like. He’s a dedicated slacker who supports himself by selling small amounts of weed, a thirty-year-old boy obsessed with the electronic music he creates in his bedroom.
“Hey, what’s happening,” he mutters as he heads for the staircase. Doyle, an aspiring slacker himself, turns and follows.
“Yo, Marshal, got a minute.”
“Another morning at Chez Nazari,” I explain. Our building, our home, was named Chez Nazari by a defunct identity. Muhammad Nazari is our bastard of a landlord. He’s adopted a simple business model. Provide only the most basic services (every ten days or so, his tenants go without hot water) and evict tenants whenever possible. Our building is rent stabilized, so the rents go up slowly, if at all. On the other hand, the law authorizes a 20 percent jump whenever an apartment becomes vacant. Throw in a few bullshit improvements and you can easily get to 30 percent. Turnover is the name of the game.
The disgusted expression on Portman’s round face as she surveys the corridor’s peeling walls tells me all I need to know. I gesture for her to enter and she saunters through the doorway. We catch a lucky break here. I’ve been piloting our body since early last night and the apartment’s in good order, which is not always the case.
Portman’s taller than me by a good three inches. I follow in her wake as she conducts her inspection. Feeling the way I feel when I watch our body perform and I’m not in charge.
“These are lovely,” she says, indicating a half dozen flower arrangements. The flowers are artificial, the arrangements courtesy of Serena, our resident artiste. They’re quite restrained, single blossoms mostly, surrounded by narrow leaves and a sprig of berries or a trailing vine. From somewhere deep inside, I hear Serena stir. She’ll want to know why I didn’t mention her name.
Portman’s thorough. Not content with a clean living room and kitchen, she examines the refrigerator, the kitchen cabinets and the oven before checking under the sink. I can almost hear her mind working: Bleach, check; laundry detergent, check; floor cleaner, check.
Meticulous or not, Portman’s done inside of ten minutes. We’ve basically got a two-room apartment with a turnaround kitchen and a bathroom so small the toilet touches the side of the tub. Our sparse furnishings and most of the prints on the walls were rescued from the trash on garbage pickup day.
It goes without saying that nothing in our apartment matches anything else. The four wooden chairs around the dining table, for just one example, are not only different shapes but also different colors. Still, I know Portman’s not fazed by our poverty. Impoverished households are as familiar to her as waking up in the morning. She’s a poverty connoisseur.
“Looks good,” she announces. “So, I guess that’s it. I don’t see anything that merits our attention.”
I should leave it there, but I can’t. “Excuse me, but I’m trying to understand what exactly we did to warrant all this attention.”
“I’ve been wondering myself. The court ordered Protective Services to make this inspection and file a report. We weren’t provided with a reason and have no choice except to comply. That said, if the rest of the inquiry goes as well as this inspection, our report will be positive.”
“The rest of the inquiry?”
“Well, we still have to talk to your neighbors.”
CHAPTER THREE
SERENA
So stunning, to be alive, to be outdoors, a simple pedestrian, no more and no less than any pedestrian on any street in New York, an absolute equal marching down a city street on a spring day with a warm southerly breeze carrying the primitive scent of the harbor. No trees here, no flowers or green, surging grass, no bunny rabbits, frolicking fawns, instead practical, always-in-a-hurry city folk, instead old men and women inching their way along, instead destitute and desperate panhandlers talking to themselves, eyes locked into their own madness. Four adolescent boys evaluate my sexual potential, their energy washing over my body, adding to the scream of an advancing ambulance. Eyes down, skirt falling to her ankles, a woman in a black hijab pushes a crying child in a stroller. A small, white dog squats at the curb, owner hovering above, poop bag at the ready.
The universe flows down Fulton Street, everything connected, every tendril in place, until there are no pieces, only one chord, each note sung, even the trash in the street, the buzzing sign above the entrance to Crunch gym, the hiss of released air as a bus pulls away from the curb, a true plainsong, proof everlasting of our creators at play. I take joy in the knowledge, the certainty, the evidence as plainly displayed as the exhibits at a murder trial: rope, restraints, knife, handsaw, the collective gaze of shaken jurors as they dutifully examine photos taken after the body was finally discovered.
Fulton Street evolves as I head south, penetrating the gentrified neighborhoods closer to Brooklyn Heights and the bridge. Faces and bodies flow effortlessly past, words bounce against my ears: Arabic, Spanish, Russian. A Hasidic couple passes, arguing in Yiddish, the words tangle with Martha’s entreaties, her pragmatism another note, only adding to the perpetual harmony.
“Halberstam, Halberstam, Halberstam, appointment, appointment, appointment …”
A cold, wet mop, never knowing even the ecstasy of Eleni, the physical release, the surrender to whatever consciousness-altering substance happens to be available and to the ultimate threat arising from casual sex with strangers. I pause to inspect a fruit vendor’s long table, the yellows and greens and oranges, a soft, soft peach, fuzz bristling, all caught in the revealing light of a perfect sun, a pure gold disc in a pure blue sky.
I buy an apple from a turbaned vendor with a triangular black beard and eat it as I turn on to Boerum Place, now called Brooklyn Bridge Boulevard, the street renamed for tourists who add their own essentials to the collective scent. I feel them around me, that we share a common goal, the still-shielded bridge rising just beyond a long curve, a yearning for the heights. Victoria and Martha want to eat me, me and Eleni, to swallow us down, to digest us, to empty us from their bowels, to flush us away. That in so doing they abandon their futures, consigning themselves to an empty survival, no joy, no love, no ecstasy, troubles them not at all. I hurry along, moving with a river of humans, the bridge a vacuum drawing us into its center, the force irresistible, up the promenade, between a spider’s web of intersecting cables, to the great arches where I press my hands against a massive block of rough-hewn stone. Two bridges cross the East River to the north, ahead the great towers present a solid front to would-be invaders, Lady Liberty stands, a solitary figure on a lonely pedestal in the harbor to the south, resolute.
CHAPTER FOUR
MARTHA
I’m running like a fool. Like the pitiful mental case we are. Tourists stare at me and speeding cyclists pass close enough to brush my arm. I pay no attention, there being only room in my brain for two thoughts. First, I’m going to be late for the fourth appointment with our shithead of a therapist. Victoria kept the first three, hoping the good doctor would let us off the hook with a cursory inspection. Not happening. He expects to meet all of us at some point. Especially Eleni, our main offender.
So, there’s that bullshit to handle. But there’s also a burning rage because my free-spirit sister has done it again. In the past, Serena regularly hijacked our body as we headed off to work. She liked to take us on spiritual
