Moving to Manhattan
When my roommate told me she was moving back home to Syracuse to take some personal time after a crazy summer in the city, I knew that the next month would be a trying one. I first attempted to find a replacement roommate – but who wants to live with a stranger? Certainly not me. But I couldn’t afford to stay put without some financial backing, and besides, a 5-room apartment is really too big for one small person. I was idling in indecision last Thursday when I rounded my block after a long run in the park. I unlocked the door, expecting to douse myself in cold water and enjoy a good stretch. Instead, I found my landlord, snooping around my bedroom.
“I fixing hole in the wall; it is emergency,” she said, her voice almost shrill, dripping with guilt.
Oh, I was livid. Immediately, I called to mind all of her previous wrongdoings, the apartment’s many shortcomings. There was the front door – broken since I moved in, the sporadic lack of hot water, the toilet that didn’t flush for a week, the mold lurking behind the shower tiles. I poked my head into the room and watched her pass my rabbit’s cage.
“HI! HI HI HI!” she said, leaning down to the bunny.
It was time to move.
I spent all morning and afternoon today looking at apartments in Manhattan. I was never really a Brooklyn kind of girl – and with a new job waiting for me in the most stylish borough*, it seemed like a good fit.
I looked at scads of apartments, all studios and all decidedly tiny. My (least) favorite was a fifth-floor walk-up, devoid of decoration or design, save a pen-scrawled sheet of looseleaf, taped to the wall above the stove. It read: “Give into the fear, give into the dark, the desperation and depression. Make them feel it. Make them feel the fear.”
Ryan pointed out that Gael Greene lived close by, on the Upper West Side as well. I asked the broker where I could sign up. Unfortunately (these sorts of things always have an “unfortunately”) the paperwork didn’t pan out, and I found myself back on the train to Brooklyn. ”Drats,” I thought. ”Homeless.” I had had such high hopes for the apartment-scouring trip.
As I approached my decrepit old mansion in Brooklyn, I spotted my landlord outside, applying packing tape to the shards of glass on the front door. A few weeks earlier, my sister cut her hand on the perilous entryway. Well, a raging lunatic might still easily break in, but at least now his appendages would be safe from sharp edges.
I’d told my landlord yesterday of my plans to move out. It didn’t go well. Feeling discouraged about the day’s fruitless effort and exhausted from the blocks and blocks walked in heels (note: don’t wear heels when looking at apartments), I was in no mood to argue about the nuances of the lease.
I hovered at the corner for a few minutes, waiting for her to finish the job. She continued to tape, so I ducked into the bar two doors down. It was awfully busy for a Monday at 4; all around me, men played lottery, watched a game on television and drank Blue Moon out of glasses.
“Hi sweetheart,” the barkeep said.
“Hello,” I said with less of a smile than I usually share. ”Do you have St. Germain?”
He laughed. ”This isn’t Manhattan, on the East side!” he said, chuckling all the way through.
“Hm,” I acknowledged. ”Then I’ll just have a gin and tonic – with lemon, instead of lime.”
He handed me a squat glass with a wedge of citrus, and I thanked him. I sipped and slipped my shoes off, dangling them from my toes.
The man to my left noticed my ever-present FCI textbook and asked me about culinary school. I was a food writer, I told him – even though I was beginning to wonder if I wasn’t really just a writer writer. He asked where he could read my writing, and for the first time after being asked that question, I lied.
“I just write for myself,” I said.
“Ah, that’s good,” he said.
“Yeah, it can be.”
I finished my gin and asked the bartender how much I owed.
“Three-fifty.”
I almost had a heart attack – not even in Syracuse could one buy a drink for that price!
The man to my left waved me away as I fished through my wallet for the change. ”I’m buying it for you.” He said it in such a way that made me feel like a friend, not a potential conquest. That was nice.
I snuck into my apartment as quietly as I could, so as not to alert my landlord to my presence.
Later, I sat on my bed, packing boxes of the memories I’ve accumulated in my three months in Windsor Terrace. I’d miss the space, the beautiful 5 P.M. light that coated my walls like butter. I’d miss the friendly neighborhood, the cheap drinks and the quiet lull of trees at night.
But I had to leave. My time was up, and I wasn’t going to be left in the dust over a few pangs of nostalgia. Besides, I thought, wrapping the picture of myself at age 5, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, there is sure to be St. Germain.
Now I can't get the theme song from The Jeffersons out of my head.
Fish don't fry in the kitchen,
Beans don't burn on the grill.
It took a whole lotta tryin'
Just to get up that hill.
Hope you find your dee-lux apartment in the sky soon.