You’ve won.
You’ve finally won at New York City. Not in the trust fund, big tech job, or Christopher Walken as King of New York kinda way. But for a bowl-cut Jesus camp kid from the sticks who grew up romanticizing life in the big city—a paint-splattered open loft life with a mattress on the floor surrounded by half-read books and half-finished art projects—to finally arrive and spend the past seven years bouncing from one overpriced shoebox-sized sublet to the next, from overtime to second job to side hustle, with a borrowed futon, a dead kindle and an unopened set of acrylic paints—this is winning.
This is signing—well, e-signing—the lease for your new rent-controlled, one-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village.
Click.
Okay, so it’s not “rent-controlled,” exactly. “But it might as well be,” said Felix, your friend who lives in 3A, and got you the place. He’s lived in the building for twenty-three years, “because, Dick—” a.k.a., the landlord, Richard Sterns, “—barely wants anything to do with the place.” Not in a slumlord-y sorta way, but more like a “journey-to-transcend-all-wants” sorta way, Felix had explained before the signing. Dick inherited the building over fifty years ago and now lives in a cult-y monastery in the Catskills. Apartments only open up in the building when people die, and, according to Felix, Dick only excepts new tenants on recommendations from his “oldest, most trusted, and least eccentric tenants,” like himself. Felix chewed the consonants of the word “eccentric,” like a milder flavor of “insane.” And Dick gives the same “journey-to-transcend” spiel to every new tenant, he said.
On the train to your next gig, you’re buzzing, anxious with excitement to get your own “journey-to-transcend” spiel. The call finally comes when you’re walking a hoard of rich people’s dogs around Battery Park. Dick’s got this sage-like chain-smoker voice, raspy but gentle, terse but rambling. Over the staticky phone connection and all the barking, it feels downright ceremonial, a rite of passage.
It's only after the call, as you’re still savoring the slow realization that this is really happening, when it occurs to you that, even at a monastery, Dick can’t transcend his own cost of living. Or else, he’d sell the place, or give it away. Wouldn’t he? You text Felix.
“No. Never.” he responds. Then a few moments later: “Well… maybe.”
“Has he ever raised the rent?” you write.
The ellipses in Felix’s talk bubble pulsates. “Just twice,” he sends, finally, “to push out problem people. As long as you pay on time, he won’t raise. That, and you don’t start any trouble.”
In another message, he adds, “Monks have the worst tempers…”
“LOL?” you send back through squinted eyes, battling a minor allergy attack from all the dog hair. Felix doesn’t respond.
That night, after the dogs are walked and you’ve delivered a few to-go dinners using a rented City Bike, you stop by to see the apartment building. It’s white, more or less: a patchwork of different shades of colorless tones painted over graffiti tags. It’s otherwise featureless except for the rust-colored fire escape clinging to its face like a dental head brace with ten windows that resemble a sideways mouth of gritted teeth. Only two are lit, one pearly white, and the other yellow. You find your own darkened tooth at the top left and wonder about your new neighbors. They’re mostly older, according to Felix, real old-school New Yorkers, who brushed shoulders with Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith at Washington Square Park and the Bitter End and Caffe Reggio. Perhaps they are a bit eccentric, which could mean anything. You imagine painters and poets, jazz music bleeding through the walls, and you smile. Sure, it might have some problem people, but what building doesn’t? It’s NYC. Heaven knows your last two buildings did. But part of you recognizes that even if Sheila and her cat with no bladder control that she insists on walking up and down the hall on a leash, or Ricardo who runs a pickling business out of his second bathroom did so here, you’d love them for it.
You cross the street to your soon-to-be front door, fluorescent light humming behind the frosted glass, and find your buzzer on the panel: 5B. There, on the street, surrounded by tourists and drunk NYU kids, you do a little dance. All are watching. No one cares. God, you love this city.
Just then, the door opens and out comes a tall, round, lumbering man with paint-splattered jeans, long gray-blond ringlet curls, glassy, deep-set eyes and a clunky old key on string around his neck. He has a sorta stoner teddy bear affect. The kind of guy you can easily imagine toking up with Jimi back in the day in the backroom of Café Wha?.
“What the fuck are you so giddy about?” the blond bear-man says through a sweet, boyish laugh. His nasal voice is small for a man of his physical presence, and thick with the smell of tobacco.
You introduce yourself. “I’m your new neighbor,” you add, “just had my ‘journey-to-transcend’ spiel today!”
Bear-man scrunches his broad forehead, then appears to remember with a heaving guttural laugh. He probably had his own spiel back when Jimi was still alive, not to mention transcended his fair share of brain cells since then. “I’m Gael, 1A. Welcome to the building,” he says, putting forward an unwieldy, arthritic hand. You take it.
“Before I go,” Gael says, “take my card.” He digs in his loose denim pockets for a short stack of cards, bound by a rubber band, and crumpled at the edges. He hands you one. It reads: Gael Bowen / El-Bow Grease Locksmiths / Founder and CEO / Greenwich Village, est. 1969, with a phone and fax number. Now that’s old school, you think.
“I know this place!” you say. “The one with the statues made of keys in the window.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Gael says dismissively, then locks eyes with you. “The other locksmiths around here are sharks,” he says. “You always call me, and I’ll always take care of you.”
You agree, making a show of pocketing the card before Gael goes on his way. That man is the real deal, you think. The real paint-splattered, hand-rolled-cigarettes-on-the-fire-escape deal. One day, you think, you’ll be a real old school New Yorker just like him.
~