Eight. Then
The night was wet, and the sky was ripe with black anticipation as we headed out into the darkness in search of Flat 56. I finally found Broadway after several dozen zigzagging motions across ridiculously steep hills and roads whose directions made no sense. If you didn’t know the road was there, you never would have found it. We parked on Railway Street, clambered up metal stairs past a bar and came to a white door scrawled with blue graffiti.
I knocked – no answer. I tentatively pushed the door open with a cautious finger. Darkness.
I smiled at Leslie. “I guess we can just walk right in.”
Leslie said nothing. Her big eyes stared at the door like a frightened deer.
Leslie, it turns out, was a failed model. She was discovered at age 14 by an agent in a McDonald’s, but no fashion houses were interested. Nor magazines or ad campaigns. Not even upscale catering services. Now Leslie was just a student, like all the others, only with bigger eyes and thinner hips.
Failure at such a young age had made her cautious. I, on the other hand, had never been served up to the big leagues for rejection, so I bounded into the narrow concrete hallway and Leslie followed close behind.
This was some place to live. It looked like an abandoned basement. Broken surfboards and mountain bikes poked out from the shadows. Clotheslines were bunched in the corners like cobwebs. The remnants of a board game were scattered across the floor. It was as if a party full of people had just vanished.
I walked along dragging my fingers behind me, tracing the rough wall edges.
“Abandon all hope ye who enter here,” I read on the wall.
A light shone at the end of the hall. Noise control notices littered the walls. The counter was covered with stacks of dishes teetering this way and that. The food had started to grow out of some plates, as if moving curiously towards the fridges for a late night snack. Five fridges of all different shapes and sizes hummed against the wall, each looking worse than the last.
Leslie gasped for air. My ears perked as a familiar voice floated in from the balcony. I stepped over a chipped polka dot pot and under a sliding window to find Adam with something that looked like a homemade bomb.
“Oh, just buy me a beer,” Adam was saying to a boy with dreads. “These were all things I had lying around at home.” The springs in his hands bounced as if alerting him of my arrival and Adam turned. “The American!”
“Canadian,” Ben insisted.
“Are you Canadian?” Adam asked.
“American,” I corrected.
“American.” Adam’s lip curled. “Your president sucks.”
“Thank you, I know.”
“But she’s a travelling American.” The boy with dreads stuck out his hand. “Morgan. Pleased.”
“Your nuclear policy is rough,” Ben drawled, lighting a cigarette, “but we can still be friends.”
“What do they teach you over there in America?” Morgan asked.
“History.”
He waved a hand. “Boring. It happened.”
“History is always happening,” I replied, taking his picture. “What do you do that’s so important?”
A grin slithered across his face. “We hack computers for money.”
“Hackers,” I mused. “Is that like pirates?”
"Pirates!" Adam yelped. "I wouldn't mess with pirates. They murdered one of our heroes last year.”
Morgan nodded solemnly. “In the Amazon.”
Adam nodded. “He could have survived, though. He only died because he fought back.” He shook his hands. “That’s just stupid.” He shook his head. “Fight bureaucracy. Fight the government. But don’t fight pirates.”
“I don’t trust computers.” I scoffed.
“Don’t trust computers?” Adam laughed. “How can you trust your mind? It can’t tell the difference between dreams and waking life.”
“Computers are the last place on earth where David can beat Goliath.” Morgan slapped Adam on the back. “Adam here unearthed a bug that could have taken out the entire country! At a conference!” he whooped. “Tis a noble thing to do, but if it were me, I would have kept that one for myself.” He paused. “Or sold it to the mafia for several hundred grand.”
Adam shook his head. “Blood money.” He proudly tapped a box at his feet. “I’d rather make this.”
I eyed the undulating device. “I don’t know if you should plug that in.”
“Nonsense,” Adam said as he sucked a thick stream of smoke through an apple. “This stuff is cutting edge. It just looks useless, because then no one will steal it.” A spring burst out of the box.
“Don’t feel bad,” I said as Adam’s face fell. “Edison failed twenty thousand times before inventing the light bulb.”
“Edison!” Adam cried. “Edison was a hack! He should have been strung up and electrocuted for what he did to Tessla.”
I glanced around. “Has anyone seen Jack?”
“Probably off with some girl.” Adam snorted.
Jack slid out from under the window. “The weather’s about to turn.” He closed the grill. “We best head inside.” He strode into the kitchen moments before the first scattered drops fell out of the sky.
“These are not the people for you,” Jack said as he slid an arm around my waist and led me away.
Shelley stood at the sink in lipstick pink pajamas, furiously attacking the dishes. “You owe me for this one, Jack.”
Jack raised his beer. “You are a princess.”
“And we need you to fix the pipes again?”
“Ooh. I would if I had my tools,” Jack said.
“Adam has some,” I told him.
“Then it’s a good thing life isn’t about being right.” Jack held up his hands, as if to prove he wasn’t lying. “Life is about getting what you want. ”
He opened his arms and spun in the hall. “What do you think of my home?”
“It’s very nice.”
“Isn’t she gorgeous? No one’s actually supposed to live here. It’s a bit il-legal. I suppose you can see why.”
Well. I just couldn’t begin to imagine. But if I did, I would start with the shower.
The bathroom looked like it had been ripped out of an airplane. It was probably best that there was no room for long glances, lest you catch sight of the tendrils of mold that curled out from the bleak yellow corners. A browning sign warned beachgoers of toxic waste, and it looked like the newest thing in the place.
The well-bred child deep in my soul curled its toes. There was a certain alarm that human beings could live in such squalor.But now every part of me was thrilled. To live without rules, or cleaning detergent. To defy every household chore ever scrawled on the bedroom door of your childhood. To build a fort and live out your days like the Lost Boys, even as the long finger of society beckoned.
This was not your quiet Manhattan apartment with chrome countertops and metallic fridge, as I could so clearly envision the future dwellings of my classmates. I didn’t need chrome countertops. I didn’t want chrome countertops. Where along the line did I start to think the only option was chrome countertops?
I cast another look around the place, my eyes settling on the stacks of upturned plates and dishes that covered the patched counter. It was nearly impossible to give a shit about this place. And so, you didn’t have to give a shit about anything. Lady Poverty had conferred on her children the freedoms of the universe.
“Wait ‘til you see my room.” Jack led me to a white door smaller than its frame. It only remained shut by a small metal padlock at the top. Shelley glared at us from the darkness of a far-off corner.
“That works?”
“It’s all you need,” Jack said as he picked the lock, threw open the broken hinges and strode into his room.
Jack flopped onto the bed. “Isn’t it great?”
I was surprised. The room wasn’t half bad. The plaster walls had been covered with bookshelves and maps an
d a huge painting of an eagle with two heads on top a twisted tree. Above his bed was a series of charcoal sketches of a beautiful girl tossing and turning in her sleep. Jack had even managed to make the exposed wood look charming – but perhaps that was merely due to his presence in the foreground grinning.
“That web a mess yesterday,” Jack mused, studying a spider in the corner with hands on his hips. “He must have been up all night fixing it.” Even the spiders were his friends.
“Poisonous,” Jack admitted. “But their teeth won’t break skin.” Then he grinned. “Try and guess the rent.”
I had passable knowledge of the market. My room at the train station squeezed students out of a hundred and eighty dollars a week.
“One ninety,” I guessed.
“Wrong!” He shot up. His eyes shined. “Seventy. Dollars. A week.”
“Can I live in your room?”
“Sure.” Jack shot a stern parental glance. “But no boys.” Jack placed his hands on my shoulders. “Now go help yourself to the vodka in the vat, stay awhile, talk a lot, and I’ll be right back.”
There was vodka? In a vat? I had but started the journey when a freshly manicured hand dug into my arm.
“Where have you been?” Leslie hissed. “I leave for a second to go to the bathroom and the next thing I know you’re GONE!”
“I was in Jack’s room.”
“Already? Anyway, listen – ” she said rapidly. “I don’t know about these people. There was this guy with a vat that wanted me to – ”
“The vat of vodka?” I interrupted her. “Where?”
“Above the fridge.” She waved her hand towards the kitchen. “But that’s not the point.” It may not have been for her but it was for me. I cut back into the kitchen and copped a quick look around. I spotted a clear plastic vat and reached up in vain.
“Can we go?”
“We just got here,” I said, peering into a glass that had some strange green film encrusted on the bottom. It would do.
Leslie’s face dripped with disbelief, hesitation and worry – all the hallmarks of someone doomed to never get their kicks. “You’re actually going to drink that?”
“Why the hell wouldn’t she?” a voice boomed from just over her left shoulder. Leslie went stiff. I assumed this was the troubling figure she had been hissing about before. I looked up. Oh come now, Leslie. What had frightened her about this gentle soul? Not the eyebrow piercing or the naked woman tattooed on his bicep. Leslie was too cultured for such shallow judgments – maybe. I conceded that it may have been the neck brace that made his head appear as if it was perched on top of a marshmallow. It gave his shoulders a bit of a hunch, which made his walk more of a lurch, and I admit, created a bit of a stalker vibe. I could grant her that.
“You should come see my room.” Stu beckoned with a finger and I saw Leslie’s shoulders stiffen.
“Why would I want to do that?”
Stu placed a hand on his chest, feigning offense. “To see the distillation process for Stu’s Brew, of course.”
What a wonderful idea! “You made this vodka?”
Stu nodded. “But that’s nothing. Wait till you try my homemade absinthe.” He raised a bottle wrapped in white paper.
I could feel my eyes involuntarily glowing. “All right!”
“No!” Leslie cried, grabbing my arm. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to be accepting random foul liquids from his guy?”
I shook her off my arm. “I’ll accept absinthe from pretty much anybody.”
“If done improperly, alcohol brewed at home can make you blind.”
“And he isn’t!” I gazed at Stu in admiration. “Isn’t he amazing?” Leslie was shaking.
“What’s wrong?” But Leslie had already turned and was sprinting for the door. I took one last sorrowful look at the bottle.
“I’ll be back,” I promised Stu before spinning on one heel and running after Leslie.
“See you tomorrow!” Adam called out as I ran past.
“Wait!” came a cry from the window. I looked up. Jack was hanging off the balcony. “Where are you going?”
“The clock struck midnight for Cinderella.” I nodded down the street. “And I’ve got this whole… what’s the word… feeling. That I don’t want to leave her alone. But I’ll be back,” I cried, breaking into a sprint in pursuit of the disappearing model. “I promise I’ll be back!”
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