and emptied one of the kitchen cabinets that had been used as overflow book storage. Morty was none the wiser, and things continued in this vein until the Jane Jacobs incident.

Morty had once met urban theorist Jane Jacobs at an academic conference and liked to reference their friendship when waxing poetic about the changes taking place in the neighborhood.

“We were closr neighbors,” he was fond of saying, though it was untrue. In fact Jane had indicated to a friend of Esther’s, who actually knew her, that she had no idea who Morty was. Recently she had gone and died, which put the matter to rest once and for all, but Morty still liked to reference her books from time to time.

The first Jane Jacobs book was declared misplaced with little fanfare and only a minimal amount of cursing, but in its absence Morty had attempted to find the second and third and fourth to no avail. He put the building on high alert, stopping neighbors to warn them to a rash of thefts he was certain was being propagated in the area. He was continually dismayed to find that nobody else was missing anything, so he began letting himself into other apartments to look for his books. He did the apartments he had keys to first. Emery was clean. Mr. Turtle (nobody knew that he had this key) lived in a dump but hadn’t taken the book. Esther was clean, for once. During a security breach he snuck into Bean’s place and found it too vast and book-free to even bother searching.

When Liseli noticed something was off-kilter in her apartment she called the police, further fueling rumors that a thief was on the lose. Soon, neighbors were asking Morty for a full inventory of what he had lost, hanging on his every work as he dramatically reenacted the moment his books had been noticed missing.

Esther called the book removal project off around this time, vowing to continue when matters calmed down a bit. The removed books were not gone for good, they had simply been sold for $1 a pop to her niece’s friend the designer, who was planning an installation in the home of an oil maven who wanted to look literary.

“These come from the library of a deceased academic,” she had told them. “Many very rare and very important volumes.” So far she was grossing $74 on the whole operation and was sad to see this revenue stream disappear.

That Mr. Hertz had happened to pick up a Jane Jacob’s book around this time was a coincidence. That Aggie had noticed he was reading it was especially unfortunate because she told Bean who told Jefferson who told Turtle who told Emery who told Morty that Mr. Hertz was the perp they had been looking for. Morty did not feel like talking to Mr. Hertz, of course, so he pawned the job off on Esther, who was oddly happy to accept the mission.

Down in Mr. Hertz’s apartment, she laid out her case. “I could get you a dollar for each of these books. For a cut, of course.”

“Really? I’ve been thinking about downsizing."

“Oh yeah, you have some good ones here. Colorful. Russian authors. I bet we can get $2 per for the Russians.”

“We’ll I’ll think about it.”

When Esther reemerged, Morty was anxious for details. “Did you tell him off? Did you make him pay?”

“I most certainly did, Morty. He must have sold the ones he took but he’ll never do it again. Your books are safe.”

“Sold them, eh? For how much?”

“$1 per. Sometimes $2.”

“They’re worth more.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, wandering back towards her apartment, counting the potential profit of her new revenue stream. "But I promise you this, Morty. I knows not to do it again."

Meet the Mayor

2011-10-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

“Benjamin.”

“Merryman.”

“Rent time.”

“Yes, I heard that was going around.”

“Rent collection time. I need your pittance rent.”

“Since it’s such a pittance, it’s probably better if we just forget the whole thing.”

“I’ll rip that remaining pinky right off your hand if you don’t go get me a check right this moment.”

“It’s actually not all that hard to live without a pinky. I’ve been doing it for years.”

“I’ll punch your face it. Try living without a face.”

“It might make my nighttime activities a little easier.”

Merryman balked. Attempted to erase that image from his mind.

Benjamin jumped back in. “I bet Alby is looking to pay rent.”

“Alby paid me two weeks ago, when it was actually due.”

“I hear one the young punks next door just inherited $5 million."

“Then he’ll be able to afford his market rate rent. That’s lucky for me. Yours, like I said, is a pittance.”

“I’m going to level with you, Merryguy. I will probably not be paying rent this month. As you know, I live on social security and this month, I just happened to need a new winter coat, so the $92 –”

“$110”

“ – $110 I would normally pay to you, went to that expenditure. And I feel bad about it, I do. But there is nothing I can do. Winter is winter, you know?”

“You try this bullshit without the utility companies? I’d like to see you try that. See what happens.

“It’s lucky for me that my utilities are included.”

“Do you know how much I could charge for your place on the open market? Say if you disappeared?”

Gangster-like talk, which Merryman was often guilty of using, had the consequence of making Benjamin develop a Brooklyn accent without realizing it. It was surprisingly effective at dealing with people who wield empty threats. “Take it up with the Mayor.”

“I’ll take it up with this Mayor.” Merryman pointed to his fist.

“Man punches rent controlled tenant, Rents shithole apartment for $5,000 a month.”

“That’s the dream, my friend. Watch where you sleep.”

“I’ll see you next month, sir.”

And with that, Benjamin slammed the door. Fifth free month this year.

Spinning Class in a Brick Tunnel

2011-10-21T16:01:00.000-07:00

Mr. Hertz had finally given up the ghost on the bike situation. He was never going to get back into his exercise routine and Mr. Lamb was bound to notice eventually that the bike was back to sitting in the basement of number 19, rusting away. In an act of good faith (and apology for using an expletive to describe her mother), Mr. Hertz bequeathed the bike to Lucy, who seemed to like staying in shape and eating healthy and a host of other wholesome, full-grain, gym-like things.

Lucy thanked him profusely for the bike, citing her love of spinning class as a reason why she was a good candidate for such a gift. Mr. Hertz went home pleased with himself and his act of charity as Lucy walked her bike down the street, presumably to find a good starting point for a ride.

Later in the day, Morty noticed Lucy walking around the neighborhood with the bicycle, happily waiving to neighbors and even, in a bizarre act of good faith, Giuseppe. Morty was left to assume that Lucy was simply returning from an invigorating bike ride.

Three days later, Everybody had noticed Lucy walking with the bike. Emery offered to take a ride with her, hoping to show off his excellent messenger-style riding skills, and was rebuffed. Liseli offered to borrow the bike for a quick jaunt and was told that Lucy just was not ready to part with it yet. One of the young punks suggested Lucy go to his bike guy and turn it into a fixie and Lucy balked at the suggestion that she deface such a perfect vehicle.

It was when Esther finally ran into Lucy and the bike several blocks from 17 Greenwich that some truths were finally discovered. “Honey, you’ve lived in this neighborhood your whole life. When would you have learned to ride a bike?”

Lucy faltered. “I never did.”

“So what, what are you doing with this thing?”

“I…I haven’t ridden it yet."

Immediately, Esther turned, indicating that Lucy should follow, and together they walked to the front of 17, buzzing an apartment. “Morty,” she howled. “Morty get down here. Stop napping.”

After a few minutes Morty was, if not bright eyed and bushy tailed, then at least present. “What’s so important?” he came out screaming. “What could be so important right this moment?”

“We’re teaching Lucy to ride a bike.”

At this, Morty perked up. “You know I taught my captain to ride a bike during the war. We were stationed near Paris, and in Paris you have to ride a bike. You put a baguette in your basket and you ride around town and pick up women. Subliminal messaging.”

Esther cackled. “What a let down you must have been.”

Grabbing the back of the bicycle, Morty instructed Lucy to sit and pedal slowly while he stabilized the bike. She followed her orders, hesitantly lifting her feet to the pedals. Morty dropped her immediately, just as Bean was exiting.

“Oh, a bike lesson. I can dig that. I had this awesome fixie in ’04. Red set. Totally custom – "

Morty cut him off. “Fascinating. Hold the back of the bike.”

Bean followed had more success than Morty with holding Lucy up, and Esther and Morty each took a side for safety. The three of them slowly helped Lucy pedal down the street. At the corner they ran into Jefferson, who took over holding the back of the bike so that Bean could focus on his role as the bike’s coxswain, shouting when Lucy needed to lean left or right. By the time Benjamin the renter came hobbling up, they were in need of somebody to relieve Esther, and he took over Lucy’s right side, offered balance tips from his days as a dancer. Eventually Aggie and Lidia found the team and followed behind, shouting loud at Bean that he was supposed to be out buying milk. Because of the noise, Mr. Lamb wandered over from Krispin’s and attempted to break up the ruckus by shouting above the chorus of voices, which drew Giuseppe’s attention. He meandered over from the construction site, shouting, “You can’t do it! You’re too old to learn to ride a bike, Luc-luc.”

That, it turned out, was all it took. As soon as Giuseppe was within site, Lucy knew it was time to strike out on her own. She drew a long breath then began to cycle fast, breaking away from Jefferson’s hold and finding herself riding a bike, alone, down a city street. There was wind in her hair, taxis speeding by, and slowly the neighborhood turned into one long brick tunnel.

Spinning class was over.

High Socks

2011-10-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

A large lady was struggling to get in the door when Jefferson got home. She wore what he assumed was typical Midwest attire; Bermuda shorts that showed off a second gut, high socks, and a Disneyland tee shirt. A camera dangled from a cord around her neck and when Jefferson looked back, he noticed that she was being followed by an even larger fellow with similar pink coloring and even higher socks. The large man carried several bags, all ludicrously oversized, while the large woman waddled her way towards the elevator.

The elevator. An elevator that could get stuck even at the mere suggestion that a small amount of weight might be placed nearby. After the movie crew incident, in which a man had been stuck in the shaft for nearly two hours being suffocated by a large chest of drawers, Jefferson knew better than to wait around with these amateurs.

As he moved towards the stairs, the woman pulled out a phone. “Honey, we’re here. We’re putting the bags in now.”

A family member. A Midwestern family member. One that knew about the elevators difficult ways and had already resigned to being too large to ride in it with her own bags. He offhandedly assumed they were related to Mr. Turtle.

At his landing, he heard a significant amount of “oof”-ing coming from the floor above. The sounds were coming from a woman, and for a moment he was left to wonder if Lucy, tough, Puerto Rican Lucy, was participating in an adult exchange program of some sort.

“Do you need a hand?” he tested into the dark stairway above, expecting to hear her booming voice curse in reply.

“Thanks I’m fine,” sang Liseli’s voice down the stairway.

Lucy was not participating in an adult exchange program, and it was then that Jefferson remembered that Mr. Turtle was from somewhere civilized like San Francisco or Philadelphia and was unlikely to have had parents in high socks.

Still, he could not fully believe that this combination of large Midwesterners that had led to the creation of Liseli, a slight, potentially anorexic dancer who quietly fluttered around the building and never made any sense. He decided to ask for clarification.

“Family visiting?,” he ventured into the stairs.

“Yup,” she replied just as her mother flew up by him, waving slightly from the window in the elevator door.

“Mom!” Liseli began as the door opened. “Have you lost weight?”

Technophile

2011-10-19T10:49:00.000-07:00

Aggie loved her landline phone. Her dedication to this old-fashioned technology was unheard of in their social circle, but she had pressed Bean on the matter so extensively that he no longer mentioned the potential cost savings of scrapping it and living an untethered life.

Bean himself had a newfangled mobile telephone that could, in addition to making shoddy calls that almost always cut out early, order food and speak movie times out loud and print documents. He had used his wife’s credit card to purchase a brand new printer that could talk to his phone and a brand new stereo that, though it had several CD decks, streamed music directly off his phone in embarrassingly poor quality, though Bean constantly commented on the tinny speaker’s superiority over similar brands. He often would snap his fingers when lecturing Aggie about how connected the world was becoming. Lidia had taken to copying him, and Aggie was now constantly coming up against a wall of attitude from the both of them.

Earlier in the month, in a moment of crisis while riding the elevator with one of the young punks upstairs, Jefferson had considered getting a phone like the one he had seen Bean playing with in front of the building. It seemed to give him the power to ignore the wails of his child and the nagging of his wife by engrossing him thoroughly in video games with very basic premises. According to Bean, these newfangled mobile telephones were changing lives. Gone were the days of sitting at a computer and typing with all ten fingers, mousing over to print icons, searching for documents by hand. It was a connected world. This concept was illustrated with a snap.

Jefferson got it, though he opted to accept a hand-me-down phone model from his sister to start with. It had purple rhinestones surrounding the screen and was sold to him as a stepping-stone phone. A phone to teach him about the ways of the phoned before he got in over his head.

Jefferson got the hang of the whole phone internet thing rather quickly, or thought he did, but he had started unintentionally bombarding printers on local networks from his phone with quotes by Arthur Schlick’s, a childhood friend who was turning himself into a self-help guru according to the interwebs. This had, in turn, started a war with the owner of Fung Wa, who began leaving quotes by philosophers in local printer boxes all over the neighborhood. Then, Mr. Hertz had upped the ante and began leaving pornographic pictures in printers boxes far and wide.

Bean started to notice the quote printouts just a week or so after running into Jefferson outside the building. Quotes by famous authors, philosophers, celebrities, and some by a man named Arthur Schlick, whose claim to fame was usually listed as, “money manager and friend of the stars.” The phenomenon was costing Bean sheets and sheets of his prized high-quality extra-bright paper every day. It was not acceptable.

Aggie suggested that Bean might be printing the quotes unintentionally from his phone, and both immediately had focused a laser-like stare on at the harmless plastic contraption, wondering why it was possessed with a need to share wisdom with people as learned as them. Bean began toying with the phone even more constantly, looking at it all through dinner, while doing errands, and while in bed. The unexplained quotes began to create a gulf between him and Aggie, constantly cloying at them. Finally, Aggie had to address it.

“Are you looking up quotes on your phone? I don’t mean to point fingers, but if you are I think you should just tell me and get it over with.”

“No, Aggie.” He stressed her name to indicate that he was feeling exasperated with her. “I do not have a thing for quotes. I am not a quote man.” Lidia snapped her fingers.

“I wont judge you for it. I just think you should tell me if you are doing this.”

“Aggie! His face began to turn red. “I do not spend the day looking up quotes on my phone. Can we drop it?”

“Well then how are they getting there, Bean? How? Tell me?”

They ignored it again for a few days but the problem persisted and finally, without an explanation, Bean did the only thing that he could think of to save his marriage. He began leaving the quotes on other people’s doorsteps before Aggie could see them. He became a building wisdom fairy of sorts, oft discussed in the hallways by other residents who were eager to know where the papers bearing advice on wooing women and living richly were coming from.

It was when the porn began to come in that Bean got rid of the phone. When that didn’t work, he got rid of the printer. Soon, him and Aggie began talking again during dinner, took walks together, shared in household chores. Lidia stopped snapping at people. At their next dinner party, Bean made an impassioned defense of their landline and Aggie nearly offered to marry him for a second time.

When Bean next saw Jefferson outside of the building, he was hit with a wave of nostalgia, recognizing the hungry look of somebody who was thinking about their phone. He did not miss the feeling, and hoping to share some real-life wisdom, he did something unusual. He took Jefferson’s phone away. Just grabbed it and walked inside.

Futile Heroism

2011-10-18T12:58:00.000-07:00

Emery stared at the monitor, not understanding. It was an email stating that the editor of a well respected magazine wanted to schedule a meeting with him to discuss commissioning him on an ongoing basis. It was probably a joke.

Clutching the phone, Emery considered dialing the number on the page, but instead dialed Morty out of habit.

“Humph,” Morthy answered.

“Who is this?”

“Who the hell is this?”

“Morty?”

“State yourself now!”

“It’s Emery. I didn’t mean to dial you. I’m just nervous. An editor from a real live magazine contacted me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Learn to dial the phone. I was taking a nap.” He hung up.

Second try. Emery lowered his hand to the phone, punched numbers in. It rang, so he hung up immediately and stumbled backwards, dropping the phone from his lap as if it had shocked him. It rang back immediately.

“When I said I was napping, I meant I was asleep, as nappers often are. No more calls, got it?”

“Did I dial you again?”

“No,” he chimed in angrily. “You called the Pope and he called me and told me to make you stop calling him. He’s taking a nap.” Morty slammed down the reciever of his three pound rotary phone, the kind that really makes a clunk when you need it to.

Emery dropped the phone before he could hang it up, made a wide circle around his living room, and settled into a spot as far from the buzzing reciever has possible. He was essentially sitting on his stove, cowering in the direction of his refridgerator. ‘This is defeat,’ he thought. ‘I recognize this feeling.’

Without the athletic ability to sustain serious cowering for very long, however, it became clear that eventually he would have to move. He did not have the necessary abdomen muscles to keep himself in a fetal position while perched on his stove. Leaping down, he leaned agains the wall and waited for a striking thought to hit him. Tried to think through the situation with a clear head. A magazine was contacting him, for once. This was serious. Drastic times and drastic measures and all that.

He regained his composure, striking out to dial one more time. Aiming to succeed. He carefully read the number off the page. Saw that it had only a one numeral difference from Morty’s. Recognized his mistake and vowed not to make it again. Began to dial slowly and carefully. He got through six of the numbers, lost his place, but bravely started over.

Finally, a new, uniterrupted ring sounded through the reciever. A ring that woke no man from his nap. A pure, blissful ring that sounded like a professional future calling.
A ring that went unanswered. A ring without an answering machine.

After several minutes of basking in the heroic nature of the clear, crisp, journalistic ring, Emery realized his continued presence on the line was futile. The whole exercise was just that, an exercise in continued defeat. A lesson on the futility of bravery. Hanging up, he remembering that Morty said the word nap at least twice during their calls so he took the only direction that the unfair, confusing universe had provided, laid his head on the grimy counch cushion, and fell asleep. He’d call another time. Maybe.

Hogging The Elevator

2010-09-19T15:08:00.001-07:00

Emery's heart raced when she stepped in. It was his first trip into the elevator in some time. She pushed five. He pushed six. She smiled. He smiled. The elevator began it's ascent.

Things were going swimmingly for the first three seconds of the ride. This was Emery's first social interaction in four days and he was digging the vibe. (That's how he was talking these days. He had been "digging vibes" and inviting people to "shindigs" all over the east side.) Liseli looked calm, happy to see him, and no longer interested in avoiding him. It was a blissful three seconds.

On second four, the elevator pulleys ground to a halt and his illusion that she was thrilled with his company was destroyed by her blood curdling scream.

It was 4:35pm. They were stuck between the third and fourth floors. Somebody from an upper floor was going to have to call the elevator from above them to get it unstuck. (That bizarre truth was one of the many things residents of 17 Greenwich no longer questioned, just performed with familiarity.)

Emery took a quick mental tally. Everybody who could have helped was at work and not likely to return for another four hours. This was the age of the downturn, after all. With each worker performing several jobs at once, leaving before 8pm was no longer a possibility. But this was all just playing into his master plan. Four hours of uninterrupted time with Liseli in a 3'x3' box. For once he was glad their elevator was uncomfortably small. He smiled, turned to her, and opened his mouth as if he was going to make a joke. He couldn't think of one, so he just said, "Hi."

"Hi."

"Stupid elevator, right?"

"Yup."

"Have you been good?"

"Um, sure. Yeah. Good."

She looked at Emery with concentration. He smiled again, this time a celebratory smile to himself. She leaned in. His fingers and toes tingled. This was it.

"Can you push the alarm? You're blocking the button panel."

He had forgotten about the alarm. The emergency people were always thinking of ways to ruin moments like this. Perfect moments when you finally have the chance to say what you've been thinking for years to somebody without fear that they will run away or, more likely in this case, just casually walk away and go back to avoiding you.

"Oh, right. The alarm. I'll get on that."

"Thanks."

He pushed it. This alarm was a hypocrite. It was un-saving him. It was actually ruining his life instead of protecting it.

It took a few anxious minutes, but finally Aggie from downstairs heard the alarm and, complaining the whole way about how they were ruining Lidia's nap, stomped her way to the fourth floor and pushed the button.

"You know the rest of us need to use the elevator too!" she said, as if they had been intentionally hogging it.

"We'll try to be more considerate next time," Emery chuckled. Finally he'd thought of a joke.

"I'd appreciate it," Aggie screeched as she stomped back down the stairs.

Emery turned to Liseli, hoping that they could at least share a laugh at Aggie's expense that, over time, would grow into a marriage. Dancer feet are sneaky, though. She was already up the stairs and out of sight.

There was only one thing to be sure of in the aftermath of this colossal failure at seduction. Liseli now knew he was unemployed.

Another four days went by before Emery hit the elevator again on his way home from a "shindig." Liseli, however, had apparently learned her lesson. He saw her ghost flying down the stairs as he made the slow ascent up, this time without stopping.

The Smack

2009-08-16T15:04:00.000-07:00

Emery quit working for The Company three years ago because the conditions became intolerable. Lay-offs had created work, work hadn’t created new positions, and everybody was feeling trapped. When he went to pick up the last of his stuff, he was still waved down by the fourth cubicle just like old times, as if he might be willing to relieve them of some responsibilities while dropping by. His former practice was to immediately concede, willing to take the extra work if it avoided confrontation. But not this time. Not while he was not even being underpaid to do it.

A year before he left, things had started to go south. He hung on as long as he could. The Company had decided to double their workspace by assigning two people to each cubicle. Every staff member shared a phone, an Ethernet cord, a filing cabinet, and a supply allowance. Most people began stealing boxes of pens from businesses on other floors when they could. One man had begun a black market pen trafficking business in which he sold unused pens from creative, who never left their internet chat programs long enough to write things down, to the goons in accounting in exchange for favors. All of the trafficked pens were stolen, so the operating costs were low, but the rewards were worth the risk. The office entrepreneur, “Black Smack,” as he was labeled, soon had a potted palm tree by his computer and a brand new keyboard.

Three months into that fretful year, a pen deal had gone sour between Emery and the Smack. A week later, Emery was moved into the cubicle closest to the bathrooms, as far from the exit as he could possibly be without being in China. The inside of the bathroom was actually closer to the office exit than his desk, which he shared with a middle-aged pre-teen named Karen Woo. Black Smack was behind Emery’s unlucky cubicle assignment. That was almost certain.

As the months progressed, Emery began expending an intense amount of effort on resenting Karen for her collection of pink postcards, which was slowly encroaching on his bulletin board space. The now sixteen small cityscapes with hot pink bordering were migrating a few centimeters more to the right with each new addition. It began with a postcard from Glendale, California, sent by one of Karen’s many long-distance lovers, which had been posted an inch over the faint gray line that separated Karen and Emery’s board territory. Days later, a postcard from Walla Walla was tacked to the wall in blatant Emery-space. Karen had smiled at Emery while sticking the tack into the wall. He smiled back, but only to spite her. A week later, he quit.

Being self-employed had created a different set of challenges in Emery’s life. He lacked health insurance, so when he was sick he sought Esther’s opinion, which was that doctors were useless shysters. That often cleared the problem right up. When he was broke, which was usually, he had nobody to blame but himself and his lack of motivation. It was three years later and there was still no bestselling novel under his belt. When he was hungry, he simply lost weight. But one day, Emery and run into Karen Woo and Black Smack at Krispin’s. They were deep in discussion and the Smack looked more panicked than Emery had ever seen him.

After eavesdropping for several minutes, Emery gathered that another round of lay-offs had begun at The Company. This time they were in preparation for the closing of the office altogether. Smack complained that he had no alternative employment prospects, being unskilled at anything legal, and Karen agreed, saying she had only one, which was to work at her father’s store. It would take years for everybody to forget how she had driven her cubicle-mate to the extremes of quitting. They thanked their lucky stars for severance packages and got up to leave the coffee shop, drastically under tipping.

Emery remained hidden in his booth until they were a safe distance, then picked up the newspaper that the Smack had left behind. Inside, job postings were halfheartedly circled and a pen, standard Company issue, rested in the fold. Emery took it and pocketed it immediately. He deserved a severance package too, after all. Closing the paper, he set it back down on the table and left to spend the rest of the day lounging on his couch in sweatpants, thinking up a story for his future bestseller, writing furiously with his victory pen. Being self-employed wasn’t so bad. When you aren’t expecting anything to come in that validates your efforts, even a pen can be a gift.

Obsession is Obsession is Obsession

2009-02-27T10:36:00.000-08:00

Annie didn’t live at 17 Greenwich but she was sure there a lot these days. Having declared her need for a hobby, she had settled on seducing Jefferson as a project, mistakenly thinking he was rich. Liseli had spoken highly of him, aside from her lingering concerns that he was a Jew for Jesus. Annie didn’t sweat those kinds of details. She, after all, was a Jew against Jesus and that was very similar in that it was the opposite.

Before she was paid to do it, dancing sufficed as a hobby and general distraction from the seven year “break” she was on with Michael Rubins, a not very good-looking, not very charismatic man that she was madly in love with. But now, dancing was like filing papers in the finance department of a law firm. She did it day in and day out, pirouetted around, stretched endlessly and painfully, and it never relaxed her anymore, only served as a cause for stress. This is why the Jefferson plan was such a genius idea. Because seducing him didn’t require stretching. It was all about the mental game. From years of being put off by Michael, Annie knew all the tricks of the trade. She knocked.

Jefferson came to the door in a bathrobe, which Annie thought was a good omen. After all, they’d be seeing each other this way soon enough. Liseli didn’t know she was here, or her plan, but Annie figured she’d knock on her way up so that she’d have a story to tell when she got there.

“Do you have any sugar I can borrow?” Jefferson, of course, lived directly below Esther, who always had sugar. Then again, asking for sugar was kind of out there and crazy for the building. He knew he had a real wildcard here.

“You can’t borrow sugar. You can only take it. What are you going to do, give it back?”

This was a line that, coming out of Michael’s mouth, had seduced many a woman in Annie’s building. It wasn’t clear whether this response was flirtatious or simply annoyed, but Annie pressed on.

“Okay, fine, I’d like to take some sugar if you have some to spare.”

“I don’t cook.”

“It’s for coffee.”

“I buy coffee pre-sugared.”

“And it’s always just right?”

“Always.”

“I wish I had that kind of luck.”

“My coffee guy’s name is Krispin.”

“I’m Annie, and –“ but the door was slamming.

Annie considered knocking again, but thought that would be poor form this early in the game. Too desperate. But maybe it did mean she should call Michael…

Welcome to the Neighborhood

2009-02-16T14:15:00.000-08:00

Seven men had to be gathered in order to get Mr. Hertz’s car out of the rain. A broken window was one thing when you had some duct tape and a little plastic tarp or a plastic bag from a high class store. Unfortunately the experiment with saran wrap and scotch tape had proven that quality materials was a key element of success in keeping water out of a car’s interior. Without access quality materials, which Mr. Hertz believed to be the problem, the only thing left to do was move the car under the thickest tree on the block and put some newspaper over it.

The haul began right in front of number 17, and was aimed for number 29, a hulking glass tower that had it’s own, privately purchased, brand new mature tree. Adding to the confusion was the fact that Mr. Hertz’s car was dead and parked illegally in front of the world’s most obvious fire hydrant. Several months ago a truck had come through and painted the curb bright red with iridescent yellow stripes. In case the stripped red curb had left anybody with doubts about how to handle parking there, there was also a large sign that read “No Parking” and a symbol stamped in white onto the red portions of the curb that showed a car with a line through it. None of these things had caught Mr. Hertz’s eye until it was too late. Parking there was habit by now, after all. He had started back when the fire hydrant and it’s grey colored curb were easily covered by his car, and had continued to do so until months after the painting incident, and many, many tickets later (all unpaid). He had moved his car briefly when a fine was levied on the building itself, feeling that as board president he had to set a good example, but once the whole thing had blown over the car was right back where it belonged.

Morty had been dispatched to stand with an umbrella in the space under the tree and keep it empty. Esther had been dispatched to watch Morty and make sure he wasn’t failing at his job. Jefferson, Mr. Turtle, Bean, two young punk renters, and Emery had been dispatched to move the car. This was a group that didn’t cooperate with each other in the best of times, and this certainly was among the worst. Emery had refused to stand next to Bean, Turtle had refused to stand next to one of the young punks, who had green hair and a trust fund worth more than Turtle’s entire portfolio, and Mr. Hertz had refused to stand next to Jefferson because he was afraid it would make him look short. By the time they had organized themselves, the whole ordeal was already pointless because the car was drenched, as were they. This did not stop Mr. Turtle from taking control, however, and demanding that the car be moved at any cost. God forbid the rain caused a fire and firefighters rushed over only to find that the hydrant was blocked. This was not a concern of his in sunny weather, but rain reminded him of the possibility of danger of all kinds.

Once properly arranged, the group’s first push made it clear that the strong men were standing on the wrong side of the car. Adding another obstacle to this endeavor was that Mr. Hertz’s car was parallel-parked just inches from cars on either side. Emery and a young punk almost got crushed in the first round, but being younger and nimble, moved away from the bumper just in time to allow the car to roll into the car behind it instead of into their skinny legs. Mr. Hertz cursed, blaming them for any damage and saying he’d sue, but did so quietly enough that nobody actually heard.

Soon Jefferson and a stronger-than-expected Bean were standing on the side, attempting to push the car laterally and failing. Aggie shouted instructions out of a window above them that got lost in the sound of raindrops, but sounded something like, “you need to move your layaway first,” and didn’t seem to be helpful. Complete strangers gathered to watch, huddling under umbrellas and shouting unsolicited advice. Finally, Giuseppe, foreman of the construction site next door, made his way over and peeked into the front window.

“You’ll have to put it in neutral to do anything.”

Mr. Turtle nearly had a breakdown. “Has it been in park the whole time?”

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Hertz, pulling at the front door handle only to find that he had locked himself out.

Pushing him out of the way, Giuseppe stuck his hand through the broken window, carefully unlocked the door, squatted down next to the pedals. He hotwired the car in under two minutes. In response to Jefferson’s horrified expression, he simply said, “Where did you think you had moved to? Connecticut?” and wandered off idly.

Mr. Turtle jumped into the front seat before Mr. Hertz could get there and expertly guided the car out of the space in three maneuvers. The hauling crew ran beside him, looking for the spot Morty was supposedly saving, but found only a parked Jeep waiting under the private tree and no empty spots for miles.

Half an hour later, Morty walked back from the newspaper stand, umbrella in hand, and saw Mr. Hertz’s car parked back at the hydrant. “I guess they gave up,” he said to Esther as they opened 17’s front door and entered the warm lobby, smiling knowingly.

Esther's Cross

2009-01-19T12:14:00.001-08:00

Morty and Fung Wa had always had a tenuous relationship. Fung Wa had displaced his favorite old-time dry cleaners, and he now went there just to prove he had no need for the even newer upstarts. He deeply believed that laundry was a dirty business that didn’t require sanitary surroundings, organic chemicals (as if that was possible), or hired help. No, Fung Wa was the complete opposite of the antiseptic white boxes that had followed it into the neighborhood. And they were just as dedicated as Morty to the tradition of the dirty laundry business. As proof of this, instead of giving their customers a mint on the way out, as was customary with the expensive places, they always left out a plate of fried chicken.

Morty had been raised during the depression and could not in good conscience turn down free food. With each gooey piece of chicken that he ate, however, he felt a terrible sense that he was being played. What an overt attempt at gaining repeat business. People, especially old people, would drip barbecued chicken sauce all over themselves and immediately be forced to disrobe, change into the clothing they were picking up, and hand over what was freshly laundered clothing before they walked in. And despite knowing this, Morty knew he had to choice but to get his clothing clean, no choice but to go back, and no choice once back, but to eat chicken.

There were other consequences as well. As prescribed by his doctor, Dr. Untrustworthy (he had been using this nickname for so long that Morty couldn’t remember his real one and everybody at the office had just had to adapt to that), Morty was now on a diet. A low-fat, low-sugar, low-fun diet. And while he had never felt overwhelmed by the number of free things in the world before, suddenly, now that it was contraband, free food was everywhere. And only the worst kind of food was free. The greasiest, sweetest, most lard-filled food. In fact, it might have been the case that perfectly good food became bad for you once it was made free. In any case, not only was he angry at being taken advantage of by those lousy dry-cleaners, but he experienced a crushing sense of guilt every time he ran out of clean clothes.

It was three weeks into the diet that Esther noticed the smell.

“What is that?”

“What?”

“I smell BBQ sauce.”

“I don’t.”

“Well maybe it’s coming from that stain on your shirt. You aren’t supposed to eat that stuff anymore. Remember?” She whacked him in the head in case he didn’t. She believed this to be a form of shock therapy, and it usually worked.

“I know, Es, don’t hit me.”

“So why do you have a stain on your shirt?”

“It’s not from today.”

“Fung Wa couldn’t get it out?”

“I can’t go back there.” And Morty was forced to relay the whole story to Esther, who had had just about enough of this dry-cleaning war in the neighborhood and had half a mind to close them all up and make people learn to do their laundry again.

“I’ll go talk to them.” She stormed out, purse in hand.

When Esther arrived at Fung Wa, the chicken plate was empty. A rotund man, who turned out to be Mr. Hertz, was just polishing off the last piece. He waved, wobbled a bit under the weight of his clean clothing, and left, smearing chicken grease all over the outside of his clean garments in at attempt to stabilize them.

Fung, the owner of Fung Wa, turned around to greet Esther. “That man,” he began, “he always finishes all the chicken. Big appetite I guess.” Sometimes Fung spoke with a fake accent, other times he sounded like a native Brooklynite, which he was. With Esther he didn’t bother with pretensions. She seemed too old to hear him anyway.

“How often does he come in?”

“All the time. Always after work. He must only have two suits. He gets his clothing cleaned a lot,”

“And he always finishes the chicken?”

Fung sighed. “It is supposed to be for all the customers!”

“I’d prefer mints, myself.”

“We usually put those out once the chicken is finished. My cousin makes it. He owns a Chinese Texas BBQ joint uptown.”

Back at the ranch, Morty was now struggling to figure out which was worse, his BBQ sauce stain or the milk stain that was now starting to smell like it had finally gone bad, despite being out of one of those unrefrigerated cartons that was more preservative than anything else.

“I’ve solved your problem,” Esther shouted, triumphantly walking into the apartment. “You do your laundry after 6 and the problem will go away.”

“And why do you say that?”

“There is no chicken after six.”

“Finally goes bad, eh?”

“Phil Hertz eats it all on his way home.”

“That greedy son of a pig! And they let him? I should start boycotting them right now!”

“Then how would you get your clothing cleaned?”

“How are you with laundry?”

Adjustments

2009-01-16T15:45:00.000-08:00

Emery was for it. As in favor of it as one person could be. He’d go to the mat for it in a heartbeat. Even write a letter about it for the newspaper using his real name and everything. That was how sure he was that it was a good idea.

Turtle was against it. As against it as one person could be. Superficial Restructured Adjustment was what he called it. It was bad. It would hurt the Ajunctural Profits in the long run.

Emery didn’t have the heart to tell Turtle that Ajuctural wasn’t a word at the meeting when the issue got raised. He simply smiled, assuming that everybody else was in on the joke with him and would smile and nod until it was time to vote, then would deliver a resounding shock to Turtle by voting for it.

Jefferson wasn’t sure what “it” was. He smiled and nodded along with the rest of them until it was time to vote. Emery voted for it. Turtle voted against it. Jefferson abstained. Then Turtle kicked him really hard under the table and he changed his mind and decided to vote against it. It seemed like the responsible thing to do.

The measure passed, but only barely. Emery was elated. Morty seemed hesitant about being too in favor of it, so he just grumbled in an ambivalent way. He was trying to play it cool so that his measure wouldn’t get voted down later as an act of revenge. Turtle took off his shoe and pounded it against the coffee table in a fury.

“Well you can kiss your Ajunctural Profits goodbye!” He shouted, then waddled out of the room.

“What was that measure for, again?” Esther whispered to Morty.

“I don’t know. Ask Emery.”

“Emery?”

“Something about adjustment. The details are complicated.”

“Do you know them?”

“Lucy does.”

“Lucy?”

“I don’t know them. I was just in favor of it to piss of Turtle.”

“Does Liseli know?”

“She’s not here.”

“Do any of you jokesters know?” Morty finally shouted.

“Well don’t say it like that. You didn’t know them either,” Emery shot back. “The important thing is that it passed.”

“Yes, but the question is, what passed?”

“We’re lowering Adjunctural Profits!” Emery finally shouted back.

“Adjunctural is not a word, you tooth-for-a-brain!”

“Turtle said it first.” Emery leaned back, took a swig from his wine glass, and closed his eyes. It was good to be a winner. Maybe success suited him after all.

Making Faces

2008-12-09T11:02:00.000-08:00

It was the only time Morty had ever seen focus in Emery’s constantly shifting eyes. He was staring intently, and Morty realized he didn’t know how to make the expression the situation required. The muscles in his face had not contorted that way in too long. Emery was waiting for a response, and wasn’t going to turn the page until he solicited one.

“Looks good, Em.”

“Good? It looks better than good. It’s amazing.”

“Are you taking drugs? Did you steal money from somebody to buy yourself some LSD? Is that what the kids are using now?”

“I’m not on drugs! I’m inspired by beauty. Nothing is wrong with that.”

“Something is wrong with this,” he interjected, tapping Emery’s head. “We didn’t give birth to you so you could participate in this kind of nonsense. No former half step-child of mine is going to turn into a sissy!”

“It’s not art, it’s architecture. It’s manly.” He stared at the page again, overtaken, then looked back at Morty.

“Stop looking at me! I don’t know what to tell you. Looks good.”

“Do you see this spike? It was the first of it’s kind. Can you just imagine what it would be like to be the guy who thought of this spike?”

“No I cannot. I am the guy that lives in a tenement and I have never invented an earth-shattering spike.”

“I think it would be fantastic.”

“Maybe it would be.”

“It definitely would be.”

“I said it would be! What’s the matter with you? I can’t say it would be more than I just said it would be. I can only say what the English language provides me with!”

Emery shut the book with a frown. “Calm down, Morty. It was only a picture.”

“Stop looking at me, kid.”

Laissez-Faire

2008-09-09T10:01:00.000-07:00

Don Keyman was a successful businessman who had political aspirations but had instead used his performance skills to prove to any remaining doubters that he was a meglomaniac. He had made a movie about himself entitled "What More Could You Want?," which was a truly horrible piece of filmmaking that had embarassed Jefferson to no end since he had been billed as the director. Jefferson had had not actual involvement in the project, but Don had put him in the credits in order to add another name to the crew list and legitimacy to the project.

They had been introduced by Jefferson's sister, who thought that he might need a fellow Junior League-rejected friend in order to to help him adjust to his mediocrity. They had only met face-to-face once before, but Jefferson spent much of his time intending to set up another lunch date. Though filled to the brim with good intentions, Jefferson never actually made the effort, mostly because Don Keyman not only looked like a donkey but also seemed to act like one. If that was possible. Nobody could put their finger on exactly what made him donkey-like, but everybody implicity got it. A few years ago, Don had moved into 24 Greenwich, meaning that Jefferson not only had to avoid making the effort to set up lunch, but also had to start subconsiously avoiding Don on the street.

On August 12th, in the height of the summer heat, Don decided that he couldn't take it anymore, and called Jefferson to ask him to make an offer on his place. Though availability was limited in 24 Greenwich and competition for apartments fierce, Don had been considering moving out for some time. The neighborhood was going downhill, which he had realized as soon as that damn child actor had moved in and started throwing parties with bouncers at the front door and look-a-like porn stars. After taking a moment to consider the offer, Jefferson low-balled him so disasteriously that Don considered hanging up and then calling back just to hang up again, but stayed on the line anyway.

"Give me something better."

"I can't. I can't afford anything better."

"Don't say that. That's negative. Do better. Just commit to success and you'll be able to do better."

"I can't do better. Forget it Don. Sell it at a lower price."

"I could never do that to the place. It's got a balcony and a six burner stove. You can't find that just anywhere."

"Well then obviously I'm not your guy. I could be your guy if you'd sell at a lower price."

"What a horrible thing to say to somebody who called you out of the blue and offered you their appartment with no strings attached."

"Don, there are strings. You want me to buy it for more money than I have."

"Fine, take it for your price you low-balling son-of-a-bitch. I'm sick of negotiating."

"You're the worst buisinessman I've ever come across. And I'm the one that can't afford your apartment?"

"You taking the place?"

"Obviously."

"Come over tonight. I'll file all the paperwork. Oh, and Jeff?"

"Yeah?"

"What kind of idiot are you? I'm taking you for everything you've got."

Jefferson hung up the phone in astonishment and immediately called his mother to let her know that he was moving up in the world without having even made a full hours effort. She was impressed, but took the precautaion of calling Don to let him know the deal was off. She didn't really love Jefferson anymore, having disowned him, but she certainly loved making sure he didn't get things. Plus, good deeds were good karma, and she needed the good karma because she was hoping for a new party space with a balcony for her birthday the following week. Perhaps she would hear about one soon.

Hot Potato

2008-09-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

19 Greenwich, the mirror-image of 17, was daunting, but Liseli had no other choice. She buzzed a random somebody, pretending to be a deliveryman, and charged right up to the fourth floor. On a particularly bad morning she had been knocked down by a resident of 19 on their way out the door, and was hoping she could take advantage of the fact that this woman now obviously owed her a favor. She knocked.

There were little cut-outs of 12 baby-faced angels dressed in pastel sheets lining the mantelpiece. It was such a waste for the only apartment on the fourth floor with a fireplace to have angels with pink tutus and wands and what-not lining the mantle. This was the kind of place whose owner deserved what she was about to get. Quelly Geneva was the kind of an annoying person who always chewed politely and quietly with her mouth closed even though that required an ungodly amount of effort. Liseli had knocked on her door after a few days of pure anxiety in order to unload Esther's keys on her. Esther was out of town visiting an imaginary niece of some sort, though Liseli was pretty sure that “niece” was code for “Atlantic City.”

“So Quelly…that’s an interesting name. Where’s it from?” Liseli hung in Quelly’s doorway, trying to anticipate how it would feel to form the look of interest she would be forced to make in the next few seconds. She tried to think of a sincere expression.

“Singapore.” She chewed silently and stabbed her fork at the plate.

Doubtful. Seriously doubtful. “Oh. How interesting.”

“So, to what do I own the pleasure?” Quelly gestured for Liseli to join her at the cramped table. Contact.

“Well I was wondering if I could make a deal with you.”

“Sure, long as it’s legal.”

“Very legal, I promise. I was wondering if I…I…” She had no idea what she was making a deal about. This was so obviously a ruse that she was starting to hate Quelly for not noticing it and putting Liseli out of her misery. “Well, could I borrow some eggs and buy you some the next time I’m at the store in exchange?” Lame.

“I’m a vegan.”

Of course she was a vegan. Baby-faced angels and veganism. Liseli put her hands in her pocket and fingered the keys. Then she realized the Quelly was at that very moment eating tuna fish straight out of the can.

“You know tuna’s a fish.”

“No it’s not.”

“Oh.” Why was she making this so hard? “What is it?”

“Canned.”

“Right, of course.” Unbelievable.

“I’m not taking the keys. Get your hands out of your pockets.”

“What?”

“Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on.”

“What could you possibly mean by that?”

“I don’t want to have to check on Esther’s cats four times a day. I have a life you know, it’s not selfish. I take pottery three times a week and I have a part-time job. She already asked me and I already said no.”

She stood up and hovered over Quelly to appear domineering.

No reply.

“This isn’t over!” Liseli stormed out. She liked to be spontaneous during an argument so that it would appear that she was winning. Storming out was a sure-fire way to win an argument. On her way out, she dropped the keys in a bowl of fake fruit next ot Quelly's door. They landed on the wax apple with a thud.

The next day, the key's were in an envelope that had been slipped under the space between Liseli's door and the floor. She took the keys and slipped them under Quelly's door with a note saying they were from a ficticious person named Eggy Donothing.

Two days later Esther came by for the keys and almost had a heart attack when Liseli told her she thought Quelly from next door had them.

"That woman's a nut. Why would you give her my keys?"

"She said you asked her to take care of the cats before asking me."

"Well she so wants to be included. I had no intention of giving them to her."

"How supportive of you."

"I'm very supportive. You should only hope for a supportive person like me to walk into your life. Maybe a man that could kick your manners into shape. I have a nephew you know. Not such a nice kid but maybe you two would hit it off…"

Liseli shut the door. Her relationships with Esther was like a dead end job. Not healthy. Those keys were indestructable. Next time she'd have to do something much more contemptible, like give the keys to a yuppie. Just as it occurred to her, she heard the yuppie-child Lidia wail loudly from downstairs. Now there was an idea.

The Reasons We Exercise

2008-09-07T19:14:00.000-07:00

Eugene Lamb had a slight limp, which made it look vaguely like an oompaloompa was approaching as he made his way into Krispin’s coffee shop. Phil Hertz was waiting for him, sitting at the counter with a cup o’ joe in one hand and a classifieds paper in the other. “I’ve decided to buy a bicycle.” He pointed excitedly to an ad for a rusty bike. “Only $30. That’s a deal, let me tell you.”

“You did this once before.”

“I did not.”

“You deny it because you had to throw out the bicycle. But I remember.”

“I kept it for a good year or so.”

“In my basement. And then that Dumas lady started to complain because she couldn’t get to her plant fertilizer. It was a very tough time. I almost lost my position on the board.” Eugene slapped his palm against the counter authoritatively. “And after that, she moved out the next year! The nerve!”

Phil cleared his throat to get Krispin’s attention and Eugene raised his index finger, one of their daily coffee shop codes, developed over years of sitting at this very counter or a booth in the back and ordering the same thing every day. The raised index finger was the symbol for doughnut. When the confection made its way across the counter Eugene winked in thanks. Krispin shuddered. “Don’t wink at me, Gene. I’m not some midnight trick.” Krispin’s bad attitude was widely noted among older residents of the area, but doubled in force when Eugene Lamb was present. They had been enemies, at first mortal enemies and now enemies of a more passive variety, since ’76, when a young Eugene had egged Krispin’s shop in a fit of drunken Halloween fun.

Eugene took a bite of the doughnut, jelly squirting out and onto his plate. “You should be watching those carbs, Gene.” Phil was on a diet.

“I’ll watch my carbs when I’m the fat one.” He poked at Phil's expanding waistline.

“That’s why I’m buying a bicycle.”

“Buy a stationary bike. And keep it at your house and out of my basement.”

Phil grimaced at the thought. A stationary bike at the apartment would stare at him day and night, beckoning as he sat through his fourth television news program, eating lemon meringue pie and washing it down with diet orange soda. He would stop being a periodic failure and turn into a constant one. A bike in Eugene Lamb’s basement, on the other hand, could only make him feel guilty when he remembered it was there. That was often enough.

Krispin approached, having overheard. “Hey Phil, I’ll give you a bike, but only if you promise to store it in Gene’s basement.”

“Unbelievable! To think I pay to sit here!” At his odd, oompaloompa-like pace, Eugene began to gather the pages of the newspaper he had found at the counter. “I will wait for an apology before I pay for even one more item from this establishment!” Krispin stared at him until it became uncomfortable and Eugene was forced to turn away and walk out the door. Krispin let him, vowing to overcharge him the next day.

Once the door had slammed shut and Eugene was galloping down the street, Phil leaned in. “I think we have a deal.” They shook, leaving nothing for Phil to do but chase down Eugene and pretend like nothing had happened.

Bean Brothers

2008-07-09T22:13:00.000-07:00

Bean Buttersworth didn’t like the talk about it, but his brother was famous. Completely, truly, 100% legitimately famous. And not for doing something lowbrow like being in a play or painting. He was an inventor. And not of something silly like the post-it. (Take that Art Fry!) He had invented something that not just any brother of any man could have invented. One day, in a flash of brilliance, he had thought up the monogram cookie-cutter and had monogrammed every sliceable, squishy, or otherwise ruinable item in the house. And that was how he made his millions. Well, his soon-to-be millions. The deal was supposed to go through in three days. Until that time, the brother-man, Clyde for short, had very little to do but wallow in his fame and take a free meal where he could get one.

And now, the real drama. The horrendously successful brother-man-Clyde-for-short, was coming for dinner at modest little 17 Greenwich to fill one of his last empty nights. Before his fame got so out of control that he no longer had time for family or friends. Despite Aggie’s trust fund, Bean and Aggie’s three-apartment complex barely competed with Clyde’s bedroom, let alone his palatial four bedroom apartment in a part of Brooklyn that was now too trendy to be considered outside Manhattan and was instead considered “an appendage.” Clyde had coined that term at a recent business lunch and the name had stuck – amongst the two people who knew it and now Bean, who would never disobey his successful brother.

When Clyde showed up, the yuppie-child Lidia wiped away her usually persistent tears and finally brightened up, hopping excitedly behind him as he circled the apartment. He finished his first lap before he could finish saying, “It’s adorable.” That was code for small, which Bean realized as Aggie patted herself of the back, thinking Clyde just liked the décor. (It was she that had hired the decorator. Her close friends said that picking the perfect decorator was her calling.) Settling himself into Bean’s chair, Clyde’s eyelids quickly began to flutter. Aggie discussed the decorating process with him, which was finally recently wrapping up, and minutes later he was asleep, soothed by the drone of Aggie’s voice and the near-constant interruptions of Bean, who wanted to be right more than he wanted to be respectful. It took them near 30 minutes to notice that Clyde was no longer paying attention, and even then it was only brought to their attention when Lidia grew bored of trying to play with a sleeping man and began to cry again.

Not knowing what to do, Aggie and Bean poked Clyde for few minutes before deciding to just go ahead and eat. As soon as they were finished, a telltale chicken carcass still on the table, Clyde awoke and made his way to the table.

“Why didn’t you wait?”

Bean had had enough of the pressure. Could he do nothing right? “It’s a free country,” he ventured. Lidia cheered him on. That was her favorite (and only) comeback.

“Well I’m not sure what to do. I guess I’ll order out. Where’s your menu drawer?”

“I don’t know. When you stay awake for dinner, you don’t need to know where the menu drawer is.”

“I can’t take this kind of pressure, Bean. I’m under a lot of pressure at work. Consider yourself cut out of the will!”

“Consider yourself cut out of my house.” But he didn’t have the authority to back that up, so Clyde just sat there and stared at him and Bean took it like a man. A man who cowered in the corner and avoided eye contact. It was just like old times.

Roach Revolution

2008-07-08T16:08:00.000-07:00

Mr. Turtle slapped a sock at the floor until the roach got scared and ambled in its infuriatingly casual roach-like manner back under the metaphorical rock - in this case a bookshelf - from whence it came. And just as he had begun to relax, another roach appeared, this one twice the size of the last, and did a mocking rendition of the tuttle just to spite his brother’s persecutor. Emery would have been proud, and perhaps would have even joined the roach. When this thought occurred to Turtle, it made him even angrier. A vein in his right eye throbbed menacingly.

Though this insulting roach dance could not be allowed to continue - the roach had to be taught a lesson the share with his roach posterity - Turtle was concerned that his sock would become an unwearable mound of roach cooties if he continued to use it as a weapon. Instead, he decided to blow on the roach with all of his might until the roach could no longer bear the wind and went back under the bookcase. It worked, and smiling at a job well done, Mr. Turtle paused for a moment inches from the hidden roach colony just to show them who was boss. Who was taller. Who had more hair. He was just about to get back up get back to work, when the largest roach in the colony and possibly the world jumped out from under the bookcase and right onto his nose.

Turtle could not see his flat, squishy nose, but he could certainly see the tentacles of this roach, which hovered ominously close to his eyes and, more disgustingly, his mouth. They stared each other down until Mr. Turtle remembered who was bigger and in a moment of needless bravado, squished the roach between his forefinger and thumb.

Now not only his socks were unwearable, but a large portion of his skin was as well.

Running into the bathroom, Turtle turned the hot water tap on as high as it would go and flung his clothing into a heap at the bottom of the tub, hoping to kill two birds with one stone. It usually took about the length of a shower for any hot water to actually make its way to the sixth floor – which was altitude discrimination according to Turtle and not acceptable – but today he was happy to have no fear of burning himself as he carelessly tossed himself into the shower.

Except, by some miracle, the water was hot. Very hot.

“Who would fix this?” he shouted as loudly as he could, causing a rumble so loud that Emery, who was procrastinating next door, was certain that he had felt the building shake. “Is nothing sacred? Suddenly tenements have hot water? What’s next? Communism?”

From the street, Morty, by reflex that he would later deny, shouted, “Workers unite!”

The Disappearing Edge

2008-07-07T10:30:00.000-07:00

"All you need is enough to take the edge off and then you're all set."

Emery sipped from his glass uncomfortably.

"Feel better?"

He didn't. Morty saw this and smacked him in the head.

"You have to let it work, doofus."

"I am. I mean, I'm trying. I can't make promises. I don't know."

Morty smacked him again. "You have to pay attention." He refilled Emery's glass with a tiny bit more of the juice.

"What's in it?"

"Ginseng. And some other things. Secret recipe."

"I'd rather know what's in it before drinking."

"It wont work if you know." He pushed Emery's glass closer to his mouth and added, "I'd just down it if I were you. Makes it go more quickly."

"Is there alcohol in this?"

"No, you terrible excuse for a sack of clothing. There is ginseng and secret recipes, none of which will cause fatal reactions and all of which will, as I have now said three times, take the edge off. And you, my dear former half step-son, need the edge taken off badly."

"I think I'm pretty relaxed."

"I think you're pretty delusional. But I'm glad to hear that it's already working. The edge is already disappearing. I've never heard you describe yourself as relaxed before."

"I'm always relaxed."

"I'll believe it when I'm in the mood to. Drink up!"

Emery forced the glass to his lips, finally just downing all of the reddish liquid in one gulp.

"Oh, I've done it. Now what's in it? It's terrible."

"Chicken blood."

"What? Seriously?"

"So sue me."

Bubbly

2008-04-23T23:19:00.001-07:00

"We need bubbly." Liseli referred to champagne as "bubbly" when she was feeling particularly moved by the bohemian spirit. This morning she was certainly in a fizzy alcoholic mood, a continuation of the excitement of the evening before. A full night of celebration, which began at the after party of her last performance, had ended with a mysterious pile of other people's belongings being dumped in her bathtub at 4 am as her friend Annie stomped her way through an improvised rain dance in the living room. There was no reason to face reality just yet.

"I'll have water. It's before noon." Annie raised her head from her make-shift bed at the foot of Liseli's sleeper sofa. She grumbled, still fully dressed in jeans and a revealing polyester top. Her make-up, though partially smeared above her right eye, was still surprisingly flattering. It was stage make-up from 14 hours ago; built to last.

Liseli did a graceful about-face, floating towards her kitchen, that oft-ignored appendage to her living/dining/bedroom. Her nightgown, so lightweight that it hovered over her slight frame, caught on the handle of a low cabinet on her way into the kitchen, tearing. Breaking the gentile grace of her stride, she stumbled into her refrigerator grabbing the door for support. "I'll have water too." She made an effort to cover her now exposed thigh.

"Wise choice, my friend," Annie said, collapsing into giggles.

Liseli picked a bottle of champagne out of her freezer anyway, a bottle of Veuve that she had taken from the cash bar at the after party while under the influence of an unidentified substance. Annie had warned her that this mysterious powder or pill or liquid of whatever it was would turn her into a kleptomaniac, and it did. In addition to the bottle, she made off with a set of silverware and somehow, oddly enough, a tablecloth and somebody's right shoe. She had a sneaking suspicion that the shoe might be Emery's, though she wasn't sure how it ended up in her bathtub, a tarnished silver fork sticking into the laces.

The champagne was as close to frozen as was physically possible, almost a slush. Maybe even a ticking bomb of potential alcoholic explosion. Liseli carefully set it down on her glass coffee table, then doubled back to put a coaster under it that was slightly too small. The bottle slid off the coaster and slammed into the table, though miraculously neither broke. It wasn't worth the trouble. She stuck the champagne bottle between two couch cushions and Annie sat up, eyeing the bottle.

"I think I will have some."

It hadn't even been a question. Liseli had the glass ready before Annie made this pronouncement, and was already in the process of pouring. "Wise choice, my friend. Cheers."

Democracy In Action

2008-02-07T08:25:00.000-08:00

Alby the Renter was the head of the 17 Greenwich nominating committee, which knocked on the door of every resident and told them who to vote for in any coming election. The members of the committee, who were comprised of all the usual suspects, liked to think that this was democracy in action. They didn’t want to have to break any kneecaps later when they discovered that somebody like Turtle or Jefferson or even Bean, God forbid, had stepped out of line and voted for the wrong candidate. They were not going to tolerate living in a two-party building.

The first meeting of the nominating committee was held on a Monday night. Alby the Renter hosted it at his small apartment, as he did every year. Benjamin the Renter and ex-dancer thief had purchased a nice bagel spread from a deli on 1st avenue and Morty and given Emery a twenty to go buy some beer. Esther brought herself ginger ale to make it easier to pretend to drink beer. Usually Morty and Esther began the meeting by demanding that everybody vote for the Socialist Workers Party candidate (although Morty was never a member and still felt that his reputation as a communist was entirely unearned) and were slowly talked out of it by the more thoughtful Benjamin and the angrier Alby. Emery was in charge of drinks.

This year began much the same as others, with drinks changing hands, Benjamin gracefully swooping about, and Alby carefully displaying all the food. Alby opened the floor with an impression of his butcher and the question, “Who should we pick?” After that sentence was spoken, however, something of a miracle occurred. Everybody at the meeting opened their mouths and spoke the same word. “Turnsted.”

“He’s great,” Morty shouted.

“Nice guy too,” Esther continued.

“A family man who isn’t cheating on his wife like the rest of them,” Benjamin, a barely closeted gay, ventured.

“He saved that school that time.” Alby didn’t know if that was really true. He was just trying to bring them back to the issues.

“That turned out not to be true,” Morty said authoritatively. He didn’t know what Alby was referring to, but figured he should take the lead on the issue anyway.

“He has nice hair,” Emery said, rounding out the compliments.

“And that other guy…”

‘Nah. Horrible horrible man. Killed those chickens.”

“And had his kids help!”

“His old co-workers hate him.”

“I hate him.”

“I hate him like I hate roaches.”

“I blame him for roaches.”

The meeting went quiet.

“So do we have a candidate?”

“Yes.”

“What are we going to talk about next week?”

Talking to Sal

2007-12-14T11:54:00.001-08:00

Jefferson fingered the two quarters in his pocket nervously, finally slipping one into the slot of a telephone on first avenue. In this era of space-aged technology and phones with cameras and robots, he was surprised he had found the opportunity to do this again. Something about pay phones was comforting.

"Sal? Are you there?"

A gruff voice whispered through the earpiece, "Who the hell is this?"

"Jefferson, you jerk."

"Who the hell is Jefferson?"

"I am."

"And why does this involve me?"

"I want to put 12 on Zorro."

"Are you trying to place a bet?"

"Aren't you taking them?"

"I'll take your money."

"What about my bet?"

"Sure, I guess I could take it." Hastily, he added, "No personal checks."

This wasn't going the way he had expected. "I'll call you back."

"Just to clarify, are we talking about 12 G?"

Jefferson hung up the phone, feeling for the other quarter in his pocket and wondering whether he should use it to call back and just get it over with. Maybe getting a confused guy on the phone was part of the game with East Village bookies. To ward off the police or something. This was not how it worked on the Upper East side. There, the bookies were all German and took the bets in French just to be safe. This, to Jefferson's mind, was a system that oozed logic and normalcy. The newspaper never printed stories about the police busting German Francophone gambling rings. Well, if you didn't count the first time Jefferson had gotten caught gambling.

Somewhere in the back of every person's mind, they know it isn't a good idea to place a bet with your last $12,000. After indecisively standing by the phone for so long that he could legally have been given a ticket for loitering, Jefferson mentally threw in the towel and decided that a better strategy would be to walk back over the 17 Greenwich and see if he won the lottery along the way. If that wasn't in the cards, maybe a piano would fall on him and put him out of his misery. Whichever happened, the phone would then be free for use by the only other person in New York without a cell phone, who was waiting behind him. As Jefferson began to walk away, the guy hastily dialed a number.

"Hey, Sal, it's BlueStuff34. I want 12 G on Zorro."

Jefferson stopped in his tracks and turned around as the man hung up the phone.

"That was my bet! Were you talking to Sal? Can I have the number?"

"No," the guy snorted. "Who the hell are you?"

Jefferson stepped in front of him, doing his best to look intimidating. Somehow, it made him look smaller. "I'm Jefferson."

"And I'm Lincoln. I freed the slaves. Get outta my way."

"I just tried to place that bet! You stole my bet!"

The man pushed Jefferson aside, which took little to no effort, and marched down the street and out of sight.

Standing by himself, Jefferson began to feel for the quarter in his pocket again. Motivated to action, he began to dial. He leaned into the phone booth, ready to begin the exchange.

"Mother...wait, mother, don't hang up. I need to borrow some money."

Who's There?

2007-12-11T18:46:00.000-08:00

Emery snuck by Liseli’s door a few times on Monday to see if she was in. On Sunday he had heard a rumor that she was going out of town, and could only hope it was true. After the whole "spending the day with Lucy" debacle, he wasn’t sure what was what in this world. Last week, Liseli had caught Lucy on her way downstairs from the sixth floor and had wondered aloud why she would be up so high. Lucy had replied, “I was just visiting with Emery,” and they had parted ways. A couple of days later, Liseli recounted this story to Emery during one of her pointless anecdotes, and Emery had panicked. He needed some time to formulate a plan that would leave Liseli with the impression that she was his one and only love. It didn't matter that they weren’t dating and that she had no interest in him. That was the kind of detail it wasn't worth getting caught up in. The impression that Liseli had competition in Lucy for Emery's heart would be untruthful and might hurt their non-relationship.

For Emery, it was the addition of the word “with” by Lucy that had thrown the whole thing into the realm of backstabbing and intrigue. “Visiting Emery,” implied no foul play, but “visiting with Emery” made it sound like he was cheating on Liseli. Like they hadn’t accidentally ended up visiting just because they were both in the same room, but that he and Lucy had sought each other out for a visit that was all about how they were there together and had nothing to do with their location. Women were the kind of people who would pick up on that subtle difference. Initially, Emery considered going to Lucy first and setting the record straight, plain and simple. Despite her moment of weakness, during which she had chosen him to confide in, and his inability to overcome his own general weakness, they were just friends. Nothing more. Before he had a chance (read: got up the nerve) to have this conversation, however, the rumor mill had started churning and he was thrown for a loop.

The rumor was that Liseli had left on a Monday to go visit her brother in Paris. Esther started the rumor, either because it was true or because she was bored. Either way, the first person she called with the "information" was Morty, who called Emery to complain about how Esther thought he cared about gossip. As soon as he heard the news, Emery hung up and and "went out for the paper" to investigate. He arrived on the fifth floor.

In the process of eavesdropping on what he assumed was an empty apartment, the door swung open on Emery and an eighteen foot tall person who was probably but not definitely a woman appeared.

"Yeah?"

After staring for a moment and running through the thought processes one inevitably does when faced with an ambiguous maybe-woman-person, he finally managed to get out, "Um...um...hi. Is Liseli here?"

"No, she just went out to get some wine."

"Oh, I...uh...thought she was out of town."

"Then why did you knock?"

His eyes were wide with fear. The "woman" smacked the door impatiently. Emery managed to spit out, "Just checking." He peeled away slowly, hoping to avoid further attention by making as little noise as possible. His departure was unfortunately timed, as usual. As he turned away, Liseli appeared on the landing, wine bottle in hand.

"Hey Emery, what's up?" She didn't sound that excited to see him. Just a normal amount of excited.

"I just wanted to talk to you about what Lucy said."

"About the water problem? I already talked to Mr. Hertz." His nervouseness when talking to Liseli usually caused him to miss about half of what she said. Had he paid attention to anything that came out of her mouth earlier in the week, before she recounted her run-in with Lucy, he would have known that she was having a water problem, as was Lucy. This was a problem that they often talked about. In fact, it was the only thing they ever talked about.

"Good, good. Just checking." Emery was about to choke up completely and managed to hightail it out of there with enough steam to make it to Morty's apartment. Morty opening the door slowly, grumbing along the way.

"What did she do?"

"I thought Liseli was out of town. Did you know she was in town? Who makes up something like that? Who does that?"

Morty smiled excitedly. "Say it with me, son."

Together, they opened their mouths and grumbled, "Esther Cohen, you're a liar!"

Morty couldn't have been happier to share this realization with the closest thing he ever got to a son.

The Hallway

2007-12-10T10:59:00.000-08:00

With a loud thud, a heavy book by Emily Post dropped in front of Bean and Aggie's door. It was blue and had a generic cover with the title and author written in a dignified cursive type. It might have been out of date, Lucy wasn't sure, but she was sure that Aggie could use whatever help she could get. She had committed one of the cardinal sins and now was going to pay the price.

Just a week ago, in a flurry of confusion that the self-centered yuppie-child Lidia had caused, Aggie had declined to wave hello to Lucy in the lobby. Walked right by her like they didn't know each other or live in the same building, like Lidia wasn't playing in the same parks Lucy did as a child (albeit with fewer crack vials), like Lucy was nobody. That was about all Lucy could take of these people. It was time they learned some manners, outdated or not. One thing that you could not do in 17 Greenwich was ignore Lucy. There was only so much change these old-timer residents could take.

17 Greenwich was a part of Lucy. She had been born in the hospital down the street, just narrowly missing a 17 Greenwich hallway birth (although she did once assist at one as a child), and as soon as she had popped out and her mother was done with that nuisance, she was promptly ushered through the faded hallways of 17 Greenwich and into a room with chipped greying paint and scuffed, warm wooden floors. She loved those floors, which was a relationship she had continued to nurture as a toddler, crawling around on them, munching on lead paint, and covering her knees and hands in dust and dirt. Her brother, the bully, had encouraged the relationship by beating up on her and repeatedly forcing her to the floor throughout much of their childhood. Her first marriage was a failure and her second was to her apartment in 17 Greenwich. It was lasting well. The floors had been sanded and were looking quite spiffy these days.

The outside world for young Lucy, growing up in a crime and drug-riddled neighborhood, consisted of the hallway floors, old and faded hexagon-shaped checkered tiles that made Lucy feel like she lived in a really fancy building with a doorman and more than one staircase. The hallway was where life happened in the building. Lucy had been part of this life from its inception and was the living embodiment of how the old order at 17 Greenwich had worked. It had given birth to a responsible, intelligent woman who had overcome her terrible family life because she was part of this bigger collective. She had lived in the building almost as long as Mr. Hertz and even longer than Morty. By this point, she figured she could be a mascot of some sort. The only true 17 Greenwicher, born and bred. That title "17 Greenwicher" sounded a lot like the name of a sandwich, but Lucy challenged anybody to come up with something better.

Lucy had watched from the hallways as Esther escorted a different man every night through the narrow front door and into her cat-infested apartment. She had seen Morty ruin most of these relationships, and had found money left under his doormat for information she had contributed to the cause. Once, she had considered starting a business collecting and compiling this information for a cut. That was back in the days when they still sold penny candies and the pocket change Morty gave her was enough to buy her a cavity. In the old order, the order that Lucy felt comfortable with, she was still a child, Esther was still a benevolent tramp, Morty was only sort-of grumpy, Emery was still a strapping youth brimming with potential, and Liseli was still the mysterious new girl.

When Mr. Turtle had moved in, things began to move along without Lucy. It was just little stuff at first. The demand that they find a better super (it was NY, after all, who wasn't looking for one?) and that they repaint the hallways (which hadn't been done in about 30 years). Small, perhaps reasonable complaints. Stuff the residents could fix themselves. Then the rains came. Jefferson, then Bean and Aggie, and the nameless Young Punks. Suddenly Mr. Hertz, the gullible long-time board president, was their mouthpiece and they were talking about doormen and raising the maintenance. If you couldn't afford it, you had no right to live there. By their calculations, only about one-third of the building had any rights at all. Them.

It was sad to think about, but sometimes Lucy wondered allowed whether, in better circumstances, Aggie and her might have been friends. If Aggie wasn't so unapologetically evil, for example. If they lived in different buildings. Different neighborhoods. Different cities. Whatever could have been, Lucy felt that because they shared a generation, despite the fact that they made up the two extremes of good and evil, they were at least required to be cordial to each other. Aggie felt differently. Either that or she just didn't feel.

In either case, Lucy knew her rights. She had put enough into 17 Greenwich that she deserved a "hi" in the hallway. A wave at least. Acknowledgement.

Aggie heard a thud and apprehensively opened the door to her apartment, holding a wailing Lidia with one hand and a spoon in the other. She found a large blue book on her doorstep.

"Somebody probably dropped this. I'll put it in the lobby."

Bean, who was relaxing in a chair, watching this scene unfold, replied, "Good idea. Last thing we want is for people to think we're taking their books. They make the place look messy anyway."

Singles and Pairs

2007-10-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

There was something about Giuseppe that was different. An air of confidence that had catapulted him from simply “boss guy” to “sir.” He announced this air of confidence by rolling his trucks in early. They were bigger and louder and Giuseppe like to think badder than the previous week. They had an extra ton of metal between them, and Giuseppe’s men had an extra ton of pure confidence to split amongst themselves. When they rolled in at 6:57 am, the extra time was filled by three minutes of sheer ego.

Emery noticed Giuseppe’s commanding presence right away. It was different. It was noisy. He briefly mentioned it to Lucy, who all but had a nervous breakdown right in front of him. Giuseppe wasn’t just all of a sudden pulling sheer brute confidence out of his hat. He was getting a divorce from the woman who had won his shattered heart after Lucy had walked off the scene and into spinsterhood (as he called it). A woman who was, by many accounts, pure evil. Or really just pure boring. Boring on a stick. Lucy had spent most of her years of spinsterhood being disappointed that Giuseppe had replaced her with a robot-lady.

Lucy’s reaction to the new Giuseppe took Emery by such surprise that he cancelled all of his plans to procrastinate and asked Lucy to spend the day with him. She cancelled work because she didn’t want to walk past Giuseppe’s construction site on her way to the subway, and followed Emery to his couch, which she sat on for hours on end, staring at the window.

The issues wasn’t jealousy, as she described it, it was pure annoyance. She could not picture Giuseppe in any role other than that of a boring doting husband. She definitely couldn’t picture him as a “sir” and was irritated that he would start to fulfill his potential so late in life, after she had put up with the disaster that was his teenage years and 20s. Emery understood her disappointment. His ex-girlfriend, after all, had said the exact opposite thing about him. She had wished they had been together back in the old days, when Emery was still brimming with potential and hadn’t bottomed out yet.

“Potential is such a tricky thing,” he noted to Lucy.

“Giuseppe never had any. I always assumed I’d come out on top and he’d be left by woman after woman after woman. But he usually made me feel good about myself, since he was such a screw-up. I used to at least have that.”

“Some men have that ability. I think I do.”

“You do. But you’re a nice guy, not a dope.”

“Depends on who you’re talking to.”

“Talking to me.” She stared hard into his eyes. He was a nice guy. Really really nice. Somebody who would never roll his trucks in at 6:57, but would still dance the tuttle outside Mr. Turtle’s door every morning for a year just to make an irrelevant point. “I think we’re a great pair, Emery.”

Emery’s eyes widened in shock. It was a revelation. The only pair he ever thought to imagine was he and Liseli. A completely imaginary pair that would never come to fruition. “I guess we do.”

He sat down beside Lucy and she leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder as another round of jackhammering began.

“Get outta the way!” they heard Giuseppe should from below, presumably at a pedestrian or a car or truck. Casually, Emery closed the window.

“I don’t think I will.”

Smoking Hot

2007-10-04T19:35:00.000-07:00

Mr. Merryman was sucking on a cigarette right in front of a baby and right under Lucy’s window, but the baby was Lidia, Bean and Aggie’s future yuppie spawn, so that wasn’t really the issue. What was problematic was that every time Lucy opened her bureau, her clothing smelled of cigarettes, and people smoking under her window were to blame. Mr. Merryman was the worst offender since he didn’t even live in the building and usually had a lot of time to kill while waiting around to collect rent from his tenants. He was essentially paid to stand around anyway since he didn’t have a real job, a wife, or any other limiting circumstances such as the desire to take care of his properties and tenants. Smoking was his only regular activity, and he had plenty of time to dedicate to it.

Even though Lucy lived on the fifth floor, there was something about the wall (or it could have been a lack of wall) that made her apartment much more porous and susceptible to invasion by smoke. She was positive of it and had scientific proof that had been fabricated by a friend of hers but looked real on paper. Try as she might to explain this to Mr. Merryman, he was disinterested in her talking from the moment she opened her mouth and would usually yawn loudly enough to render her speech useless. Once, as his mouth had begun to form the long o of a yawn, Lucy stopped talking and poked him to make the point. He had poked her back and neither knew where to go from there so both had walked away with the mistaken impression that they had won the argument.

The smoking argument was epic. It couldn’t be solved because it was born out of 30 years of hatred and the smoke was merely the only concrete thing that Lucy could latch onto and complain about. On the one hand, Mr. Merryman had every right to believe that Lucy was picking on him because she did not like him. On the other, she had every right to pick on him since he had overcharged her mother for rent and never fixed a damn thing in the many years that he had been their landlord. In addition, she was pretty sure she had the grounds for a sexual harassment suit.

It was at the suggestion of Mr. Turtle of all people that Lucy had taken the drastic step that had cost her the argument. She had overheard the Turtleman on the phone in the hallway discussing the ways in which he planned dissect the person who was stealing his fork in the lunchroom and had seen a light bulb go off. The next time Mr. Merryman appeared under her window, she dropped a lit cigarette on his head, assuming this was roughly the equivalent of dissecting a fork thief. The situation did not go over well with the board, which had painted her as the villain for some reason, and she had been forced to retract her complaint.

Mr. Merryman continued to puff away outside Lucy’s window, causing Lidia to cough and Aggie to become concerned. Lucy watched from her window, holding her nose, as Aggie slowly became too concerned to accept Merryman’s imposition. She lectured him on the many ways in which smoking was a danger to one’s health, then pulled the cigarette out of his hands and crushed it with her toe.

Sometimes it took a yuppie to get things done. This was the new Lower East Side after all.