No Lease on Life Read online

  Jeanine drank some more coffee. She had a shower. She came out wrapped in a towel.

  —All the guys I have used to be cops. Isn’t that weird? All the cops come over to me. It’s weird. They like me, they’re trying to get me off the block, but they end up giving me money to buy drugs. Cops come and buy drugs, not from here, from elsewhere. From other precincts, whatever. The guy I’ve been seeing for a while, he’s married, and he wanted me to stay stuck in the house, and it was just not a healthy situation. If she’s here, I wouldn’t see him for three or four days in a row, then I won’t see him for two weeks. A really uncomfortable situation, and I become very obsessed with him, and I didn’t think that was cool. Somebody else’s man. He’s alright, he used to be a cop. He’s a very nice guy. Some no-good man—that’s my worst addiction. I’m addicted to no-good men. Or being addicted to anything, you know what I’m saying? Your body has to keep up with your mind. I’ll run to avoid sitting and thinking and facing reality. A lot of people in the neighborhood speak to me, want to help me, say I’m nice. I don’t belong out there. I tell them, I don’t know. It’s my lifestyle now.

  Elizabeth said it was a job, she saw her working on the corner almost every day.

  —My job? Yeah, it’s my job. True. And before, there used to be a lot of money. The flow was nonstop. A lot of people got clean. A lot of customers went bankrupt. Lost their jobs. A lot of customers had to stop to maintain their lives. A lot of men, their wives don’t know what they’re doing, and they screw up and their wives find out. There’s women too, but it’s usually couples if there’s a woman involved, or like a lot of teenagers. I won’t serve to teenagers, but there’s college kids buying weed and stuff, then you see a lot of girls. A lot of people are smart enough to give it up instead of giving up their lives. Or it’s too expensive. Sign of the times.

  Jeanine looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. She had to make her group therapy session. She dressed, brushed her hair and put on orange lipstick.

  —The last two months with my leg broken I couldn’t report, and I couldn’t get any outpatient therapy. It wasn’t my fault. You go there, a group meeting, which is so stupid. I can’t understand why parole and probation want to send you somewhere where you sit around and hear stories about drugs. Even in jail. I go to jail and sit in these little encounter groups, and every time I come out the drug I try is different from the one I used before. Because I heard about it in some meeting. They make you go and by the time you’re finished with these meetings you want to get high. It’s like really ridiculous. I don’t want to go back. I won’t sell to someone unless I know them. So many undercovers, you can’t even tell who they are. I’m still on parole. They can lie on you, just ’cause you have a record, you can go to jail forever, you know? You gotta be real careful out there.

  It was Jeanine in the doorway. She was gobbling some guy’s dick for the price of a rock.

  —You gotta be real careful out there.

  Elizabeth wondered if Ernest was awake, lying in bed, or at the window above hers. Maybe he was naked, at his window. Maybe he was watching Jeanine. Maybe he was summer hot or excited. Jeanine in the doorway. Elizabeth liked sex, she liked watching sex.

  Maybe Ernest could sleep through noise. Sleep through anything. Like Roy. Lights on in two more apartments. Babies crying. Dogs barking. One horrific scream. Then silence.

  Now a door opened across the street.

  The young super from the building on the other side of the street walked out his front door. Onto the street. He glanced from east to west. He played the role of an important man expecting someone or something. He couldn’t have expected to catch the morons. They were gone. He shuffled in an aggravated way to the overturned garbage cans. He saw the damage. He cursed loudly. His arms flapped up and down, jerking out from his body. He checked his car. It was OK. The one next to his was dented. He didn’t react. The garbage-can throwers weren’t on the church steps. The young super took his time. He was a creep.

  There’s a restaurant on the moon.

  Yeah?

  Great food, no atmosphere.

  Why don’t cannibals eat clowns?

  They taste funny.

  When the young super first took over the building across the street, he worked on his car every day. sometimes he worked on it early, five A.M., six A.M. He’d rev it up and turn the engine over. Over and over. Elizabeth became aware of him. He woke her up. She’d run to the window, stare out, and see him at dawn looking at his coughing car. Maybe his hands would be tinkering with the car’s insides. Dawn was just another ruined night. Sometimes she’d open the window and shout, Stop it, stop it. Please. He never heard. He couldn’t hear over his engine. The noise went on and on. Furious like churlish garbagetrucks, incessant like boisterous oil trucks fueling boilers in basements.

  The young super was revving his engine again. No one else was alive to him. Elizabeth lay there with her eyes open. The noise grew louder. It always did. She started to inch out of bed. To slide to the end of the bed. Her toenails were hard. She gouged Roy on his calf.

  —What are you doing? Roy asked.

  —I’m not telling you, Elizabeth said.

  —Where are you going?

  —I’m going for a walk.

  —In the middle of the night.

  —It’s dawn.

  —Get back in bed.

  —I can’t sleep.

  —Get back here, Lizard. Go to sleep.

  —I can’t. He’s revving his engine again.

  —He’s got a right to work on his car.

  —This is a residential area.

  —What are you going to do?

  —Tell him to stop.

  —You’re going to get killed.

  —OK.

  —Don’t do anything, don’t be a jerk.

  She might have to die to sleep. She laughed out loud. It sounded hollow in the apartment. She put on her robe and Japanese canvas shoes. Roy pulled the blanket over his head. His back was to her. He’d already accepted her death. Maybe she was as good as dead.

  Roy didn’t want Elizabeth at an open window in the middle of the night, or at dawn, he didn’t want her getting involved, staring down or checking out a commotion on the street, especially a fight between drugged-out, warring guys or between a man and a woman, over sex, money, or drugs. He didn’t want her sticking her head out the window. He told her about a couple of newlyweds who were on a train, on their honeymoon. They were going to the country. The bridegroom stuck his head out of the window of the train. A pole or something jutting out decapitated him, sliced his head right off. Then he fell back into the compartment, headless. And his bride went mad.

  Elizabeth didn’t think that would happen to her. An illegal windowbox could drop from the windowsill above and crush her head, but even then there wouldn’t be enough speed or thrust for her head to be chopped off. Her skull could be flattened to a bloody pulp, but her head wouldn’t be sliced off like a chunk of fat white meat.

  Roy returned to Roy’s world.

  Elizabeth opened her door and walked down the stairs. The halls were even bleaker in the middle of the night. Dawn. Farmers woke like this every morning, at the break of day, milked cows, sloshed around in the heat or cold, fed pigs who were more intelligent than they were, grew wrinkled and weather-beaten, and their wives cooked heartbreaking breakfasts, shriveled under the sun, nursed belligerent youngsters or died in childbirth. Everyone’s a hero. Elizabeth giggled then stifled herself. There were cigarette butts on the stairs and floors, tissues, candy wrappers, an empty paper bag. Nothing big. No vomit or blood or needles. Only some Phillies Blunt tobacco the kids mixed with marijuana. Grass. Weed. Tree.

  Elizabeth marched stiffly across the street to the super at his car. She was in her robe, outside, on the street. She knew she looked ridiculous. People do when they act on principle. Like clowns in the circus. She’d only been to one circus. It was a crazy theater, the rings, the animals, the red-lipped clowns hanging from rope
s. The audience fears the worst and waits for it. She counted herself a silent, anonymous member of Clowns for Progress. The group plastered its posters around the neighborhood.

  Elizabeth stood beside the super until he decided to notice her. She was closer than she’d ever been to him. It was a grotesque intimacy. When he noticed her, she spoke as calmly as she could.

  —You may not realize it, but some people are still trying to sleep. Maybe even until eight or nine this morning. Do you realize how loud your engine is? And do you know that it’s against the law? It’s noise pollution. Disturbing the peace. I could call the cops. I won’t, but I could. I can’t sleep. I can’t stand it anymore. Don’t you ever think about anyone else?

  She stood there. She had finished her speech. She waited beside him, in her robe. He stared at her. His answer was silent revulsion. His disgust should have been reserved for battle, when a soldier calls up the desire to destroy from a vat of villainous mixed emotions. Pleasure, revulsion, and fear animate the killing machine. Soldiers are allowed legal murder.

  The young super, smartly dressed but his nose streaked with grease, had no understanding of quiet in the morning. No respect for other people who needed their sleep. Elizabeth could see that. She enlivened his killing machine. He and she stood their ground. Her ground felt puny and groundless. They were locked in a barbaric embrace. It was public. They could be watched by anyone. Someone might be videotaping them for a stupid TV show. She was candid and conspicuous. The young super despised her. His rage shaped and reshaped his face. She would’ve slapped him if she thought he wouldn’t murder her. She wanted to wipe the expression off his face. Murder was too good for him. That’s what her mother would say. He didn’t raise a hand, and the law held Elizabeth’s hand. They were both held in check. An abyss yawned, wide and filthy, like a domestic Persian Gulf. She hated her own voice which repeated:

  —Don’t you understand that there are other people on the block? Don’t you understand? People need to sleep. There are other people on the block.

  The young super’s face had hardened into furious incomprehension. Then he turned away from her, turned his back to her, returned to his car’s engine, ignored her existence, and she walked back across the street to her building, walked back up the filthy stairs, went back to her position at the window. Elizabeth wondered who, if anyone, had witnessed the event. A friend or an enemy. Roy slept through it.

  Now one of the dogwalkers marched out. He was usually the first on the block. He carried a single paper towel. He had a little dog. Most carried newspapers or plastic bags. Roy picked up newspaper from the street and used it for Fatboy, their dog. His dog. Dogwalkers walked their dogs and waited until the dog took a shit and then they scooped it up. They threw it into garbage cans. Most of them did this flawlessly. Gracefully. They’d had practice. There were a variety of methods. Newspaper under their dogs’ asses. The dogs were trained to do it on the paper. Plastic bag on the hand like a glove. Owner grabs the shit and like a surgeon removes the glove with the shit and drops it into the garbage can. Each one had a technique, different for different dogs. The pooper scooper law was enacted under Mayor Koch. It was his legacy to the city, what he’d be remembered for, New Yorkers picking up dog shit. Along with an impartial judicial review board and handing over the city, opening it up like a high-class brothel, to the real estate clowns. That was years ago.

  Now she wouldn’t confront the young super, or anyone, alone on the street. Crime was down, but on what basis do they figure those stats, and even if there were fewer murders, she still wouldn’t take the chance. People were more apathetic, exhausted, they were back on heroin, off crack, it didn’t matter, it could change, and statistics lie any way you want them to, and if you’re lying in the street, blood flowing from a wound in your head or stomach, because one of the fewer murders has been attempted, or achieved, it’s you lying on the street, it’s your bloody body, lifeless or hurt, and it doesn’t matter what the stats are.

  Elizabeth didn’t have that many chances. No one did.

  Now she considered the enduring consequences of announcing her grievances to her neighbors. Elizabeth had been ignorant of the fact that Hector the super had befriended the young super. His name was Ahmed, she didn’t know which Middle Eastern country he was from, and Hector was Ahmed’s block mentor. She hadn’t known that. After Hector heard about what she did, he was barely civil to her.

  Roy told Elizabeth she had to learn to accept the unacceptable.

  She tried and slipped and told the woman on the first floor, Diane, that the woman on the top floor bothered her. The top floor woman screamed at her boyfriend’s child from early morning on, and when she was high on coke, ran out in the night, forgot her keys and screamed for her mate to throw her a key, to let her in. He’d punish her, want to teach her a lesson. He’d be disgusted. He’d want out. He’d pretend not to hear the wailing, subhuman shrieks everyone else heard. Finally he’d give in, let her in. She’d whimper all the way up the stairs. Past Elizabeth’s door. Then they’d fuck probably. Elizabeth complained to the woman on the first floor about how the craziness was driving her crazy. The first-floor woman said she was friends with the top-floor woman.

  —Do you want me to talk with her? she asked.

  —No, no, please, I’ll handle it, Elizabeth said.

  Elizabeth retreated. She had to be more careful. Roy thought she was a jerk. She had to let people know what she felt or thought. He told her she was chronicling her life. He’d watched a TV news special about women talking on the telephone. It said they were chronicling their lives.

  The young super never looked at her on the street. He wouldn’t help her if someone was trying to cut her, cap her, molest her. He was an enemy on the block. He wouldn’t lift a finger to save her life. In the city, you can have enemies and never see them. It’s urbane, humane. But if you have enemies on your block, you can’t count on them. Not even in a lethal situation. They might applaud the bad guys or be apathetic bystanders, even grandstanders. Yeah, they could say later grinning, yeah, I saw him take that bitch and grab her head and slam it against the wall…

  Elizabeth daydreamed that the young super Ahmed would come to her aid. Even though he hated her, he’d help her. He’d overcome his hatred and save her life. They’d forget their enmity, they’d forget the past. They’d become friends, and there would be one less problem in her little world. It was a fairy tale. It was like a dream when an ex-friend appeared and said, I love you. Or something. Elizabeth cried over spilt milk, the irreconcilable.

  But Ahmed, wherever he came from, hated her. He still hated her. He would always hate her. He still lived on her block. He would always live on her block. He had a family now. The young super had a wife. They had one or two babies. Some nasty people are loved by apparently nice people. The young super’s wife usually had a benign expression on her face. Elizabeth watched her get into and out of the young super’s new car. Elizabeth decided he slapped her around. The wife’s placid expression masked fear. Her abjection was as great as the enmity between Elizabeth and the young super. But Elizabeth couldn’t ask him, Have you stopped beating your wife? He wouldn’t get the joke.

  They found a woman on Fourteenth Street in a bathtub full of milk.

  They did?

  With a banana jammed up her ass.

  You’re kidding.

  The cops are looking for a cereal killer.

  Why are there so few black serial killers?

  Why?

  No ambition.

  Elizabeth hated the country. Small-town life was jail. Country people huddled together like sheep near one-movie towns, without bookstores or restaurants. They drove to abysmal malls for action. They planted huge antennae and satellite dishes on their lawns to hook themselves up to the world, which they didn’t want any part of. They lived in nature, didn’t see it, didn’t care about it. They knew everything about each other. They saw each other every day and passed the time: Looks like Sally isn’t getting
out much anymore.

  It was on TV. Elizabeth watched TV. She liked windows. TV’s cranky hermits and serial killers were at the dark heart of the country’s dark side. They were the children taught to distrust anyone not like them, children of incest, thin-blooded, with dead, flat eyes, they were genetic threats. They fucked harnessed animals who kicked them in the head. Hermits passed bleak nights knitting shrouds, cleaning their shotguns, or fuming about grievances long past. Hermits plotted. Serial killers thrived and grew bloodthirsty for company in isolated outposts. The city’s a cold place, the story goes, But in the country, your barn burns down, they raise a new one with you, you get a smile and a howdy in the country.

  There was no anonymity for hate, love, or lust in the country. Elizabeth could’ve fucked the super as easily as killed him.

  The young super hadn’t revved his engine that early in the morning for a long time. Elizabeth didn’t know if it was because of her. She’d spelled it out to him that she could call the cops and have him arrested for disturbing the peace, which she didn’t, but it may have made an impression on him. It may have made no impression on him. If he hadn’t cared about waking other people, hadn’t thought it was wrong, he wouldn’t have cared about disturbing the peace.

  Everybody understood, I’ll call the cops. Everyone on the block understood that.

  Maybe he was an illegal immigrant, hiding, living in fear. If she threatened him now after his years in New York—maybe back then he’d just arrived and was adjusting to America, was still peaceful, even content to be here, if he was, maybe he’d escaped a worse situation. Now he’d probably hit her with a car wrench or throw her under his car, grab the jack and let the car drop on her, killing her, not instantly, slowly. Painfully. It could be made to seem like an accident unless people were around to witness it or people knew they’d had an incident in the past. That’s why it’s necessary to tell people about fights you have with crazy people. Later the crazy person might come after you, and if no one knew there was a motive, your life could be ended and the cops would never find your killer. Never bring him to justice. Elizabeth couldn’t convince Roy about the necessity of communicating to other people the malevolent acts of crazy people. Roy didn’t make small talk.