And the emptiness of it was deafening. I was living in the master bedroom on the second floor and living room/dinning room and kitchen on the first, or “parlor floor.” The garden floor was a separate apartment that I rented to a young couple. Lisa and Remington. He went by Remy. They were quiet and worked a lot and I barely ever saw them. Almost every weekend they went somewhere upstate. Remington, maybe both of them, did some hunting, and at Christmas they had given me (us-that-was-no-longer-us) a couple of pounds of venison that still sat in the back of my freezer, wrapped in its white butcher paper. Amy didn''t eat red meat and I just never got around to grilling it, or whatever you are supposed to do with venison. One of the cookbooks Amy took would have probably told me. Ideal tenants.
My parents, back in California, had both died a few years back. After my mom had died of cancer at age seventy, Amy and I had flown out there. I was an only child and we had always been close, but the distance of an entire country had made me less than the ideal son. I stayed out there a week, helping my dad take care of all the ridiculous bits and pieces a death makes you handle. My parents had met later and had had me when my mom was thirty-nine and my dad forty-seven. Now, at eighty-two, he was still in good health, and after a week encouraged us to return to New York. “Your mom wouldn’t want you to sit here in the sun that she loved and miss that gloomy east coast weather and snobbery,” he joked.
Six months later he died in his sleep.
The inheritance had just been enough to buy the brownstone. It was big, but not too big. Perfect for building a life, a family. Amy had been hesitant since we weren’t even engaged, but I wanted everything planned out before we did and getting the house seemed like perfect first step to expand my life.
And now I had condensed my life to a one-bedroom apartment.
Everything else was bare. Empty rooms and empty closets. All the walls were bare except in the areas I spent anytime. It matched my mood and my head.
I rambled along, day in and day out. Wake up, shower, make breakfast, go to work. Come home, shower, read. Make dinner. Make lunch for the next day, clean up. Shower, go to bed. Showering seemed to take up time and some how it seemed very important that I keep up my personal hygiene. I suppose I knew I was sitting on the edge and that if I slipped up I would become a recluse, just disappear. Of course, I was becoming a recluse. But a clean one. I might have been on my way to being a shut-in, but I was going to be the best smelling shut-in ever. No stacks of newspapers or herds of cats for me. Oh, no! When they found my corpse, it would be wrapped in a white terry cloth robe and I’d be wearing clean boxers. I’d be all wrinkly but they wouldn’t need gloves to drag me out to the curb.
My mind wasn’t in the greatest place.
Ever since Amy had moved out, my friend Jake had been calling me every other day. Checking my pulse. He’d pry, I’d say I was doing fine. He’d invite me out drinking, I’d pass. Finally, after three weeks of this, he started to insist.
“Allen,” Jake spat, “if you don’t come out with me tonight, I’m coming over there breaking your shower. I swear it, dude. I have a sledge hammer.”
“I have two bathrooms. They both have showers.”
“God damn it, Allen! You. Need. Beers. Lots of beers. We are going the Soda Bar. We are getting drunk and we’re going to play pool. We are going to check out women and if things go right, you will bring some total skank back to that fucking beautiful house you’re hiding in and tap some skank ass.”
“Fuck you, Jake,” I whined. “You know I’m not up for that.”
“You and Amy have been done for three months.”
“Two months three weeks. And she only moved out three weeks ago,” I corrected.
“She moved out almost two months ago,” Jake re-corrected. “She moved her stuff out three weeks ago. And when was that last time you had sex? Really. Honestly.”
“Fuck you.”
“Tell me,” Jake demanded.
I relented. “Five months. Wait. Five and a half.”
“Five and a half months,” exclaimed Jake. “Five and a half fucking months. Allen, you’re ready. I won’t pressure you. I won’t embarrass you. But you are at least going to at least look. I’ll be by in twenty minutes. If you are in the shower when I get there, I am climbing in with you and fucking you myself.”
Soda Bar was a short three block walk away. Jake was being his usual six feet, 270 pound full of kinetic energy self. He normally always brought my spirits up. Now he was just spoiling my perfectly good melancholy. I shuffled along, head down, hands shoved deeply into my pockets. He was bubbling along about some records he’d just bought and how he was actually extremely pumped for the party he was DJ-ing in a week.
“You should come, Allen. There’ll be tons of babes there. Tons, I tell you! Tons!”
“Emphasis on ‘babes,’” I sighed. “It’s a bat mitzvah. They’ll all be thirteen.”
“Moms. Lots of moms. I’ll bet you’ll get your handful of divorcées.”
“Yes. Moms of thirteen year old children. If I don’t think I am up for flirting in a bar, do you really think I’m up for being a step dad?”
“My god! Who said anything about marriage? You just need to meet people, get out, be a bit freaky. Fine. No bat mitzvah for sourpuss. Tonight is just about beer and pool. Alright?”
The bar was crowded but not packed. Painted in blacks and reds, its mismatched furniture gave it that much-desired Brooklyn-dive feel even though it was far from it. Most Brooklyn bars seemed to strive to counteract the sheen of Manhattan bars. The sad fact was that the East Village had already cornered the market on the manicured dive bar and Brooklyn had to settle for the neighborhood hang out.
Jake immediately recognized half a dozen folks through out the room and charged in, his voice bellowing greetings and arms giving bear hugs. Left standing by the door I realized that I could slink back out and get a good looffa-ing in before Jake was finished making his rounds. But as I started to turn, Jake’s voice rang out. “You go and I am anal raping you in that shower! I mean it! No lube! Just you and me and cold hard tile!”
Turning back, I tried not to make eye contact with waitress staring at me with a cheshire cat grin and made beeline for the back patio. It was late May and the weather was has comfortable as it ever gets. Picking a table in a far back corner, I brushed dirt off the plastic chair and sat. Glancing around, it was a standard mix of young Brooklyn. Professionals, grunges, hipsters, anti-hippsters, counter-hipsters, anti-counter-hippsters, professional-grunge-counter-anti-hippsters. Mostly people just trying to be themselves. There was the fair share of couples from which I immediate turned away. But there were tables of single women, gathered in groups of threes and fours, laughing and talking. Every table had its miss matched candles and rounds of beers in various states of being emptied. Also the little gatherings of cell phones. At regular intervals a phone would chirp or sing or shiver and someone suddenly would be connected with another someone else out there in the world. Putting my phone on the table I realized that I had no chance of anyone calling. Who had any reason to call me?
The waitress walked up to my table, pad in hand and that smile still slapped on her face. “Um, I’m guessing you need a drink. If only to loosen yourself up for later.”
Great. “Yeah. Funny.”
“Hey, just kidding. Relax. I know Jake. You’re Allen, right? I’ve seen you here before but not in a while. Usually come in with a tiny girl? Dark hair.”
I stammered, “Yeah. She’s… was my girlfriend. She’s… um… well…” Was I ever going to be able to talk about it without qualifying and stammering?
After an approbriate wait to see if I'd finish my sentence, she asked, “What can I get you?”
“Um, Brooklyn Lager and onion rings?” Why did I make that a question? Why do I do that? She’s a waitress. Of course she’d going to get you onion rings. Just order it like a normal person.
“Onion rings? You sure?” she asked with a cocked eyebrow.
“Why?”
“The breath and all,” she answered. “I mean, if you’re planning on hitting on say… that girl.” She subtly gestured to a table to my right about 15 feet away. A man and two women were there. The man and one woman were clearly a couple, her hand on his forearm, his hand on her leg under the table. The other woman, early or mid thirties, sat in jeans and a brown vintage Atari t-shirt. Her hair, dyed a deep crimson, was cut short with bangs almost to her eyes. She held a beer up close to her chest with both hands as if she where savoring its chill or using it as a talisman of protection. I could almost swear she turned away quickly just as I looked.
“She’s been looking at you.” Now both of her eyebrows cocked, if that’s possible.
No. No, I can’t. I turned back to the waitress. “Onion rings. Please.”
“Oh kaay. “ Spinning quickly on her heels, she walks away shaking her head.
“Allen!” Jake shouted coming up to the table. “You flirting with Candy?”
“Who? What? Who’s Candy?” I stammered.
“The booze slinger. Actually, I think it’s Sally. Or Susie. But this bar needs a sassy gal named Candy, dontcha think? So, were you macking?”
“I don’t even know what that means. No. I wasn’t. Jake, just give me some time, okay?”
Jake sat down with a large sigh. “Allen, I understand. I really do. I love you like the brother I never wanted. You’re my homie, my bud. You are the cheese on my nachos. The sausage in my Grand Slam Breakfast. Remember back in our twenties? When we’d go out and just hang? You had no problem meeting people, no problem talking to women. Heck, I couldn't care less if you meet women. But you need to meet new people, make some friends! It’s time.”
“I know. I just… I can’t seem to remember how. Back them it was… simple. It was all potential. Now, I don’t know. The one thing I was working towards, I failed at.”
Jake replied, “Yep. Yep you did. But thirty is the new twenty.”
“That’s stupid, Jake.”
“Of course it is! But you need to get out, out and about, and I can’t be your wingman every night.”
“Back then I was in an apartment with three other people. You, me, and Julie and Oscar. There was always someone there to do something with. But now, in that house…”
“Oh, don’t you dare complain about that house. It’s fucking amazing. Three floors of kick ass.”
“But it’s just so…”
“Empty, yes... So you’ve said. There’s your problem. Fill it. Rent out rooms.”
“I don’t know. Having strangers move in? I haven’t lived with other people for so long.”
“You lived with Amy for years. This will be the same but without the sex. Oh, wait. It’ll be just the same.”
Right then possibily-but-probably-not-Candy walked up hold two beers and the onion rings. “Who’s not having sex?”
“Thanks, Jake,” I murmured as I sunk my head into my hands.
“Just doin’ my part, Allen. Just doin’ my part.”
Stumbling in the door at 2 a.m., I kicked off my shoes and headed to the kitchen to drink as much water as I could stomach. Drink tons of water and then shower. That was my mission. Had to take a shower. Turns out it was only half a glass before I got dizzy and started vomiting three baskets of onion rings and who knows how many lagers into the sink. Arms braced on the counter, head sunk low to my chest, I tried counting to ten. At seven, I threw up the last of what was in me. Breaths, Allen. Just take slow gentle breaths. Trying to keep focused on my lungs and not the bile and batter in front of me, I looked out the window above the sink. A full moon sat just above the apartment building behind the backyard. Everything seemed crisp and sharp, more like a fall night then a late spring night.
Movement in the yard caught my eye. Out of the ivy climbed a shape. At first dark and sleek, it resolved into a large shiny black cat. It was stalking something, but I couldn’t see what. Stopping midstep, its body slowly shrunk back onto its hind legs. It stayed there, unmoving except for its head slowly tracking something near by.
With a sudden snap, the cat sprung forward, pouncing on its prey. A squirrel. Or maybe a rat. With a ferocity I had never seen in a house cat, it quickly sunk its teeth into its catch and tore a large chunk of the still squirming thing. Flesh still dripping from its jaw, the cat looked up and made eye contact with me. Cold eyes, devoid of anything but the hunt, it locked in on me. Slowly, it chewed. Ice shot through my blood and the lingering taste of vomit in my mouth turned to coppery acid. Behind me, the barren house gave a large creak, a distant and ancient spasm of pain and loss.
The black cat swallowed and bent down to take up the remains in its mouth. Smoothly he turned from me and made his way back into the ivy and was gone.
Drunkenly, I stumbled to the bedroom and switched on my computer. Logging onto Craigslist, I filled out a classified for four rooms in a Prospect Height brownstone. Cheap rent, clean, two bathrooms. Laundry. And backyard.
Available immediately.
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