The Next (3 page)

Underneath them lived Schlongzilla, a half black, half Brazilian, six-foot three, thirty-something guy perpetually dressing to go out to somewhere where one sees and is seen. His indispensable contribution to society could be reduced to one Saturday last summer when he spent no less than an hour and forty-five minutes in front of the mirror deliberating on whether or not to wear the distressed low-cut jeans, the boat-collared ribbed sweater, the paper-thin sky-blue hoodie that draped off his gigantic pecs and rear deltoid boulders with just the right waterfall fluidity, the kicky printed Airforce-sort-of T, or the metallic silver gangsta hightops. Then he grabbed his laundry bag and box of Tide detergent and headed out the door. An hour and forty-five minutes! For Christ’s sake, when you’ve got shoulders and hips that are broad and narrow enough to essentially give you the proportions of a six-foot three crucifix,
everything
hangs well on you.

To be fair, Schlongzilla served more purpose in this world than being one of New York’s walking coat hangers. He was, in fact, hung to his knee and didn’t care two shits which neighbors took notice. Every time Schongzilla received a phone call and then hurriedly bolted out the door with his collapsible massage table in tow, some Upper East Side wife could count on some major migraine alleviation. If you’re hung like Saddlebred, you practically have a social obligation to prance like one too. That’s what Johanna used to say anyway.

In the brownstone directly in front of my window on the second story lived The Princess. She would have her hair up tight in a bun when she’d come home from work, and then let her hair down in a long, flowing perfect, Pre-Raphaelite mane. Her studio apartment was small and shimmering in white, with a four-poster bed draped in sheer white gauze, perfectly placed oversized white pillows, and glimmers of silver combs and frames and knickknacks on her silver mirrored dressing table. I’d watched her tentatively date and tentatively retreat into the safety of her shiny white palace at least four times since she moved in. She’d spend a sad two months reading alone on her white quilt, retrench, and paint that smile back on again for the next round.

Above her, occupying the top two floors of the brownstone, lived the Perfects. He was a dashing forty-something man with salt and pepper hair and the kind of body that requires working out three hours a day every day. She was a stunningly gorgeous brunette. He had a propensity for suits that would be quite at home in any Cond
é
Nast magazine, and she wore chic dresses Johanna used to recognize from Parisian ready-to-wear runway shows. In fact, Johanna was quite familiar with Mrs. Perfect, recognizing her as the president of some competing luxury women’s design company. Mrs. Perfect had a name fashion folks all knew, but I never registered it. They had two rambunctious children under ten years old and an enormous apartment straight out of Architectural Digest. The household was rarely still during the week: chasing the son to sit him down for homework hour, calming the daughter’s anxious crying fits, excited family pizza nights. The family would disappear on Friday nights, so I assumed they’d weekend in Connecticut or Bucks County or the Hamptons. Frequently Mr. Perfect would stay home and work on the weekend alone. I supposed he was a CEO or a partner of a firm.

When Johanna would come over, she would often first check to see if the Perfects were home, then close our curtains if they were. I assumed the reason was that she didn’t want word spreading in her world that she was dating a slob like me. Correction: she did not want to curtail her future employment possibilities through any embarrassing associations.

In the building on the right at the top lived the Beached Whale, an enormous multi-chinned lady in her forties who ate popcorn every night on her side, propped on her forearm, watching television, until she’d fall asleep and spill the popcorn on the floor. I don’t think I ever saw her go out in the evening. Not once.

Below her lived the Broadway Dancer, milk-white and smooth with zero body fat and abdominal definition I could distinctly see across the courtyard. He had the energy of a whippet on Red Bull. When he was in a show, I only saw him in the afternoons. When he wasn’t, he would spend his evenings unselfconsciously in his underwear on the dark brown love seat sofa with his laptop in his lap and the television on for hours on end.

On the courtyard level below the Broadway Dancer lived the Little Old Man. Not an inch on him was unwrinkled or undarkened with liver spots. His body had shrunken as his bones retracted from muscular neglect, and his diminutive appearance was exaggerated by a growing hunched posture caused by his looking down at the ground all the time. I’d no idea how he survived alone, but I’d never seen a nurse enter or leave his apartment. I’d never seen a family member or friend enter or leave his apartment. Except…

Once a month, an old, bald, black man with a white mustache appeared at his doorway and handed the old man a bag full of cans of beef and chicken soup and a Ziploc bag of weed in exchange for a couple bills taken from a Chock Full O’Nuts coffee can kept below the sink next to a plunger. The handover was followed by a dispassionate handshake, and the black man would disappear until the next month.

Apart from a slow shuffling traverse to the bathroom to pee twice a day or to the stove in the tiny kitchenette to heat a can of soup over a gas flame, the Little Old man spent almost his entire existence under a maroon sheet in his bed, propped up by sagging yellowed pillows that held his head aloft to watch television and light up a joint. He never closed his curtains; he’d lived too many years to give a flying fuck if any neighbor saw his sagging skin wearily clinging to his frail frame, let alone his skeletal ass or stretched grey testicles.

Back when the curtains were opened, I’d placed a pillow on the right corner of the center window to block my view of the Little Old Man’s apartment. He did not disgust me, but I was irritated each and every time I spied him alone in that bed biding time on soup and pot until the end. I was irritated that he forced me to feel a stew of sadness, apprehension, anger, and compassion each and every time he came into view. He was one of New York’s survivors to be sure, but what a fucking solitary and protracted trophy he placed on his mantle.

It had been half a year at least since I’d last opened the thick heavy curtains and observed The Couch Potatoes, Schlongzilla, the Beached Whale, the Little Old Man, the Princess, or the Perfects. And, I suppose, it had been a year since any of them had observed me. Part of me was curious who had said “Screw this!” to this year’s rent jacks and who had endured. If you can’t pay the rent in New York, you’ll get booted and replaced in a matter of minutes by ambitious landlords. I was curious who remained, but drawing back the red curtain was more psychological adjustment than I could muster at that moment. But as the disposal continued to growl in a low continual anger, fate mustered it for me.

Knock knock.

Who managed to get past the street door buzzer to reach my door? Unless…oh, damn it! Please don’t let it be Mrs. Abraham and her yapping toy dog Minnie from down the hall.

Mrs. Abraham was in her seventies and had lived with her sister when I first moved in. The sister had Parkinson’s disease, and her condition was progressing rapidly. But Mrs. Abraham was warm and generous, knocking on my door with yappity yap yap to bring me foil-covered leftovers. At first, I enjoyed the idea of a friendly gabby neighbor who enjoyed sharing food and looking after each other. However, one evening I returned her casserole dish and encountered Mrs. Abraham dealing with her sister fidgeting epileptically on the mint-green carpet, drooling in a steady stream down her jaw. She inadvertently struck her sister in the mouth with her fist, but Mrs. Abraham ignored the split lip as she grabbed hold of her sister’s right hand and held it tightly. I did not know what to do except crouch next to Mrs. Abraham and take the sister’s other hand. The convulsions began to mellow, mellow, mellow, then stopped. Mrs. Abraham and I waited, holding the sister’s hands, listening in silence to the breathing until it resumed a steady calm rhythm.

Minnie stared in wide eyes at the procedure from atop the bright yellow couch, not yapping in my presence for the first time ever.

In the silence, the sister on the floor gently opened her eyes. She looked at me. Studied me. And then, with a wide smile that would be called radiant were it not for her teeth’s darkened, rotting state, pointed and said, “Look, Dinah! It’s Jack!”

Mrs. Abraham’s first name wasn’t Dinah, and mine wasn’t Jack.

Mrs. Abraham petted her sister’s forehead tenderly. She responded softly, “No, Lucy. It’s Phillip.”

I smiled, not knowing who the hell Phillip was either.

Then my heart froze as I realized the connection.

Jack, Phillip, Dinah, and Lucy were characters in the rust-brown hardback Enid Blyton Adventure books my brother and I had read as children after my mother’s parents handed them down to her. Since these books were immensely popular among our grandparent’s generation, it made absolute sense that Mrs. Abraham and her sister would have read them too. I had not thought about them for decades. I drew a sharp breath. My jaw stiffened. My teeth clenched.

“My name is…” I began to correct.

“…is Phillip.” Mrs. Abraham interrupted.

Okay, I could play along for the sake of the addled mind lying weak and confused on the floor, drooling, her grey hair unkempt and tangled, her arthritic pointed finger, and her thin cracked lips smiling, assuaged gently by Mrs. Abraham with her soft patient green eyes and bleeding lip. But my blood was icy. Mrs. Abraham could have no knowledge as to why. At the time I could barely acknowledge why myself. The two smiled at each other, now comforted. I let go of her hand and departed, closing the door as silently as I could.

The sister died a month later.

Through no fault of her own, Mrs. Abraham had now become an elderly woman living alone in New York City, which meant she was a woman with tremendous needs. But I was still a writer with only one—to be left alone. I needed no maternal substitute, nor had I ever asked for one, and I needed the desserts from her kitchen even less. Most annoying was the mounting feeling of guilt and obligation to return her neighborliness, and those feelings evolved into a Pavlovian resentment every time I heard the knock on the door hailing another steaming foil-covered casserole dish of buttery guilt. Plus I began to imagine drop kicking Minnie to oblivion every time I heard it yappity yap yap when anyone padded his way past her door. But we were neighbors. I accepted her apple strudel once and would be plagued with accepting it until the day one of us kicked it first.

Knock knock.

Whoever knocked would not go away, apparently.

What was interesting was that there was no yappity yap yap leading up to these knocks, which only meant this visitor did not approach from the stairs. If it was not Mrs. Abraham, he or she would have had to come from Mrs. Abraham’s apartment, for there were only two apartments on our floor. I opened the door without asking whom.

Please, let it be a drug-thug with a shiny silver gun pointed at my forehead.

“You live here?”

“I opened the door.”

“Marzoli.”

He presented a card.

Sergeant Marzoli.

My hands did not move to accept the card.

I scanned this stranger. My every instinct wanted to throw attitude. Why? Why not? He was in perfect fucking shape. Better than fucking perfect, and he wore his stiff clothing in a manner that announced his better than fucking perfection to everyone. Did he really need to wear his sleeves rolled up to accentuate how fucking pumped his biceps were? Did he really need to tuck his navy blue, button-down shirt tightly beneath his belt to show off how fucking flat his abdomen was? Did he really need to grow out his hair to show how fucking full and thick it was in addition to how fucking chiseled and masculine his face was? He looked all of fucking thirty years old, confident, and fulfilled in whatever his fucking role was in life, and radiating the fucking positive energy that inevitably emits from embracing this fucking knowledge. His shirt was wrinkleless and starched to stiff fucking perfection. Did I really need this fucking specimen knocking on my door? Fuck him.

“An Italian policeman. Isn’t that incredible?”

“Sicilian and Puerto Rican.”

“Sociopathic and alcoholic. Delicious. Come on in.”

I opened the door. He remained in place.

His eyes processed the graciousness of the greeting. The fucker had intelligence behind those fucking beautiful lashes, or at the very least, rapid brain synapses that could be confused for intelligence.

He matched my dryness. “A gay man with a ’tude. Isn’t
that
incredible.”

Beat. Wait.
Who’s gay?
He didn’t wait.

“Your place smells like a shithole.”

“Mommy’s not here to clean up.” I looked directly at his stiff starched shirt. “She’s not here to iron my shirts either, sergeant.”

He lifted one of his fucking perfect thick masculine eyebrows, which in most contexts would have been all he needed to do to accomplish establishing higher status.

“Your neighbor’s missing. Been missing for six weeks.”

“Who?”

He flipped open his black notebook, “Nathan Ridges.”

I could tell that the act of looking at his notebook was unnecessary and calculated, for I caught him looking at my face as he was saying the name. Got it. The first expression on my face as he said the name Nathan Ridges would reveal a lot of information: recognition, fear, tension, indignation, or, on the other hand, ignorance and innocence. Okay. This little fucker was quick and insightful, and, damn it, I’d have to be honest.