Super in the City Read online

  I didn’t sleep much that night because I couldn’t stop prowling around his apartment. I trolled through his medicine cabinet, his linen closet, his refrigerator, his utensil drawers. I flipped through his magazines and peeked behind his shower curtain to examine his soap scum. My brain was growling for more information about him, but he may as well have lived in a hotel suite for all I could glean.

  In the morning, Hayden did everything right. He made me eggs and toast and coffee and went back to staring into my eyes, only now he couldn’t stop saying my name.

  “Zephyr, Zephyr, Zephyr …”

  What?! I wanted to yell. What? Are we back on? Are we getting married? Will you start showing up for dates? Will you tell me whether you want kids? Whether you like ice cream? But I just popped the yolk of my over- easy and smiled enigmatically at him.

  I was exhausted from my night of snooping, which made it easier for me to leave: what I really wanted was to chain myself to his kitchen table until he outlined our commitment to each other. Instead, I purposely left my earrings next to the bed. That way he’d have to see me again.

  “Seriously?” Mercedes said later that night as the Sterling Girls sprawled around Lucy’s mother’s Riverside Drive living room, picking at cold pad thai and waiting for ER to begin. I could barely keep my eyes open, but there was no way I’d have stayed home. It was Abigail’s last week in town before she was to become the youngest tenure- track professor of dead and obscure languages at Stanford, and she was terrified of venturing more than a hundred miles west of the Hudson River.

  Even Lucy was having a hard time defending my reunion with Hayden.

  “I don’t think it’s healthy,” she began tentatively. Tiny, blond, frequently exclamation- pointy, Lucy worked at a free clinic in Bed- Stuy. To our continued amazement, her clients loved her. It seemed like she should be the one heading for the froufy West Coast, while dark, grounded, alarmingly practical Abigail—who once made a potential boyfriend read The Feminine Mystique before she would date him—would look perfectly at home in a basement office dissuading meth addicts from suicide.

  “Oh, it’s not,” I assured her.

  “It’s the job thing, right?” said Abigail, pulling thoughtfully at her Jew- fro curls. “You’re thinking that he’s got to be really committed to his job to have gotten where he is. And to be that committed, he must be passionate about it. Work passion is sexy, no question.”

  “Plus,” Tag conceded, “he’s not anyone we know. I mean, he’s not a friend of a friend. He’s in the real world, not in our precious little circle.”

  Mercedes glared at both of them.

  “I’m not saying I approve,” Tag added hastily. “Not at all. Zeph’s gonna get screwed, no question. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “Thanks,” I grumbled, closing my eyes just as the green letters “ER” began pulsing across the screen.

  Despite the vote of no confidence, the Sterling Girls, otherwise known as the SGs, were there for me when the inevitable happened. A week after my reunion with Hayden, I found a bulky little envelope taped to the front door with just my first name written on the flap. I knew what it was before I opened it, but I still allowed myself a moment’s thrill over the fact that he had actually handwritten my name. It was so intimate.

  My earrings were tucked inside a sheet of white of paper with a typed message:

  i’m sorry i can’t do this

  its me not you

  i have things to work out

  your great you know that right?

  and god your hot

  ill miss you, i’ll miss your blue eyes

  thank you

  We held an emergency convention at my apartment that night. I couldn’t stop pacing and shrieking, “Fucker!” at random intervals. Tag and Mercedes were mixing up a sickly sweet gin concoction that I’d be able to swallow in large quantities. Lucy was shaking her head over and over again.

  Abigail was already in Palo Alto, so we put her on speaker-phone. “It looks like archy and mehitabel.” she laughed. I had faxed her Hayden’s infuriating attempt at a breakup note.

  “Who?” Mercedes yelled from the kitchen.

  “The book with the poetry- writing cockroach who couldn’t hold down the shift key to type capital letters. Mr. Petrone’s class. Tenth grade,” Lucy confirmed.

  “That’s perfect,” Tag laughed, her face lighting up at the prospect of an invertebrate metaphor. “He is a cockroach, a literate cockroach.”

  “Not even!” I yelled. “He can’t spell or use apostrophes or complete sentences or ANYTHING! It’s the most juvenile, simple- minded piece of crap I’ve ever seen! And he’s supposed to be a journalist!”

  “Shh, shhh,” soothed Lucy.

  “And he thinks her eyes are blue,” Abigail cackled.

  “They are blue,” Lucy said toward the phone.

  “They’re green,” Abigail said firmly.

  “People!” I shrieked hoarsely.

  “What are you gonna do?” Mercedes carried in a pitcher of something purple and made me sit down in front of the coffee table.

  “Nothing,” Tag answered for me, alarmed by the question. “It’s over. He’s a shit. It’s over.” She glared at me, as if she could burn this conviction into me with her eyes.

  “Oh, it’s over,” I assured them, swigging a glass of the violet- hued drink. “Do you realize he orchestrated that little reunion just so he could dump me?!”

  “Yeah, we picked up on that,” Abigail said dryly.

  “Did he spend the last two months harping on the fact that Ihad dumped him?”

  “At least you know he was thinking about you,” Tag smirked.

  “I want to humiliate him. I want to crack that cool cover and blow his brains out!” I shrieked.

  “Humiliating and killing are two different things,” Lucy pointed out gently.

  We rejected a number of plans that were technically illegal, and finally settled on using Hayden’s own idiocy against him. I made about fifty copies of his moronic letter, intending to send them to everyone I knew. I mailed a few, but it was far from satisfying, since none of the recipients knew Hayden. Even the SGs had never met him.

  So I added my own note to the bottom of the letter: “This is the handiwork of Hayden Briggs, beat reporter. Perhaps you people should consider raising your standards. Or your copy editors’ salaries.” It had all the hallmarks of a madwoman’s missive, but I made twenty copies and mailed one to every editor and senior writer on the Post masthead. Tag, who had once dissuaded actual pirates from robbing her research vessel in the South Pacific, was brave enough to post a copy in the elevator of his building.

  We waited.

  What was I expecting him to do? Call and beg me to stop? Tell me he had behaved like an ass, and that, by the way, he was sorry for writing a sub- par breakup letter and not caring enough to run it through Grammar Wizard? Apologize for not being who I wanted him to be?

  I never heard from him. Which may have been why, two years later, I was still searching for him on every subway car in New York.

  THREE

  I GOT OUT AT FOURTEENTH STREET AND HEADED DOWN Seventh Avenue, observing for the millionth time how hideous the cab- clogged thoroughfare was compared to my own charmer of a block, just a few steps away. Seventh Avenue was an acne- like cluster of arriviste chain retailers—McDonald’s, Duane Reade, Radio Shack, Subway—punctuated by a struggling hair salon, a struggling smoothie shop, and the lovely, funky ship-like building of St. Vincent’s Hospital. But turning onto my cobblestoned stretch of Twelfth Street was like stepping into an English garden: old and quaint and aesthetically pleasing, and all the more lovable for its flaws and hidden histories. The two elegant Federal homes at the eastern end of the block might have looked identical to an outsider, but I knew they were occupied alternately by old- timers who’d dug in during the sixties, and the young bankers who’d recently bought in, and that a fragile peace was maintained only by a shared desire to preserve property
values.

  There were two tiny Italian restaurants, the too- noisy one that served perfect lamb ragú, and the too- oily one whose mama- and- son owners cheerfully greeted me every day in Italian. Across the street, interrupting the line of brownstones and postage- stamp front gardens, was a century- old boarding-house for young women. They still came from points west, were served two meals a day, and were not permitted to bring male visitors upstairs. In the summer, girls studying at the Joffrey found rooms there, and for two months the block was overrun by packs of giggling, Starbucks- sucking, splayed- foot ballerinas who moved in a blur of tights and torn denim shorts.

  My own building was unlike most of the others. Two four-story Greek Revivals that had been joined together by a renegade Vanderbilt now housed me, my parents, our super, and five tenants in four rented apartments. My parents had bought the place during the early seventies for a pittance, back when the Village was still considered a bohemian dump. My brother and I had learned to ride our bikes on the cracked sidewalk, and our double- wide interior staircase had been the cold-weather hangout for all our friends from P.S. 41 (the creaky banisters were sturdier than they appeared). When strangers dared to sit on our stoop, we pretended we were ghosts and wailed at them over the intercom until they left.

  Just before I reached Twelfth Street, I waved hello to the deaf woman perched on a milk crate outside the Duane Reade. She was knitting up a storm, making her handout cup look like an afterthought. I sometimes brought her coffee and squatted beside her to chat by way of pen and paper. After a full year of waving and writing, I still didn’t know her name, but because she wore her hair in a hundred tiny twists, I thought of her as Braids.

  Braids and I knew a surprising amount about each other. I knew she was waiting for her boyfriend, also deaf, to finish his stint in prison so they could try to move upstate and sell her knitting and start a better life. She knew I had lived in Greenwich Village my entire life, that I had gone to the same public school my dad had attended, and that I still lived in the same building I’d grown up in. I knew she’d quit taking her meds and preferred to be on the street than in the shelter. She knew I’d tried medical school for a year, then quit. I knew she had a daughter back in Haiti who had inherited her manic depression. She knew I’d packed a moving truck to go to law school, and then unpacked it before I ever turned the key in the ignition. I didn’t know where she went when she wasn’t in front of the drugstore and she didn’t know which building on Twelfth Street I lived in. In a life of phone call and e-mail obligations, of constant social upkeep—coffee, drinks, dinner, brunch, lunch—my no- expectation acquaintance with Braids was a unique pleasure.

  Tonight, though, instead of waving back, Braids frantically gestured down the street, her eyes wide. I hurried to the corner and saw two police cars, an ambulance, and three fire trucks, their red turret lights turning the block into a silent disco. My curiosity flash- froze to panic when I saw that the hub of activity was immediately outside number 287. Adrenaline flooded my veins and I took off as fast as my Nine Wests would allow. I imagined my father on a stretcher, my mother slung over the shoulder of a fireman, my apartment filled with smoke, water, and broken glass.

  Ever since September 11, I’d had a “go” bag ready, packed with a checkbook, credit card, notebook and pen, some photo albums, a bank statement, underwear, extra contact lenses, my passport, and some yellowing iodine pills my mother had wrapped up in a little baggie and pressed upon my brother Gideon and me. I wondered if I could get to the bag before my childhood home burned to the ground. I was crying by the time I reached the front door. But even as tears flowed, I couldn’t help thinking how convenient it was that I didn’t wear makeup, because that meant there was no eyeliner running down my face; at least if I ended up being comforted by a husky fireman, I’d still look decent. We’d have a great story to tell the kids so long as it didn’t involve the untimely death or disfigurement of their grandparents. I’d explain to them that it was their father’s heroics that had inspired me to start a nonprofit devoted to restoring the lives of fire victims in New York.

  Just as I grasped the curlicued iron railing, the door at the top of the stoop swung open. Out burst a tangle of cops escorting James, our super, who was in handcuffs. James had always spoken with the diction of an Eton alum and had been unfailingly courteous for the ten years he’d been caring for the seven apartments in our building. He took out trash, repaired leaky faucets, and cheerfully produced spare keys at all hours of the night. At that moment, however, he was cursing a blue streak in a distinctly outerborough accent.

  “You pickin’ ME up first?” he bellowed at the cop leading him out by the elbow. “You better fuckin’ pick up Richie Pantone, too. He said those was Christmas gifts from Fuel Masters’ fuckin’ CEO.” He spat out each letter as if at a bingo hall filled with deaf people. “That muthafucka’s gonna eat my balls for breakfast!” He added for emphasis, “Mutha FUCKA!”

  Aside from the perp walk being staged on my steps, I think I was most shocked by the instant dissolution of James’s pristine grammar before my very ears. As the procession pushed past, James, apparently no stranger to personality disorders, called out in familiar clipped tones, “Zephyr, love, this is a case of mistaken identity. No worries, love, no worries. Your uncle James will be back in a jif. You look smashing in that dress, smashing! Ow, watch yuh fuckin’…” James’s head caught the top of the car door as an officer pushed him into the backseat.

  Mrs. Hannaham, who lived in the garden apartment and dressed, day and night, head to toe, in Tom Wolfe whites, came out and stood next to me. Tonight, she was wearing a white rabbit- fur bolero jacket over white, sequin- studded vinyl pants. Just as the dejected EMTs and firemen were climbing back into their rigs—no heart attacks, no conflagrations—Cliff, the brooding musician who might make me forget I ever met Ferdinand (though not Hayden), came loping up the street, pushing his bass. The three of us silently watched the procession roll away. In a moment of self- consciousness, I forgot about James and wondered if anybody passing by thought we were a family. That Cliff and I were siblings and Mrs. Hannaham was our mother? Or we were married and she was my mother- in- law? Or maybe they were having a May-December relationship and I was her angry daughter, protecting her worldly assets from this gold digger—

  “Zephy! Is he gone? I couldn’t stand to watch while they took him away!” My mother came flying down the steps, still dressed in sweaty workout clothes at 10 P.M.

  My father, six- foot- six and constitutionally incapable of absorbing bad news, came lumbering after her, shouting to me, “Zephyr, light of my life!” I have never had the heart to tell him that this is a line credited to Humbert Humbert, literature’s most famous pedophile. My father is as innocent as a grown man can be while still actually being a prosecutor.

  He enveloped me in a bear hug. “What kind of fun were you up to tonight? It’s beautiful out! We had the windows open—do you smell those magnolias? You’ve got to come listen to the most gorgeous Mozart quartets, on WQXR—ba, ba, ba, baaaaa, bababa, BA, BA—!”

  “OLLIE!” my mother shouted.

  “What?”

  “Other things!” She pointed down the block at the receding police cars.

  My father paused, his conductor’s arm high in the air, and squinted at the scene before us. “It’s a bit of a shock,” he conceded.

  “What the hell happened?” I asked, beginning to understand that these events were not a product of my imagination.

  “Kickbacks,” my mom said, shaking her head dramatically. “I feel so betrayed. He was like family.”

  I thought that was stretching it a bit. But I wondered whether my parents would have to declare bankruptcy. Would we lose the building? I gripped the iron railing, and imagined myself turning to Braids for guidance.

  My dad put his hand on the back of my neck, sensing my panic.

  “Zeph, he only stole from the oil company. He didn’t do anything to us.”

  “But h
is voice,” I said incredulously, “did you hear his voice?”

  My dad frowned. “That was disturbing.”

  “Disturbing?” I shrieked. “He was leading a double life! Can’t we prosecute him for lying to us? For not being who he says he is?” The sound of the caring Brit—who’d once worked until 4 A.M. helping me mop up after my dishwasher staged a sit- in—flinging epithets at cops in Brooklynese was still ringing sharply in my ears.

  “No one is who he says he is,” Cliff piped up. We all turned to look at him, leaning on his bass at the bottom of the steps. He shrugged.

  “Well,” my dad announced in a voice that indicated he’d like to move on to pleasanter topics, “I never entirely trusted James anyway. Too short.” He beamed at gangly Cliff, who managed to return a polite wince of a smile.

  “Mrs. Zuckerman—” Mrs. Hannaham began, adjusting the strand of white paper clips she frequently wove through her wiry, black hair.

  “Mrs. Hannaham, please, please call me Bella. I’ve told you umpteen times.” My mother doesn’t actually want Mrs. Hannaham to call her Bella. She wants to be someone who wants Mrs. Hannaham to call her Bella.

  “Mrs. Zuckerman, you know my sink frequently clogs and without my darling Compton around to help me—” We all waited a moment while she sniffed theatrically. Compton had been dead for twenty- five years and had been sleeping with his secretary for the twenty- five before that. “I really must live in a building with a super. I must! Now, listen to me.”