The View from the Vue (24 page)

For some reason, the Lords of Stuyvesant Town looked with favor on the Bellevue house staff. My wife and I sent in an application while we were paying $115 a month for the privilege of sharing three rooms with a brigade of cockroaches on East Nineteenth Street. Just nine months later, we moved to Stuyvesant Town, leaving the frozen water pipes and the vermin behind for the next lucky pair of newlyweds. Unbelievably, our new rent was only $88 a month.

Naturally there had to be a catch. Before we moved in, we were carefully screened. Then we signed a statement promising to abide by a long and complex set of rules and regulations, all aimed at maintaining the loveliness of the buildings and grounds. The list of thou shalt nots was impressive: walk on grass, slam doors, paint walls, install appliances and appurtenances (whatever they were), keep animals on the premises, and on and on literally for pages. My friend Mike Zimmerman, who also lived in Stuyvesant Town, summed it up one day by telling me that in his building, the residents were allowed to engage in sexual intercourse only on alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Stuyvesant Town apartments were arranged in a linear fashion: our kitchen, dining area, living room, bathroom, and bedroom all opened off the right of a hallway that ran the length of the apartment. Only the coat closet opened to the left, right opposite the bathroom. Next door to each apartment was a mirror-image unit.

The inhabitant of our mirror-image was named Lizzie. At least, that’s what Myra, my wife, and I called her. The name on her door plate read Elizabeth Oursley.

Lizzie was about fifty-five, tall, and gray-haired. Any way you looked at her, she was all angles, skinny and sticking out in every direction. She always wore a cotton-print dress. Her apartment was spotlessly clean and liberally adorned with antimacassars and glass and plaster figurines.

We first got to know Lizzie by post. One night while we were eating dinner, an envelope slid under the door and came to rest near Myra’s feet. She tore it open and read it, and then began to laugh uproariously. “‘This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen,” she spluttered, as the tears began to run down her cheeks.

“What is it?” I asked.

She brushed the tears away, and pushed the note across the table to me. It said:

“What the hell is so funny?” I asked.

“It’s a riot,” choked my wife.

“Some riot. Of all the kooks in New York, I have to pick one to live next to who listens at the wall with a stethoscope.”

“I hope she gets a charge.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to move my bed across the room and sleep under the window for her. Let
her
sleep under
her
window.”

“Relax, dear,” said Myra. “We’ll probably never hear another thing about it.”

It took me a while to get to sleep that night. Every time one of us turned over and a bedspring squeaked, my neck muscles tightened and I gnashed my teeth. By the time morning came around, I had conceived a thorough and heartfelt hatred for my keen-eared neighbor.

The next night I was on call at the hospital. Myra stayed with me to help with the laboratory work. We were busy, so rather than go home at 2
A.M.
, she slept the rest of the night in my hospital room. I was up all night, and by the following evening I was pretty irritable. After supper I was dozing in the living room when the phone rang. Myra was in the bathroom, so I answered it. A high, nervous voice with a slight quaver asked, “Is this Apartment 14?”

I allowed that it was.

“Well, this is Apartment 15.”

I began to wake up.

“Did you get my note two nights ago?” asked the voice.

I said we had.

“Well, sir, I really do wish you would pay attention to it. Last night, your…your…your
cavortings
kept me up most of the night. I really don’t want to make trouble, but I will not—”

“Just wait a minute, please,” I interrupted. “Do you mean last night or the night before?”

“I mean
last night
. I know what I mean. And you know what I mean, too. And furthermore, I want to tell you that I will not tolerate this indecency! Do you understand?”

The question was rhetorical, because before I could get more than “urk” out, she had hung up with a slam. As I replaced the receiver, Myra walked in and asked who it was.

“It was Mrs. Apartment 15,” I said. “She wanted to complain about our scandalous behavior last night.”

“But we weren’t home.”

“I know. But she seems to think we were.”

Myra looked puzzled. “Now what?” she asked.

“Christ, I don’t know. Is she violent? Might she kill?”

Myra giggled. “Loony Lizzie took an ax and gave her neighbor forty whacks.”

“Well,” I said. “Maybe we ought to meet the lady. At least see what we’re up against.”

“You or me?”

“Both. Then, if she starts screaming or something, we’ll be around to help each other.”

“Should we call and invite her over some night?”

“You kidding? Let her in here? Let’s go to her place. Now.”

“Just walk over?”

“Sure, why not?”

Myra shrugged, and we went out the door and walked the six paces to Apartment 15. We knocked, and an eye appeared at the peephole. “Yes? What is it?” piped the phone voice.

“My name is Apartment 14, but my friends call me Laurence Karp,” I said. “My wife and I want to talk to you.” In retrospect, I think it’s possible that I might have been showing a little hostility.

Lizzie opened the door and let us into her neat and ordered little world. I wondered whether there was a plaque hidden behind a sofa in memory of the last living bacterium in the apartment who had died a horrible death before the relentless epidemic of Mr. Clean.

I was not prepared for the reception we got. My stars, she was just terribly sorry to raise all that fuss, and really, we did look like such a lovely young couple, and she certainly did hope we understood how embarrassing it all was for her. Finally, she assured me that henceforth she would call me Mr. Karp, not 14, and that I was to feel free to address her as Mrs. Oursley. “Now,” she beamed, “wouldn’t you like a nice cup of tea?”

My wife and I had a sudden attack of Hanselandgretelitis, but despite a frantic exchange of stares and mouthings, we could think of no tactful way out. Mrs. Oursley put on the water and sat down.

I hemmed once and hawed a couple of times, and then, with all good tact and consideration, I introduced the major topic by informing our hostess that neither my wife nor I had been at home the previous evening.

“Well,” she said, “I really don’t understand that. I did hear something, you know.”

Then she smiled at us. Sweetly. She looked just like anyone’s dear little gray-haired mother. I know she didn’t believe me. We had really been at home, had fornicated wildly and loudly and via every forbidden orifice, and now we were trying to pull the wool over her eyes.

At that point, she changed the subject. She chattered on for a half an hour or so about life as a lonely middle-aged woman in lovely Stuyvesant Town. I wondered whether or not there had ever really been a Mr. Lizzie. If so, he had long since passed to what had to be his just reward.

Later in the evening, as we left, Lizzie reminded us what lovely young people we were, and how she was just certain that there would be no more unpleasant misunderstandings. Those were the words she used.

About a week later, I came home from work, and found a letter addressed to Mr. Karp, Apt. 14. I ripped open the envelope and found a surprise. Rather than another circumlocutory assortment of euphemisms related to my satyrical pursuits, it was a plainly worded memorandum from one of the assistant managers of Stuyvesant Town, requesting that I meet with him two afternoons hence, in order that we might clarify some unpleasant misunderstandings.

My immediate impulse was to bash in the door at Apartment 15, beat the occupant to death with a figurine, and leave her wrapped in antimacassars on the assistant manager’s office doorstep. However, I restrained myself. The cool-headed approach, I decided, would be better.

The next afternoon my wife told me she had gotten a phone call from the assistant manager. “But he wouldn’t talk to me,” she said. “He wanted to know if you had received his note.”

“What did you say?”

“Oh, I played dumb. I asked him what he wanted, and what it was all about, and you should have heard him splutter. Finally, he just asked me to tell you he wants to see you at four o’clock tomorrow, and if you have any questions, you should feel free to call him.”

“You really embarrassed the poor man.”

“No, dear. He embarrassed himself. I didn’t do a thing.”

At four o’clock the next day, I went to the office of the assistant manager. He was the very model of an assistant manager in the early 1960’s: about forty, balding, sweaty, with rimless glasses, and a habit of looking at his watch at approximately thirty-second intervals. I had the feeling that if I had asked him at mid-interval for the time, he’d have had to glance again before he’d have been able to tell me.

With a “Dr. Karp, I’m glad you could come,” he showed me to a seat, and then proceeded to apologize profusely for having addressed my envelope to Mr. Karp. “That was the name I was given. I didn’t realize you were a doctor until I, uh, checked your, uh, records here.”

I assured him that I was neither crushed nor angered by his oversight, and that I could indeed find it in my heart to forgive him.

“Uh, let me come to the point, uh, Dr. Karp. It’s about your neighbor in 15—”

“Mrs. Oursley.”

“Yes, of course, Mrs. Oursley. Uh, Dr. Karp, uh, the problem is, uh, Mrs. Oursley…uh, says, uh…”

He paused and mopped his brow; he looked as though he were going to wring out his handkerchief in the wastebasket. I decided that the only decent thing to do was to put him out of his misery.

“Mrs. Oursley has been complaining that our nocturnal behavior is disturbing her,” I said.

The assistant manager allowed himself a tentative smile. “Yes, Dr. Karp. That’s well put.” He glanced at his watch. “She says she has mentioned it to both you and your wife on several occasions, and has asked you to move your bed to the other end of the room. Now, that doesn’t sound unreasonable, does it?”

“Actually, it does,” I said. “For several reasons. First, it’s too cold to sleep under the window. Furthermore, if we put the bed on any other wall, we’d have to walk across it to get to the other side of the room.”

“But—”

“What’s more, this lady hears noises when there are none.”

“What do you mean?” He wiped his forehead, and then snuck a glance wristward.

“Because last Tuesday night she called to tell me that we had kept her up the whole night before. I was at the hospital for the whole night. What’s more, just to keep the issues straight, my wife spent the entire night with me at the hospital. And furthermore, I can assure you, we did not give another couple the key to our place. In short, our apartment was empty that night.”

The assistant manager looked stricken. I could see the little men with hammers begin to whack at his temples. “Oh, I was afraid it was something like that again,” he whimpered.

“Like what—again?” I whimpered back.

“Oh, Dr. Karp, it’s just terrible. Last year, we had something very much like this happen. A man—a very nice man—lived in the building next to yours, and the woman who lived in the apartment downstairs from him kept complaining to us that he was making obscene advances to her. He denied ever having spoken to her. In fact, he said he had never even noticed her. She called us every day; one time it would be a proposition in the hall, and the next, an obscene phone call. We just didn’t know what to do.”

Yes indeedy, I thought. In Stuyvesant Town, you really can’t tell the players without a scorecard. But I smiled sympathetically, and he went on.

“Well, I’ll tell you, we were really in a spot. Finally, one day, she rang his doorbell without a stitch of clothing on.”

I guffawed. I couldn’t help it. “Stark raving nude?” I asked.

He looked a bit sternly at me, and then checked the hour, minute, and second. “Uh…yes, yes. She began to claw at him, and was screaming ‘Rape me, rape me, goddamnit.’ Or something like that. Fortunately, one of the other neighbors saw the whole thing and called the police, and they took her off.”

At that point I had it made, and I knew it. I scratched my head and mused, “Well, that is frightening. Actually, I
have
been a bit worried about my wife’s safety when I’ve been away. As you know, I work at night a lot.”

“Oh yes, I can imagine an intern’s lot is not pleasant.”

He really had checked me out thoroughly. “Yes, we work every other night. And while I’m down here talking to you, the fellow who was on call all last night is doing my work and his too. Then, when I do get home, I have to put up with these notes and phone calls.” I was almost shouting; I had myself convinced how angry I was. “I do hope this will be the end of the matter.”

“I’m sure it will be, Dr. Karp.” 4:17:41. “I will speak to Mrs. Oursley and tell her that I’m convinced that there is nothing more that you can do to accommodate her, and that she must not disturb you further, or we will have to ask
her
to vacate.”

I said my thanks and left him drying off his forehead, undoubtedly trying to remember what insane impulse had led him to major in business administration and not in something reasonable like veterinary medicine.

About a week and a half later I was spending the night at The Vue when, about midnight, a patient was admitted to my service. She was a feeble, eighty-seven pound, eighty-seven-year old, white-haired lady who was totally out of it. To any question I put to her, she only smiled sweetly and patted me on the hand and arm. She had been sent in from her nursing home with an admission diagnosis of fecal impaction, which seemed like a hell of a reason for a midnight admission, but at Bellevue the unusual was commonplace. Seeing the futility of trying to take a history, I patted her back on the arm and began to do a physical examination. I didn’t get far. Her pulse was thready, rapid, and terribly irregular. So I quickly checked her heart and lungs, which made it clear that she was going into heart failure. Hooking her up to an electrocardiograph machine, the cause showed itself to be a severe heart attack. All the usual therapeutic procedures for heart attacks and failure didn’t seem to do anything for her, but she appeared to be comfortable. Then, I began to wonder whether her apparent senility was really only the result of a temporary oxygen deficiency in the brain as a result of the heart attack—that sometimes does happen. So I looked up the phone number of the nursing home, called the place, and got connected with the nurse on my patient’s former floor. I identified myself and asked her whether she remembered Mrs. O’Leary.