Holland Tunnel (part 05)

part 05: just take it

Obviously I needed time to process what I saw inside Shane’s black bag.

But every time my mind’s eye glanced upon Shane’s murder kit — his knife, the loaded pistol, the rolls of duct tape — something in my belly turned to ice and shivered uncontrollably.

It wasn’t just that I’d opened all the windows to let the freezing Hudson wind air out the sour stink of our apartment. I could barely even sit in my own bedroom anymore, even with the door closed, without feeling his orgy cave slash maybe-murder hideout right on the other side of our shared kitchen. The bedroom I was paying market-price rent for — and probably his rent, too — where he’d been rolling around on my saggy futon like a neglected dog, leaving behind sour sweat and blond hairs.

Sitting outside the kitchen window under the electronic billboard was easier. Breathing frozen car exhaust from the Holland Tunnel kept my body connected to the rest of the city, not hidden from view inside the apartment, where there was nowhere to run if Shane suddenly reappeared. 

Posted up with a thermos of instant coffee and half a pack of American Spirits, I sipped and chain-smoked with a violence: shoulders arched against freezing rain, exhaling fire, cursing myself for being such a bobo.

How could I have read Shane so wrong? My whole life I've been a shitty judge of character, but none of my previous toxic entanglements had left me cowering like actual prey under their shadow. And on top of all that, our cats instantly hated each other, which should’ve told me all I needed to know.

I looked up at gray winter clouds, thanking heavens I didn’t bow to that Shane went away for a minute, that I didn’t have to face my toothless boogieman right now and pretend everything was fine. Was I safe? How much time would pass before I wasn’t? Where the fuck did he split to, and what was he doing out there? Was he on murder holiday? 

Probably not. He’d left his kit bag behind. But there was no coming back from this. No reality existed where I could possibly continue living with him, even if we avoided each other completely. Even if I let him hold out hope of fucking me. 

My safe harbor in a storm was washed right off the edge of the map, and out here there were monsters.

++++

Work that evening melted off slow as molasses. My supervisor Michael assigned me edits to a PowerPoint called “Economic Opportunities in US-Occupied Iraq.” I spent all night suckling the teat of evil to pay for my imminent next move, but it helped me distract myself from the clock running down on my shift.

For the first time as a vampire temp, I dreaded the end of my night. I didn’t feel safe going home. What if Shane was there? 

At the end of my shift, I walked uptown, away from the subway towards Times Square. It was like an empty movie set: lit up with megawatt lights like a stadium for no one but a ranting hobo emptying a trash can with his hands and a slow-creeping Honda Civic that pulled up next to me to ask if I needed any pills. I turned down a side street, headed toward the flashing lights of a 24-hour internet cafe. Flanked by Japanese tourists on orange plastic chairs, I peeled off layer after layer of clothes while sweating off my nerves in the heat of the radiator. Every minute or two, I double-clicked the dirty mouse to refresh the Village Voice’s apartment listings page.

++++

My days before work were spent viewing unsuitable apartments and being told:

LANDLORD: Your credit score’s too low. I can’t take a risk without a guarantor.

TWO ROOMMATES LOOKING FOR A THIRD: We won’t share a lease with a temp worker. You need a W-2 as proof you have steady work.

SINGLE FIREMAN: You seem nice but… I’m looking more for a hot college student who’ll clean and give massages in exchange for a rent break-type situation.

My nights became routine, over and over again in the internet cafe, searching for apartment leads. Increasingly frantic and at an increasingly higher vibration of caffeine. The end of the month was closing in, and there hadn't been a peep from Shane.

He did say we could just settle up when he got back home, but I had no idea if that meant weeks, months... I just knew I didn't want to be there when he returned.

++++

And I was being stubborn, too: I really didn’t want to leave Manhattan. There was a special feeling in the pocket universe by the Holland Tunnel: a feeling of being in the city’s veins, a part of it all flowing in and around that downtown westside nexus, that I fucking loved.

But the doors to the city weren’t opening for me to step outside the serial killer’s apartment share. There would be no shelter from my shelter. No place I could feel safe.

++++

To calm my nerves, I began drinking more, spending more time at The Ear. I’d hit the happy hour before clocking in, walking into work still swishing a minty mouthful of travel-size mouthwash from Rite Aid. Hitting the bar so early was the only thing that let me get through an eight-hour vampire temp shift, where every night I burned in the clock’s countdown wondering if tonight I’d come home to find Shane sharpening his surgical implements. Hitting the bar early also kept me from bumping into Elaine again. Sex wasn’t even on my mind anymore; I was too deep into the wrong headspace to want it. Instead, The Ear became my office, a place to field calls and texts, set up apartment viewings for the next day.

The stress of that, the alcohol, the fried happy-hour food all started taking their toll on me: I was bloated, sleepless, depressed.

++++

One Thursday happy hour, I was parked alone at a two-top in the corner, trying to keep sour cream from dripping off my potato skins onto my work clothes when I got a text from a landlord I’d called days before:

TEXT: studio you called about got RENTED but have small 1BR in PK SLOPE Bklyn $900. call Dennis if interested

My first year or so in the city was spent in Brooklyn — but Greenpoint, so a whole other Brooklyn — and Park Slope was a place I’d only been once during a very weird hookup. I didn’t know it at all. 

What I do remember was the long subway ride, how far out it was from the action… but the possibility of having a place of my own was enough for me to text back: 

ME: can I come by tmrw?

++++

Popping out of the Q train onto Flatbush Avenue was my first morning in real Brooklyn. The train exited near an old movie house advertising a kung-fu double feature. There was a narrow shopfront selling Jamaican beef patties served on fresh coco bread, a taste of home that hit me so hard my eyes rolled back on their own. I ate one, grabbed two more for the ride home.

The apartment was a few blocks down, off Sixth Avenue. I passed underneath a hand-painted wooden “charcuterie” sign next to a very dirty antique furniture shop.

When I reached Saint Marks Place, it was brownstones and tree lines all the way downhill, beaten up by crime but loved by families and weirdos for decades. A few doors in from the corner was Dennis’s building. I passed a shirtless old Nuyorican biker in a black leather vest, his fingerless glove wrapped around a bottle of cheap rum. He burped and winked at me behind his sunglasses.

I rang the bell. Waited. Waited.

I texted Dennis. He texted back that Willy the Super was on his way.

I sat on the stairs of the brownstone and waited some more.

The old biker finished his rum, tossed the bottle across the street. It landed gracefully, soundlessly atop someone’s black trash bag. Then it hit me:

ME: Hey, are you… Willy?

His ears perked up, like a dog’s. His voice was gravelly, the sound of police-busted block parties and wild nights:

BIKER [screaming]: What?! 

ME: I said, are you Willy?

WILLY [still screaming]: Yeah meng, I’m Willy! [taps left ear] Sorry I don’t hear so good no more. Too much heavy metal! Watchu need?

ME: I’m, uh… Daniel…? Dennis said you could show me the apartment?

WILLY: Yeah, meng! I got the place cleaned up all nice for you!

Willy cackled with recognition; he was missing the same front eight teeth that Shane was. What the fuck was going on in this city?

He grunted to his feet and led me up the brownstone stairs and into the glass vestibule, his boots tracking dirt up the carpeted stairs.

WILLY: This is an old house. Used to have a big, biiiig ol’ family here. When Dennis bought it, he carved it up into lotsa lil’ apartments…

With a sweeping arm, Willy gestured for me to follow the wooden railing to a narrow door at the corner. When I reached to open it, he slapped my hand away:

WILLY: Not that one, meng! Some other dude lives in that place! [points to door to immediate right] This is the studio I’m a-sposed to show you.

ME: Studio? The ad said it was one-bedroom?

He opened the door for me, and this was most definitely a studio, not a “small 1BR.” In fact, it was tiny; calling it 300 square feet would be generous. Charging $900 a month for it was blatant chutzpah. But it was less than I was paying Shane. Less space too.

I looked around the single room: there was a ratty chandelier hanging from the ceiling, a dusty marble fireplace that had been covered over with a brass grate. Nice wood floors though, original moulding. 

WILLY: You wan’ the tour?

I nodded and Willy threw his arms open wide, turning around slowly:

WILLY: THIS IS IT! [cackles] You wanna take it?

I looked around another minute. There was a tiny kitchenette with a stove, a microwave, and a sink; just enough floor space for one body to rotate between appliances.

ME: It has its own bathroom, right…?

It did. I thought it was a closet, but the bathroom was built out from the wall, enclosed in a box. It contained a toilet installed too close to the wall and a mildewy tiled shower.

WILLY: Pretty small, right? You prolly want something bigger?

I thought about myself, my cat, the serial killer I was currently living with. 

ME: I think for me it’s perfect. Can I leave a deposit on it?

He licked his lips, rolling something over in his mind before he replied:

WILLY: Naw meng, that’s not such a good idea. [snaps his fingers] You gotta call Dennis and then GO SEE DENNIS! He’s way up in THE CITY! You gotta pay him first, meng, then you can get them keys!

I nodded and reached out my hand to shake his in thanks. Willy took it with a strong, moist grip:

WILLY: Welcome to the hood, meng! I mean, maybe…

++++

The next day, I had a 12 pm appointment to meet Dennis at his condo building in Tudor City, near the United Nations. He had the concierge take me past the mirrored-gold letters framing the lobby up to a second-floor conference room overlooking the East River. 

The winter sun rippled off the river’s surface, shining directly into my eyes as I tried to present myself as a “responsible low-risk tenant” to Dennis. He’d already asked for my social security number and his assistant, Ariel, went off to run my credit.

Minutes later, Ariel came back into the room, placed a small stapled packet on the table in front of him. Dennis looked down at the packet and then back to me. His lower eyelids drooped from rounds of nip/tuck surgery, the skin of his face reddened by broken blood vessels rippling across his nose and cheeks.

He picked up the packet, licked his thumb, flicked straight to the last page. His droopy blue eyes focused for a moment, then he set the packet down again:

DENNIS: Four months’ security, plus first and last.

ME: So, like… [doing the math] six thousand dollars?

DENNIS: Less. $900 times six is $5,400. [sneers] You don’t work in finance, I guess.

My heart sank: I knew how much I had saved and I was about $300 short of that number. This little studio would zero out months of savings right from jump.

ME: Can I ask why? Four months’ security seems like… a lot.

DENNIS [clearing his throat]: Where are you from, uh [checks packet] Daniel? Obviously, not from New York.

ME: South F-Florida, D-Dennis. 

I’d almost called him “sir.”

DENNIS: Look, your credit’s in the toilet. This city runs on risk and housing law favors the tenant. If you lose your job and can’t make rent… well, that’s why we call it “security.” 

He concluded by clapping the packet of papers with his left palm, his fingers soft but his heavy gold ring loud against marble:

DENNIS: Pay the $5,400 today, and you can move in tomorrow.

ME: Can I pay tomorrow?

DENNIS [getting up from his chair]: Already you’re a pain in my ass. Sure. Tomorrow.

++++

Miraculously, my estimate was dead-on: I was actually almost $300 short. But my brother and my friends were all scraping by just like me. Nobody was in any kind of position to lend me that much so close to the end of the month. 

++++

I went back home defeated. I had no idea where that $300 was going to come from, and I had to be at work in a few hours.

Thankfully there was still no sign of Shane. Still, every time the vestibule door downstairs creaked open, my body froze on animal instinct. I held my breath and I counted the clomping footsteps up the stairs, exhaling only when they continued past our door to the floors above.

For the next few hours, I paced the length of the apartment, my brain cycling and scheming and hypothesizing until it exhausted me and I collapsed onto a futon that still smelled faintly of Shane’s sour sweat. 

Hanging my head over the edge of the bed, my hair brushing greasy linoleum, tears of frustration slid down across my eyebrows and forehead. My freedom was $300 away, but I owned nothing of value beyond my PS2 and some games. I absolutely couldn’t sell my rickety old MacBook, my only instrument to break the vampire temp orbit.

I caught my own upside-down reflection in the floor-length mirror that came with my room. My reddening face was filling up with blood, veins in the corners of my eyes pulsing. Behind me, on the floor beneath my lone plastic crate of books was the 19” Zenith TV that also came with the room. I’d used it once or twice to watch bootleg VCDs… maybe I could get some money for it? There was a 24-hour pawn shop on the southeast corner of Canal and Church.

But I shook my head in the mirror at myself. I was no thief. Besides, what could I possibly get for an old piece of shit TV like that?

++++

And yet: this thief found himself planting one foot in front of the next, navigating across Canal Street’s nubs of near-invisible black ice. That old Zenith dug into my freezing elbows as I struggled with the weighed-down milk crate, using my ass to push open the door to Fonseca Pawn Shop.

The three Fonseca employees inside watched me enter like predators, slowly gliding on separate trajectories to meet me at the single intake window behind bulletproof plexiglass. I’d never been inside a pawn shop before, but I’d seen enough of them in movies to know how they worked. Dropping the Zenith on the counter first, the workers chuckled:

FONSECA #1: Haven’t seen one of them bitches in a minute. Give you ten bucks.

I was shocked; it was worth even less than I expected, but I had no leverage here. I followed that with my boxed-up PS2, some games, a few of Shane’s unopened plasmo kits:

FONSECA #2: Boss, what the fuck are these?

ME: They’re collectible model kits, imported from Japan. Mint condition.

The three Fonsecas exchanged a look, shrugged together. Then I placed Shane’s gun on the counter.

Fonseca #3’s hand reflexively disappeared beneath the counter, in case this was a robbery. It wasn’t. He nodded to #1 to stand by the door. It was shady business time.

FONSECA #2: Boss, this your piece?

I nodded yes.

FONSECA #3: You got a license for it?

I shook my head no. They smiled; they’d seen me coming a mile away.

Fonseca #2’s hands reached for the pistol but didn’t touch it:

FONSECA #2: May I?

I agreed. He picked up the pistol; cocked it. With a sigh, he ejected its loaded cartridge and the extra shell in its chamber, placing it back on the counter with a clunk:

FONSECA #3: You fuckin’ for real, boss? Walking in here with a hot strap?

My nerves escaped in a chuckle:

ME: Sorry, I— I forgot to check. I just wanna get rid of it.

Another look passed between them. They could see “mark” written across my forehead.

FONSECA #2 [waving his hands over the whole lot]: I give you $260 for everything.

That was definitely a rip-off. I must have made a lemon-face as I countered with attitude:

ME: That’s not even enough for the gun, man.

FONSECA #2: Aight, $320. Final offer, boss.

I took it. Of course I did. I covered my landlord deposit, plus I had enough for a decent celebratory lunch.

++++

I went straight to my bank and put $300 on a cashier’s check, ran back uptown to Dennis’s office, came out with my house keys. Stepping back out onto Second Avenue, a flock of iridescent pigeons exploded out of my heart into the sky. I called in sick to the temp agency, laid a performance on thick, and took the crosstown bus back to Canal to pack up my shit.

++++

Upstairs in the apartment, I was shaking. I packed up Wedge in his carrier first, then threw everything I had into a duffel, a backpack, a cardboard box. I looked around my room to see if I’d missed anything.

That’s when I caught the slightest whiff of bong water, weed smoke.

The kick drum that was pounding in my ribcage leaped upwards a foot and began bashing both lobes of my brain. Every blood vessel in my eyes burst at once. The world turned red. Blood. Emergency.

As silently as I could move, I peeked outside my room into our shared kitchen. I didn’t see Shane, but his backpack was lying there by the front door. And from his aquarium-lit fuck-cave, Captain Galaxy slow-blinked back at me, the fat little shit.

I waited another three minutes, holding my breath before I knew: I was going to have to make a break for it. But I gamed it out: if I carried my shit out the front door and he was in his room, he’d hear me. And if he wasn’t home yet, I could run into him on the stairs, or in the vestibule, or even outside on the sidewalk. None of these scenarios ended well.

Feeling for my new house keys in my pocket, I took them out and kissed them for good luck. Locking into my energy from his carrier, Wedge chirped at me: it was time.

Slowly, quietly, I slid open my bedroom window, swung my legs out onto the fire escape, and began placing my items outside. I slung Wedge’s carrier strap over one shoulder, the duffle bag over the other, backpack straps over both. Looking back at my now-empty room, I caught my own face in the mirror. Terrified. Then: footsteps from inside. The top of Shane’s face peeked past the door frame into my vacated room, to the open window, to my terrified face staring back at his, frozen:

SHANE: Daniel? Hey! What the FUCK?

He turned and ran back out the front door, I assumed to intercept us around the back of the building. To do what, I still do not know.

Leaving my box behind, I let go of the rail, dropping down to the second floor, again to the first, then my feet hit crumbling asphalt and anthills of broken auto glass. I had one minute, maybe two, to get gone.

Scrambling through the back alley, crossing the street into the $19/hr parking lot, I huddled with my cat and bags, hyperventilating so loudly I knew he’d hear me.

Shane came around the back of the building, his blue eyes casting all around the alley, the sidewalk, to the parking lot across the street where I lay balled up with my knees against my chest, heart pounding from inside my ribcage to run — just fucking run.

His gaze didn’t leave the parking lot. He knew how far we could’ve gotten on so little time, he knew the survival move I’d made. Licking his lips, he started to cross the street, coming right for us. The light changed and a stream of cars blocked him from crossing.

That’s when I saw the taxi, coming from the other direction, its cab number illuminated: it was available. My knees unlocked, extended, and launched me out from behind the parked cars into the street, my hands waving frantically for it to stop. 

As its tires squealed to a halt, I wrenched open the door and leaped in blind faith like a spawning salmon. Shane stormed right out into traffic to peer in at us through the opposite window:

SHANE [spittle flying]: HEY! WHERE ARE YOU GOING, YOU LITTLE… FUCKER!!

ME [to the driver]: Go! Go, go, go, please go!

My taxi driver — a gentleman whose NYC taxi license identified as Pradeep Subramanian — smashed the gas pedal without hesitation, only making eye contact with me in his rear-view mirror as we left Shane in a cloud of ethanol-blend fumes heading uptown on Varick.

I lay back, my cat in my arms, my face sticking to vinyl seating that smelled like a thousand unwashed asses, thanking every god ever dreamt into existence for sending that yellow cab my way in that precise moment.

And then: every muscle, every nerve in my body relaxed. I sat up to give Pradeep Subramanian my address and then collapsed again, en route to a new home.

Lying on my back, my consciousness spread outward through the cab’s windows as we rolled through valleys of concrete buildings under a pulse of streetlights that suddenly gave way to suspension cables and sky.

I sat up, blinking away tears. We were leaving Chinatown via the Manhattan Bridge. From the front seat:

PRADEEP: My friend, if you are able, please tell me what that was all about.

His dark eyes met mine in the mirror again. An angel of kindness, with a twinkle of good humor.

ME: That was my… roommate, but I’m pretty sure he’s also a serial killer. 

PRADEEP: He certainly had very serial killer energy, my friend.

ME: I— I don’t know why he was chasing me, but I— think he was planning to murder me after I wouldn’t have sex with him. I barely got—

My voice just… sputtered out. I was so tired, for so long. Pradeep’s head waggled as he considered my story:

PRADEEP: My friend, you Americans are all fucking crazy.

++++

My first night in my new place, I slept on a bed of folded clothes. After situating Wedge with water and litter, I walked down to the corner bodega and bought cat food, potato chips, an Italian hoagie sandwich, a can of Guinness.

After eating one of the best meals of my life, I lay on my dusty parquet floors with Wedge snoozing on my chest, looking up at the cobwebs in my chandelier.

This would be my home, I thought to myself, for a few years at least. 

And it was.

++++

For a long time afterwards, I’d considered tipping the police off about Shane. But I had no proof, nor had I actually witnessed any crimes, unless you count the bikini briefs with the cum spot.

Also, I had stolen from him, so surfacing to prosecute him would reconnect us again, which I did not want for any reason. The Fonseca Pawn Shop had receipts with my driver’s license on file.

So I let it go, all of it. And I never saw Shane again. 

But for the next decade, wherever in the city I moved, whenever I was in the vicinity of our pocket universe, I looked over my shoulder, watching for any sign of that blond hair, that toothless grin.

Até a próxima,