The Apartment

The Apartment


It was midnight. The cab disappeared in the dark, and they were alone. Two suitcases full of bicycle parts and two duffel bags were piled on the sidewalk. Eight hours ago the luggage represented adventure, now it was a forlorn pile of the sole possessions of west coast refugees, homeless in New York City. “I’ll stay with the luggage. You go get the keys,” Pinky offered.
The building on the corner has a doorman all night. Gretchen had left keys with him. Duff stood at that desk while the doorman went through three boxes from two different closets – no keys. Finally the last envelope appeared with Gretchen’s beautiful penmanship. Oh salvation! Inside were the precious keys and five step directions for the unlocking process for her apartment.
Duff returned and pulled the suitcases to the red door at #5, and performed the first instruction: Turn the red key, in the lock on the red door, one quarter turn counter-clockwise. The lock would not turn. Puzzled Duff poked at his Palm Pilot. The address was #5. It was a red door. Now what? Pinky pulled the handwritten note from her purse.
“It is number 6. You should throw that thing away,” she said with disgust.
“It’s across the street. Embarrassing. Neighbors must be laughing.”
“Calling the cops is more likely at this hour.”
They carried the pile of baggage across the street quickly – surreptitiously.
. Duff turned the red key in the lock of the red outside door, and they piled baggage in the antechamber. The lock clicked as they inched the last bag in enough for the front door to close behind them.
“It feels like we’re locked in—like we’re being inspected.” He was looking up at the camera on the ceiling. It was a little different than the key under the mat at their own house.
Instruction #2: the green key one quarter turn in the bottom lock. The bolt slid but kept springing back. He pushed against the door with his foot to hold the bolt from spring back again. Instruction #3: put the same green key in the upper lock for a quarter turn. What a satisfying sound the bolt made. The door opened. Their hearts gave a few elated thumps. They had cracked it. It took two hands, one foot, and two keys. They carried bags, one at a time, up three flights of narrow stairs. The pile filled the landing. Duff lay atop the baggage pile and reached down to the door, and performed step #4: small key full circle. “We’re in,” he said.
There was one big room with sink, counter, refrigerator, chair, and table on the right and a double bed on the left, entry behind and the balcony ahead. They found the note on the table, retrieved the hidden key, and completed step #5. They opened the iron gate leading to the outdoor balcony, where Duff deposited the suitcases containing the folding bicycles.
“It’s cute,” Pinky said.
They were sticky with sweat. Duff stripped to his jockey juniors. Pinky read three notes on the table: The Instructions. She unpacked and organized stepping over him.
“How can I unpack?” she asked, her voice rising. “What are you doing lying on the floor?”
“Trying to play Gretchen’s new CD, the one with Garrison Keillor narrating the flute music. It was on the table. Hand me my flashlight from the fanny pack, would you?”
“By lying on the floor?”
“Just hand me the flashlight.”
“You look like a bear rug. There is no place to stand with you sprawled like that.”
“The stereo is on the floor under the table, Smarty,” he said. “I have to lie down with the flashlight to see the controls. Everything has push button controls. Clever. She has to bend down and put the CD in the slot, then she operates the whole rig with her toes. There.” Beautiful flute music filled the room with Garrison narrating for the bird.
“That is beautiful,” Pinky said.
“She’s world class, isn’t she? We can take a tour and rubber neck at Julliard …see where she works. It’s after midnight,” Duff said, turning the volume down.
“I can’t hear it. Put it back up a little,” Pinky said, her voice rising. “She practices here all the time, louder than this.” Pinky was working with Gretchen’s new machine from heaven. It was the air conditioner blowing cold air at us. Pinky had found a place for everything, and then developed her system for moving the open suitcase from the chair to the bed depending on which was in use.
“Go sit outside on the balcony, and I’ll take a shower while the place cools down,” she said.
On the balcony, the New York City sounds faded into the cool calm of the courtyard behind the building. The arrival angst was dissolving. He sat with bare skin to the cool plastic of the chair. Fabulous. They were residents of the Big Apple – for a week.
Two minutes later Pinky arrived in her silk nighty with two glasses of ice water and a tiny little piece of cheese. It would be the ritual balcony snack in the night air when they recapped each day and planned the next.
Pinky had a radiant laughing smile. “Wait till you see the shower.”
“What about it?”
“After our snack, read the yellow instruction sheet that Gretchen left and take a shower.”
“Come on. Just tell me.”
“Well. She doesn’t have room in the closet for winter coats. She hangs them along the back of the bath tub on the shower rod, and she has the curtain wrapped around separating them, dry and away from the front of the tub where she stands to shower,” Pinky said with amazement.
“So, from the perspective of the winter coats, the south end of the tub is filled with a cleverly-fashioned plastic coat bag, which has an extension that functions as a shower curtain,” Duff tried to clarify
“Pretty much. I can’t wait to see you in the shower, Mr. Bear.”
Pinky inspected the four flower boxes on the balcony, feeling the soil in each.
“I need to water these. Let’s fill the pot on the stove with water. We’ll have to run it back and forth so I can water these plants.”
“We?” he asked.
She glared at him. “You can help a little, you know.”
“I read something in the note about a faucet outside,” he said.
“I didn’t see it.” She was on her way in to re-read the notes. In a few minutes she said, “I can’t find it.”
“I see a hose on the balcony next door,” he said.
She was looking at the three foot high iron railings of the two neighboring balconies, just inches apart, three floors up. She leaned over the railings to push a chair out of the way on the other side so she could have a landing spot when she climbed over. The light on the balcony went out while she was still reaching. She looked back and saw him standing at the door with his hand inside at the switch.
“Turn the light on. I can’t see anything,” she hissed, seeing him in the doorway standing by the light switch. The light came on again.
“When you go head first over the rail in your nighty you flash about two hundred of our next door neighbors. I got a pretty good shot of the whole whisker biscuit,” he replied.
“You don’t need to talk like that, and keep your voice down. I’ll do it without the light,” she snapped.
“Wait until morning. You might frighten our neighbors creeping around on their balcony.”
“Not one light. They’re not home.”
“It’s 1 AM. They’re asleep,” he said. “In New York, they shoot people for balcony hopping.”
“Don’t touch that light. I’m going over.” She went over, head first. She was not going to sit on that cold metal railing in her nighty.
She turned on the hose. Squirted a little over the end and waited to hear the water hit the concrete three stories below. She smiled. She was thinking of her grandson Max, holding a hose. There is power in a running hose. Then she passed it over the railing and instructed Duff as he sprinkled the plants. Now he had the hose. He was remembering Max too. “Don’t even think about it.” She said. “You won’t like the pay back.”
She climbed back. They left the lights off and sat in the plastic chairs.
“There’s a step ladder in the bathroom leaning against the wall next to the light switch,” Pinky said. “She must have changed a light bulb.”
“No. I know what it’s for.”
“What?” she asked.
“To reach her CD’s. They’re shelved in the bedroom in a single row about eight feet up, above the bathroom door. Look up when you go to brush your teeth.”
“She stores the ladder in the bathroom?”
“Yep. Groovy isn’t it? Very practical. It’s like living on a boat – a submarine maybe.”
“While you were trying to break in across the street, I was looking around at the houses on this block. You know some of the brownstones on this block are really nice. Some of them are pretty fancy. She’s in an upscale neighborhood here.”
“It’s right on Central Park, a block from the subway. Dynamite spot.”
“Well in only a few minutes here we are beginning to share her life. This is the big city: Lots of neighbors, housing at a premium, and reasons out there to have four locks to get where we are now.”
“Yeah and nobody has a garage, a car, a washing machine, or floor space: no tool bench, lumber pile, and no storage for kayaks and bicycles.”
“Everything is big in New York. The good stuff is the best, and the bad stuff is the worst … they say everything in the world eventually seems to show up on this 20 miles of island.
“Yeah, and be ready to walk. New Yorkers walk. There are stairs to the apartments, to the subways, and in the stores. There are two or three blocks to walk, round trip, at both ends every subway trip.”
The late night and travel fatigue were their excuses. They awoke at 10:15 AM. “
“We’re late. We’re late. We’re late--for a very important date,” Duff chanted. “I’ll put the bikes together while you go get some breakfast stuff.”
“Okay. I’m doing some detective work,” she said opening the refrigerator door. “Your mother’s refrigerator is much more interesting. Gretchen cleaned hers out. No clues. I don’t think she eats here much. I’ll be back shortly,” Pinky said.
Thirty minutes later Pinky returned with a plastic bag in one hand and a large bouquet of flowers in the other. “Good boy. You have your bike together, I see. How long until you finish mine?”
“Ten minutes. Don’t distract me. I don’t want to drop any parts through the slats on this balcony.”
“How do you like my bouquet?”
“Pretty. I thought you went to buy food.”
“Relax, skinflint. They were free. I got them from the dumpster next door. They are still fresh,” she said. “When should we call Ned? We’ve got to check out this boy friend.”
“Soon. So we can come up with a plan,” he said. They both looked stunned at the sound of the little 6mm screw bouncing on the wood slats.
“Damn it!” he exclaimed.
“I’m sorry. I guess that’s what you were talking about, huh,” she said smiling.
He gave a resigned, eyes closed nod. They got down on their hands and knees. The screw had not fallen all the way through but was perched on a two by four joist in the half-inch space between the deck slats.
“I don’t have the needle nose pliers,” he said looking at the roll of tools in the suitcase. “I can reach it, but I can’t get a hold of it.”
“I’ll get it,” she said. She was stuffing two sticks of Juicy Fruit gum into her mouth. “Here.” She handed him the sticky wad.
“It’ll never work,” he said.
“Your tools didn’t work,” she replied.
He took the gum and stuffed it into the crack on top of the screw. As he pushed it around with a screwdriver the gum stuck to the screw enough to move it to a more precarious position. It stuck even more tenaciously to the wood surfaces of the slats. He began cursing.
“Here. Let me do it,” she said. “You go in there and wash your hands. Walk down to the stoop and cool off. Look around a little.”
When he returned she held up the gum in triumph. The threaded end was peaking out of the wad. “Disaster averted,” she proclaimed. “Now you have to call Ned.”
“So tell me the nights we don’t have show tickets.”
“Thursday and Friday.”
“Shall we go out or eat here.”
“Out.”
They made the date for Friday. Ned agreed to pick a restaurant. They were going to have dinner with her beau. Pinky was excited, full of questions – girl questions. “What did he sound like?”
“Tall,” Duff answered.
“Come on, you know what I mean. I heard you talking to him. You know what I mean,” she said.
“I don’t. You should have made the call.”
“What does he do?” She would even take a boy question if he would answer it.
“He works for Conde Naste. He’s a graphic designer. You have to wait until Friday and ask your own questions.”
By eleven the bikes were together, ready for a Sunday ride in Central Park. Pinky’s friend Hope had one major recommendation: Zabar’s. Pinky called to reserve a table for dinner. The amazed but tolerant clerk informed her that it was a quintessential deli and gourmet cooking store with tools and supplies for the industrial strength kitchen mechanic. Ha! Tourists. That was enough of planning. They wheeled the bikes down the stairs on their back wheels with the front wheels vertical.
At the street, they mounted their bikes, headed across Central Park West, and pedaled a few blocks. There were a lot of people, and the mood was festive. Police were conspicuous, several on every corner, talking to each other.
Pinky stopped to adjust her seat. “How come there are so many of you guys in the park?” She asked the policeman who was staring at her funny looking bike.
“For the parade. The mayor is not going to have anything like last year happen again.”
“Parade?” she asked.
“Puerto Rican Day Parade,” he said. “Where are you from?”
“Mount Vernon – state of Washington, about 60 miles north of Seattle.”
“You’re going to see New York on that bike?”
She nodded.
“O-o-o-h,” he said. It was sort of a pleading gasp. “Be careful.”
“We will. Thanks,” she said. “Not bad duty today.”
“Yeah. It’s good, and it’s overtime too,” he replied
“How do you get to the Carousel?”
“I don’t know. I work in the Bronx.”
“You don’t work in the park?”
“Oh, no. This is beautiful. It’s like Beirut where I work.”
“I suspect we are very glad that you are here.”
The officer smiled broadly. “Bye,” he said.
They pedaled on, to the playing fields, the open-air playhouse, the castle, the sculptured shrubs at Tavern on the Green, and to the carousel. As they moved south through ball games, baroque concert, street musicians, and the rollerbladers weaving in and out of crowds, there were people in costumes, people dressed in Puerto Rican flags. There were people dressed to the nines. A few who nothing on but a few tattoos. One girl in particular skated with arms extended with an almost flying movement as if in the Ice Follies. There were other bicyclists and everything to quadriplegics in motorized wheel chairs. Gradually, approaching Fifth Avenue, they were packed into crowd tight enough to ride a Tokyo subway. All peoples of the earth seemed represented, an amazing ethnic cross section of New York.
“Where is the parade?” Pinky asked.
“Down there below us, on fifth avenue. You can barely see it through the trees,” Duff replied. “Technically we aren’t supposed to be on the sidewalks with the bikes since the roads are open.”
“And people aren’t supposed to be walking in the middle of the street,” Pinky added.
We passed another policeman, and Pinky asked, “Is it okay to ride bikes on the sidewalk?”
By his face, he was incredulous that she had asked. “This is New York,” he shrugged. The question was rendered irrelevant by practicality. Like the police, New Yorkers in general, seem to accept a panoply of ideas their fellow citizens employ in activities of daily living, somewhere between approval and surrender
A bike messenger unlocked his heavy duty stainless steel construction padlock and removed with the huge 3/8 in galvanized chain from a light pole. He locked the chain around his waist, crossed the street against the light, did a u-turn in a slow moving lane of oncoming traffic, weaved around a bus and two taxis to disappear on a side street. “I guess you were right about these horrible heavy locks you bought,” Pinky admitted.
“We got a little lesson on how to bike in traffic, too. The motorists tolerate bicycles like horses tolerate flies.”
New York City is actually very bike-friendly. There is a bike trail almost all the way around Manhattan Island – the entire west side and about a third of the eastside. Bikes are allowed on the subways. Bicyclists and rollerbladers weave in and out of almost parked cars on the North-South streets and ride along the sides the East-West avenues that have the faster traffic. They watch drivers at the curbs more concerned about getting door jacked than about side-swiped by cars to their left. Surprisingly, the drivers are tolerant, and they expect bikes and skates. When the street is too dangerous to ride, the sidewalk is okay. Don’t get to close and don’t let the bike touch anyone. Most pedestrians pay little attention. Some are not happy seeing a bike but they have a disciplined tolerance. Police attitude seems to be: If you are not hurting anybody, you have your privacy and freedom to do what you need to get through frenetic life in the big city, including riding your bike on the sidewalk.
Monday they rode down the west side along the Hudson around the eastern tip of Manhattan, and up the east side to the Brooklyn Bridge. Along the west side, they passed some wonderful piers maintained as parks. There was great stuff to see: the aircraft carrier Intrepid, a skateboard park, a riding paddock in a warehouse, and environmental zealots who have developed center for the protection of the fish species in the Hudson. There was good “people-watching” when the World Trade Center disgorged bursts of suits into the Waterfront Park for a lunch break. They continued riding down the waterfront to Battery Park where there were the lines of tourists waiting for boats to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. A man spray painted himself in silver and was making angular movements coordinated with recorded robotic machine noises. The entertainment was the uncertainty in figuring out that he was a man acting like a machine rather than visa versa. He responded to overtures from children in a very human and friendly way, and they usually put money in the tip jar.
Pinky and Duff crossed the Brooklyn Bridge for lunch. The history of the bridge is rendered on multiple large plaques. Pinky especially liked the story about the wife of the engineer-builder. The bridge was a marvel begun about ten years after the civil war, engineered by father and then by son. During the final year, her husband bedridden and dying, the faithful wife delivered instructions to the construction site on his behalf.
They headed north in Brooklyn . The kids playing pick up basketball game in a park were skinny and neat, fat and sloppy, some reading, some dribbling a basketball, and all had black pants, white shirt, and the curled locks of hair hanging in front of each ear . “I think they are Hasidic Jews,” Pinky said.
“It’s an unusual pickup basketball game,” Duff said.
“Why not? This is New York.”
The Manhattan Bridge had a bike path that was under construction, so they returned over the Williamsburg Bridge. They continued uptown on the east side passing the UN in the 4:30 p,m. traffic, they learned to ride the parking lanes just out of the fast traffic, weaving as necessary among nearly parked cars of slow traffic. They went on the sidewalk when the street was too scary. They worked their way uptown past the Trump Tower, where they found the only New Yorker who would not abide a cyclist on the sidewalk. Security guards pursue any bicyclist riding on Don’s concrete approaching Trump Tower. Then, from the southeast corner of Central Park, they had bucolic cruise home to the apartment for the three-flight-bike-hike. Hors d’ oeuvres and drinks and they were off to dinner and a show, “Rent.” They would see “The Producers”, “Proof”, and “Stones in his Pockets” by the end of the week.
On the advice of Ned, after the matinee of “The Producers”, Duff and Pinky stopped in the park and got in the stand-by line to see “Measure by Measure”, offered free in the evening by the “Shakespeare in the Park” program. At the head of the line a young couple made a cell phone call. Shortly, a bicycle arrived with a basket on the handlebars designed to carry a big insulated bag. These cognoscenti dined in line on hot pizza. The other patrons had only the aroma and their abundant saliva. We in the standby line got the unclaimed seats. Corporate sponsors almost never used their seats, the best seats in the house, up front. Pinky and Duff arrived standby but sat in the second row. The performance was top notch and free. After the play, they filed out to ride their bikes. The return to Central Park West was lined with police officers, a testimony of the dangers in the park at night.
The next day the bikes were the perfect transportation to the Museum of Natural History, the Genome Project, and Planetarium. Then they covered the short distance across Central Park to the Guggenheim, International Museum of Photography, and the Fricke Museum. The Fricke Collection was a tour of unexpected excellence. It was a no expense spared, one man art collection, housed in his personal residence. The house was designed around the collection by Mr. Fricke, knowing that he would donate it to the city at his death. The art pieces and arrangements were his personal choices, often diverged from prevailing opinions of critics. It had the highest reading on the fun meter for the eastside.
On the next day, Pinky said, “I want to go the Cloisters.”
“What’s there,” Duff asked.
She handed him a brochure. “It says, ‘The Garden in Medieval Life’. You must be thinking of another place,” he said.
“That’s the right museum. That’s what I want to see. You don’t have to go.”
“Let me see that guide book again,” he said. After a few minutes, he said, “I don’t see anything open today that I like a lot better, and at least it is a decent bike ride.”
They rode the bike trail north along the Hudson, north to the state park, to the Washington Bridge, and through Harlem. They reached the Cloisters Museum in Fort Tyron Park. It was a spectacular surprise because the building was so meticulously and caringly built, and because the garden was authentic, medieval, and utilitarian. The cloister was reconstructed from parts dating to the twelfth to fifteenth century collected mainly from one cloister in France. Missing elements were collected elsewhere in Europe or were re-crafted in the United States. It was bought and then donated to New York City by the Rockefellers. They had bought large tracts of land across the Hudson so that the views from the cloister would be wooded rather than urban. The garden tour demonstrated a practical purpose for every plant. All plants were grown in the medieval period, and were planted to provide the foods, spices, medicines, dyes, and magic potions to the inhabitants. Beauty was a lesser consideration. The tour was the personal project of our docent, who identified the plants, gave us the history of the cloister garden. She also demonstrated how they were processed to make medicines, dyes, and potions. Our docent explained the uses of spices and the various food plants present. She described searching for the somewhat rare plants. We made the docent’s last tour of the season. She would not work in the hot weather that was coming.
“Well?” Pinky asked as they were unlocking their bikes.
“All right. All right. I loved the Garden Tour,” Duff admitted.
They returned to the submarine apartment, their much appreciated home base with that cool balcony for the hors d’ oeuvres and the late night snack rituals.
“I want to buy that Picasso print of the musical instruments for the apartment,” Duff said.
“Don’t do it,” Pinky said. “If she liked hanging art on the wall, she would have something there now.”
“Maybe they won’t let her make holes in the walls. We could show her how to use steel sewing needles.”
“Those walls are bare for a reason.”
“So. We have Germanic discipline from the Rhineland; no laisez-faire or foo foo paintings from the French Riviera are allowed.”
“That’s not it. She just likes the white walls. It makes the apartment seem bigger. And I think she is a minimalist like my father,” said Pinky.
The week had flown. It was raining steadily. He stood out on the balcony in his brief lycra swim suit, taking the bikes apart and putting the dripping parts into their suitcases. She was cleaning inside trying to leave the apartment as they had found it. They were ready to call the cab.
“What a strange way to get to know a new friend,” she said.
“It is, isn’t it? We come as new crew on the submarine … live in her empty apartment, raid her refrigerator, have dinner with her boyfriend, and play her CDs.”
“We feel closer to her, and she wasn’t even here.”
“Next time she has to be with us.”
“Yes. She would have liked to see your hot shot jump onto the curb with your bike, with your subsequent front flip over the handlebars landing on your knees, right in front the lady coming out of the Fricke Museum. And the look on that lady’s face…she was calling 911 before you even hit, flabbergasted to see this gray haired man twice her age, arising from the sidewalk laughing, face to face within arm’s reach.”
“We are not going to tell Gretchen about that. We’re late. Call the cab.”
Once again, we were off at the crack of noon.