Chapter 1

It was the sort of street where movies are filmed. Stately trees grew out of sidewalks, framing a car-lined avenue between. Noble brick and stone structures proudly harrumphed at each other through the branches, as they agreed amongst themselves that they had much more character for having once lived in a poor neighborhood. Overall, it looked like a distinguished but not opulent section of New York named for some part of non-Slavic Europe. So I guess it is not at all surprising that the street was located in the Manhattan neighborhood of Little Dresden.

One of those stone facades belonged to the building I had recently begun referring to as ‘home’. If a person were to enter the building through the front door, that person would enter a warmly lit central atrium extending up to a ceiling five stories above. Apartments sprang off a staircase that wound a looping helix to the top floor. This stairwell itself was a marvel of architectural design, not so much for any sort of overwhelming grandeur or ornate design, but rather for the fact it made the flocked, two-tone blue wallpaper look like it belonged there.

The apartments themselves were phenomenal. Upon entering, one could cross a hardwood floor, passing a smallish kitchen on the right before seeing a small alcove on the left from which the bathroom and bedroom sprang off. A large living/dining/et cetera room was to be found straight ahead with the obligatory, blocked off fireplace. The wall farthest from the door was mostly used by a bay window peering through the tree branches down onto the street below. A fire escape was attached, obviously as an afterthought, such that one could slip out the window and climb down to the street below. The rude, wrought iron fire escape, though intrusive and more than a little bit ugly, would serve as a nice place to sit outside when one wanted to enjoy some solitude, supposing the person whose window opened on the other side of it did not have the same idea.

The old, neatly tucked, mahogany molded, well-kept manner of the place provided the air of an apartment that budding young writers think of when they imagine an apartment in Manhattan. Unfortunately, I was nothing of the sort; I was a mere systems administrator, meaning I was the guy you could not get a hold of when the system crashed again.

The romance of my appearance in New York was further undermined by the fact my contracting company sent me there and thus I would be earning a pretty healthy paycheck. I could not claim to be fighting my way up to the top, I was already sitting somewhere comfortably near that location. It is a real shame; it seems all these stories usually start with a more intriguing introduction, such as a struggling, misunderstood artist or a tough kid growing up in Brooklyn. Am I dreaming of dancing on Broadway or do I fight the mean streets of Harlem? No, I live in the inner suburbs, working a job that is, at worst, draining, but failed to crush either the body or the spirit. It is none too heartening to know I would be a much more interesting character had I been an alcoholic longshoreman in the 1930’s.

#

Moving in, by the way, sucked.

There is nothing good about moving, period. But moving in on an unseasonably warm spring Friday, such as it had been, with nobody to help get all my crap up the stairs, such as there had not been, the hours quickly became long and miserable. I frequently rued the decision to pocket most of my moving stipend by doing the job myself. It would have been worth the money to have the professionals do it, just so I could avoid having to fight boxes and furniture up the stairs while worrying about nicking that god-awful wall covering. Fortunately, I own nothing that most people outside of college refer to as real furniture, otherwise there would have been no wallpaper left on the first two flights of stairs. However, after expending the effort required to get all that junk upstairs, I was dead tired.

The air that had been residing in my new place had been sticky and stagnant and, since its lease had expired, I decided to evict it myself. Consequently, I’d left the door and windows to my apartment open to allow for some of the cooler night air to circulate through. This also allowed the other residents to look inside and see the sweaty, smelly new guy, but I figured they had seen such people as me before and one more of my type wasn’t going to spoil their dinner.

It was in the situation of unpacking boxes, in order to find something with which to make the bed, that I heard a charmingly inquisitive, almost little girlish, woman’s voice ask, "And how are things going in here?"

"Fine," was enough of a reply for the time being. I was too exhausted to bother with either cordiality or complete sentences and too busy attempting to find my sheets to turn around and properly greet a visitor.

"Still moving your things in?"

"No," I answered, as I moved a foot in between two boxes, "unpacking."

"Need any help?"

This gesture of unsolicited kindness immediately put me on my guard; after all, this was New York City. I finally stood up and turned around to see a woman in my doorway wearing an immaculate black evening dress under an equally immaculate black trench coat.

The only response I could manage was "Aren’t you a little overdressed?"

"Nonsense," she replied as she began walking in the doorway.

Not but two steps in the door, she was stopped by a male voice from upstairs hollering, "Hey Lori! You down there?" and she began walking backward toward railing outside my door.

This gave me a chance to take a good, long look at my visitor. She was one of those uniquely American constructions that failed to be describable in terms of races or places. Her tanned skin was complemented by long, dark, curly hair falling well below her shoulders. She had striking features, not the least of which was the way her generally dark hue accentuated by contrast her incandescently blue-green eyes. I did not know whether she was wearing any sort of ring, her hands were in her coat pockets. Overall, she was quite attractive and I figured I’d better be nice to her in case the guy upstairs was only her brother.

As she leaned backwards against the railing, looking straight up to another floor, she answered with a cheery, "I’m down here, meeting our new neighbor."

"You have the keys?" the voice asked.

"I’ve got them right here," she answered as she pulled a set of keys out of her right pocket and jinglingly displayed them to the voice above. The multi-floor portion of the conversation thus ended, someone upstairs I could not see, presumably the owner of the voice, closed an equally unvisible door.

She turned her attention back to me and asked, "Do you have everything out of your truck?" It was not that difficult for her to figure out that was my big yellow rental truck parked near the front of the building. I’d already had a few requests by other tenants of this building to move it in some way or another. Denials based on needing to move the rest of its contents did not earn me any friends.

"Yeah," I answered, "I actually managed to fight all my stuff upstairs."

"How long did it take you to empty that thing?"

"Oh, about six hours."

"I’m impressed, you did a great job."

"Why’s that?"

"When people move themselves in, the building manager normally has to replace a ton of scraped off wallpaper. My name is Lori, by the way."

"Hi, I’m Tom," I replied. I was warming up to her despite my otherwise lousy mood.

She turned to her left in response to footsteps coming from that direction. "Hi Andy, I was just meeting our new neighbor."

What I assumed to be her boyfriend, fiancée, husband or brother showed up. His eyes were set behind a pair of roundish glasses and his dark hair was short and neatly combed. He was taller than average, somewhat thin, wearing a tuxedo under his trench coat, and about to make a powerful first impression.

"I’d kind of figured," he told her. "Andrew," he informed me matter-of-factly before he asked, "Did you just move in this morning?"

"Yep."

"Sounds like a shit day," he said plainly. He turned to Lori with, "We’ve got to get going, I don’t feel like being late for opening night again." What a dick.

"Okay," she responded in a playful sort of voice before turning to me saying, "Nice meeting you," with a cute little sideways turning of her head. "Let us know if you need any help with anything."

This Andrew acknowledged me with a curt nod as they headed toward the down stairs. I closed the door soon after they left; I had no desire to be friendly with anyone else for the rest of the evening.