Role Play (20 page)

That started
my year of commuting from Tarrytown to Midtown. A lot of my paycheck went to paying for the train. The rest I saved up, and once Lola was free, I found our little one bedroom that barely had space for two single beds. It was on Ditmars Blvd with traffic always crisscrossing on it, so it was noisy even at night. And when the wind was from the north, I could smell the sluggish East River in the industrial bays.

Maybe Lola was right and
I had used her to afford our place in Astoria. Even though Lola didn’t have the same dream as I did about making it in the city.

I
sure hoped Lola was doing what was best for her now. Because I wouldn’t be able to help if she couldn’t handle the shark-infested waters.

The worst was
, I never heard from Victor. Not once.

It was impossible not to think about him.
I thought of him constantly in my long trips to the distant corners of the city. I kept thinking about how I had messed up with him, and the way his eyes went gray and flat as he withdrew from me. It hurt so much. So I pushed that away to remember how his hands had taken hold of my waist, pulling me in close to him. How strong and big he was, lifting me with ease. His warm breath against my face as he was deep inside of me…

It took
me back instantly to those moments, and I was lost in the pleasure again, as the remembered sensations washed through me. It was the drug I used to get through the pain. When I was lost in those moments, everything else receded: the faces on the subway or bus, the confusion of new streets, of being afraid and trying to deal with suddenly being uprooted. My own neighborhood felt strange because I knew I no longer belonged there. Soon I wouldn’t be buying my morning coffee at that corner deli or shopping for groceries in the bodega by the subway station. It really hurt that I wouldn’t be able to walk in the park along the East River anymore and watch the tugs go by.

Doggedly I went through my days, going to work and even making it to class on Wednesday. At that moment,
making it to class felt pretty heroic. Every other second was spent trying to find a new home. I normally would have kept my troubles to myself at work, ever mindful of my need to rise in the ranks. But I couldn’t pretend that the weekend went great when it had been a complete disaster, resulting in the need to find a new apartment and the loss of my potential most-sexy boyfriend. The girls were sympathetic, including Kalisha, and they agreed that the only thing rich men wanted from girls like us was sex on the side with no strings attached.

It didn’t occur to me to go to my family with my tale of woe. They had their own problems to deal with. My older brother had helped me out before, but according to his Facebook updates, he was also searching for a new place to rent upstate where he could live with his fiancé.

Besides, it wasn’t money that I needed. I needed a room in the city that wasn’t awful where I could try to rebuild my life.

At one point
I found myself sitting on a bench, not sure where I was. The search had overwhelmed me. People streamed by in a sea of scissoring legs, not noticing me.

I
was lost.

Nobody cared. Nobody came to help me. I don’t know how long I sat there until I realized that if I didn’t pick up my own butt and get on my feet, everything I had worked for would be ruined. I couldn’t let myself slide back into living in Peekskill or Tarrytown or wherever my mom had landed this month. I had to fight, even when there was no fight left in me.

Standing back up from that bench, I felt like was in a deep, deep hole. And I would have to claw my way out one step at a time.

The first step was the worst. But after that, I went into auto-pilot, turning off my mind as I smiled at prospective roommates, ignor
ed the rejection and refused to get my hopes up. It was easier that way, to go numb. Numb was better than feeling so awful.

After work on Friday
, my first appointment took me on the 7 train only one stop into Queens to Long Island City, where I got a bus to go over the Pulaski Bridge into Greenpoint. It was one of the closest places I had seen advertised, but the big disadvantage was that it was nowhere near a subway line into the city. Waiting for the bus among a crowd of stoic commuters was no fun, and I could tell it would be freezing in the winter with wind blowing off the river. But as a bonus the city skyline was practically within arm’s reach.

The bus let
me off on McGuinness Blvd, a very busy 6-lane artery that carried truck traffic along the industrial corridor west of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Greenpoint looked a lot like my Astoria neighborhood with two-family houses mixed in with tenement buildings and small warehouses. There were lots of trees, which I liked. Even though I was tired, I perked up on the two block walk from the bus stop.

The
address was for a big blocky building, three stories high. The brick wall on the ground floor had a large bay door. A mural covered it like graffiti writ large. I had to check to make sure it was the right place. It looked like a warehouse.

Buzzing the 2
nd
floor, a scratchy voice told me to come up.

The black-painted stairs reminded
me unpleasantly of the Chamber, but here light poured down from the ancient skylight in the ceiling. Several bikes were chained to the pipes running up the walls, and the garbage cans smelled terrible.

At the top of the
first flight of stairs was a table piled with envelopes, so many they were spilling off. A guy opened the door and saw me looking down at them.

“We need to toss all that. Mostly it’s for old tenants and junk mail. Every few months the landlord throws it away.” He smiled at
me. “Are you Sierra or Lucy?”

“Sierra.”
Strike one against the place—he was a guy.

He opened the door for
me to come in. His black hair was so curly it made corkscrews falling around his bony face. He was smiling a lot, and had that overly-relaxed bohemian air. “I’m Jake. This is it!”

His hand swept out to encompass a large room with
three battered couches of various colors and sizes, with tables scattered among them. A large plain dining table was closest to the door with eight assorted chairs pulled haphazardly around it.

I
was kind of appalled, especially when I saw the large bathroom created by drywall to create an open-air nook, exactly like the kitchen area. There were two refrigerators in the kitchen, and Jake showed me the cabinet that would be mine and the empty shelves in one fridge waiting for the new occupant.

“How many people live here?”
I asked faintly.

“
There’s five bedrooms.”

Strike two—
I couldn’t imagine sharing an apartment with that many people.

Lining
one long wall were a series of doors. One of them had a padlock on it. “Marky is out of town. He travels with a touring company. I think he’s in Phoenix this week.”

Near
the back, Jake flung open a door to reveal an eight by ten room. A sturdy wooden loft bed filled the end wall over the window that had lots of small rectangular panes. It was actually half of a window with the makeshift wall cutting it in half so it was shared by the room next door.

“You can open this part,” Jake explained, turning the handle so one pane of the window swung outward. “You have two in here. I almost swiped this room when Sheila left, but I like being on the
front end. It’s quieter than back here by the kitchen.”

“That’s some sales pitch you have there.”

Jake laughed. “It is what it is. You want to see the roof? We like to hang out there in the evening.”

“
Who’s we?”

“The folks on our floor and the third floor.
There’s eight rooms up there. Ours is smaller because the landlord lives in the back, through that door.”

I
looked at yet another black-painted door between the kitchen and the last room. “His place is through there?”

“Yeah.
It’s handy when the toilet stops up.”

“I’m sure.”

I followed Jake up the stairs, but I didn’t know why I was bothering. This was
not
the place for me. Most definitely.

Then
I was on the tar-paper roof looking at one of the best views of the city I had ever seen. Manhattan stretched north and south, the golden glow of the afternoon sun catching the windows.

“Wow!”
I exclaimed. “You can see all of the bridges!”

“You should see it at night,” Jake told
me. “We watched the fireworks from here on the Fourth. We have a huge party every year.”

From the trio over in one corner, a
n obnoxiously loud voice called, “She’s invited next year! Jake, tell your pretty friend she’s invited.”

The invite
came from the heavy-set guy reclining in the folding chair next to some boxed soil where vegetables grew. The man and two women were sitting under the shade cast by a big umbrella.

“She’s here to see Sheila’s room,” Jake explained.

I followed him over. The man was wearing beaten-up shorts and a T-shirt, and his cheeks had four days stubble on them. But his head was perfectly smooth and bald.

“Keith, Candice and
Devi, this is Sierra,” Jake introduced.

The three of them nodded at
me, looking me over. It was every horrible experience I had gone through in my room search, rolled into one. I felt judged and dismissed in seconds.

“Why is she smiling
weird like that?” Devi asked Candice. Devi was all softness: soft white flesh, soft beige clothes, and soft washed-out hair.

“I don’t know.”
Candice’s blunt voice much lower than I expected. After a moment, I realized Candice might be a guy. Or a very manly woman who was rocking a black chiffon blouse.

“
This isn’t a job interview, honey,” Candice told me, raising her voice like I was a little slow.

I
realized I
was
smiling. It was my at-work face that I wore without thinking anymore. The pleasant approachable face I put on around people I needed to please. It was the trick that Lola could never learn, or never wanted to learn.

That reminded
me of how happy Lola had looked at Festival, before our fight.

My
smile vanished.

“That’s better,”
Devi said in her high wispy voice.

Jake was still standing there, and he was grinning from ear-to-ear.
I asked, “How come he can smile and not me?”

“Jake means it,”
Devi said.

I
had no defense without my smile-shield, so my feelings of loss and unhappiness lapped over me. “Most people don’t want to rent a room to someone who’s a downer.”

“Are you a downer?”
Devi asked curiously.

“Not usually. But it’s been a bad week. That’s why I’m looking for a place.”

Candice sat forward eagerly. “Divorce? Cheating boyfriend? Murdered roommate?”

“Uh… no.”
I gave her a look. “My sister left and I can’t afford my apartment without her.”

Candice and
Devi sat back, clearly disappointed that I didn’t have a juicier story. I had failed to impress the owners of yet another apartment I didn’t want. It was demoralizing.

But
Keith finally spoke again, declaring, “You look like you need a beer.”

He popped open the cooler next to his chair and held out a Corona. “
There’s limes on the cutting board.”

It was barely four in the afternoon, a little early to start drinking. And
I had three other places to see, so I really didn’t have time. But the breeze on the roof was cool, and the empty chair in the shade looked inviting.

Candice and
Devi started talking like they were carrying on a conversation that I had interrupted by my arrival. Something about an ex-boyfriend, and a new girl he was seeing.

“Sure,”
I agreed, accepting the beer from Keith. “Why not?”

Jake went back down to wait for the next applicant, while
I fixed my beer and settled into the chair. It was even more comfortable in the shade with the fine breeze lifting my hair off my forehead. The city was spread out in front of me like I could pluck anything I wanted from it. But that was an illusion. The city dangled the possibility of amazing things, but how could I get any of that for myself? I was stuck in a low-end job and would live in a low-end dive. It had been that way for years and would continue that way for years to come. I knew it wasn’t easy working your way up, but I hadn’t expected that every rung would be this herculean effort.

I
leaned my head back against the chair, hoping Keith wouldn’t try to talk to me. I was glad for a moment of peace before I had to hit that bus ride back to the subway and civilization.

I
only got half way through my beer when Jake spoiled it by bringing Lucy onto the roof. Lucy was a bouncy girl who reminded me of a terrier with her shaggy hair and constant yapping.