brightness outside was harder to take now. I rounded the corner of the building and went into the commons. I walked across the grass with my box and my birth certificate and for once knew where I was going: I was headed for the parapet at the north side where everything rose into view. But even before I got there I saw that today everything wasn’t what it used to be.
In front of the lake the new stadium was under construction. A football team had been acquired while I was away. I’d forgotten. A cloud of dust hung motionless above it and even from where I was you could hear the clank of invisible machinery. Next to it a geodesic dome surrounded by a cluster of new-looking buildings, the spidery vehicle that had landed on the moon parked out front. I realized then it must have been a replica because the real one hadn’t come back.
In the gap between you could see water and sky, and though there was a haze over the lake it was still better than nothing. I knew I had to take things a little at a time anyway, especially the good things.
Fifty feet below me a train went by.
I was already sweating and it was the kind of day where once you started you didn’t stop. My ear throbbed. Without touching it I could feel the seam where they’d put it back on. I sat on one of the benches behind the parapet. For all I knew I might end up sleeping on it—there were people on the grass who didn’t look like picnickers. A girl was sitting on the bench next to me. I glanced at her. I wanted to know what time it was and I wondered if I should ask her. I looked her way again. This time she noticed, or noticed it was the second time, and yelled the name Steve. A guy whose name must have been Steve came over in jogging shorts. He had an overdeveloped torso and skinny legs and looked like he was about to topple over. She asked him where he wanted to go for breakfast. The word gave me no appetite. After they left I stayed there for a while, waiting to see how much the box would weigh the next time I picked it up.
A medium-sized building, peeling to gray. The bottom floor had once housed an exclusive restaurant with valet parking. Now it was a bodega, though its prices were still exclusive. There’d been a pool on the roof, webs of light pulsing in someone’s memory. In between were rooms you could rent by the week or the month. The woman behind the desk in the lobby broke it down for me. She was small and shriveled and wore a flowered sleeveless frock like something you’d wear around the house. Metal clips pinned her hair to her scalp, more metal than hair. A clear plastic tube from her nose to a green tank at her side. The tank on a cart with wheels. She told me how much, and for what.
“You can cook in your room,” she said. “No pets.”
“No drugs or whores, either,” the man behind the desk with her said. He sat on a chair balanced on its back legs, wore a gray shirt with dark pants. He could have been twenty-five or fifty. A name was stitched above his heart.
She turned her head as much as the tube would allow, “Only if he gets them for you, huh?” She looked at me. “You’re not one of those college animals, are you?”
I wondered about the scarf tied around her throat. You heard breathing when she spoke, like someone else was there. I wondered if there was a deposit.
“A week’s rent if you’re staying by the week,” she said. “A month if it’s by the month. Plus a five-dollar key deposit.” It was half of all I had but I didn’t want to try and find a shelter. I asked if I could see it.
She turned to get a key. The tube grew taut but kept her in this world. She held it in place with one hand, said she needed a longer one.
“No comment,” the maintenance man said, getting out of his chair.
“Not your department anyway,” she said. It could have been a routine, but they didn’t care if I laughed. I left my box behind the desk.
We rode the elevator to the seventh floor. The halls were off-white with brown wainscoting. The floor was carpeted and beneath it there was a muted crunch like buried bones. I heard TV sets too well, an unanswered phone. Smelled cigarette smoke, Lysol, the carpet, a permanent odor like leftovers—not just food, but everything that remains.
The room was as ready as it was going to get, and cleaner than I expected. The little hallway you walked into was also a kitchen. Half a refrigerator, half a stove with two electric eyelets, crammed into a nook opposite the bathroom. Then a single bed, nightstand, dresser, a round table with two chairs. Another shade of white. You could still smell the carpet. An oversized air conditioner had been shoved through the wall beneath the window. Beneath a kind of view.
“I just put Freon in,” the maintenance man said. He switched it on. It was loud and gave off a smell that made the back of your throat itch, but it worked. There was nothing to decide but I thought I should go through the motions a little longer—touching, opening, closing. I turned on the faucet over the kitchen sink. It groaned, twitched, spat out a cockroach. I let the water run and the roach headed up the side of the basin. He would have made it so I gave him a little push and the vortex pulled him down the drain.
“We spray once a month,” the maintenance man said. “We’ll let you know in advance.”
“What about noise?”
“Concrete floor slabs. You won’t hear a thing.”
I told him I’d seen enough. He asked me if I needed anything to go with the place, a TV, for instance. I said I didn’t. A radio, then, or a CD player. A toaster, a blender, a microwave. He could get me things at cost.
“You got the means,” he said, “I got the ends.”
I asked him where the license bureau was. I knew the street but not how to get to it.
“Driver’s license?”
“State ID.” To get a job you needed an address and to prove I had one I’d need a state ID. But no, I wasn’t getting a driver’s license.
“You got no ID?” He shook his head gravely. “Man, I don’t know. Mrs. Ivy don’t play that. You need ID to register.”
He looked at me. “You in some kind of trouble?”
“I just don’t have a place to live.”
He reverted to his transactional mode. “Maybe I could hook you up.” He put out a hand, but not to shake. “Financhual consideration,” he said. I got him down to ten but it would have to be up front. I didn’t know if I could trust him. I thanked the name on his breast.
“This ain’t even my shirt,” he said.
In the elevator he asked if I needed a computer.
Back downstairs Mrs. Ivy let him process the paperwork. I wrote things down and got two keys and a receipt. I put the keys on the chain I’d bought at the bus station and asked the maintenance man about the license bureau again.
He told me where it had moved to. It wasn’t even where I didn’t remember it was in the first place.
I took my box up to the room and put things away. Then I flattened the cardboard and put it in the closet. The closet door wouldn’t shut. A bolt protruded beneath the latch and I didn’t have a key for it. One of those old-fashioned locks, triangular keyhole, rounded at the top. Skeleton key—at least I thought you called it that.
I washed my face. I lay down on the bed for a few minutes and tried not to think about anything. This is harder than it sounds
