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The Next(3)

By:Rafe Haze


     



 

The Dominican delivery guy from Yum Yum's was fuming with one raised,  thick, dark eyebrow and pursed white lips. He stiffly shoved the receipt  through the eight-inch crack I'd conceded. I handed him a Ziploc bag  containing nine dollars and twenty cents of coins and reached for the  white plastic bag of Pad Thai Plop and Kung Crap Soup. He defiantly  backed up twenty feet and placed the bag on the floor. He shot me a  bitchy look and strode to the stairs.

Yappity yap yap.

Fuckity fuck fuck.

I guess I was eating the last of the Quaker oats tonight.





Chapter Four

December eighth turned to March eighth.

If there was a Next, it was hardly making an effort to seep its way into  this hole of dazzling vitality. The utility bills now were underscored  with red. Un-watered songs died in the drought. No more phone service.  No more internet service. Johanna couldn't contact me even if she wanted  to, and it was more than plain she did not want to.

Disconnected. Totally disconnected.

I hadn't heard the thumping music upstairs … since … God, I had no idea. A  month? Six months? A year? I guess tweaking twinkie twat moved out. He  probably hooked up with some Rockefeller Hilton Koch brother and was now  living rent-free in a sparkling new loft west of the High Line in  return for wearing twelve-hundred dollar distressed Boss jeans with a  Velcro ass-flap for easy access by Daddy any time Daddy could get away  from Wifey. Hoo-fucking-ray for Twinky Twat.

Tweaking Twinky Twat had a name...Nate … eh … something …

Roach in the sink.

Let it live or blend it into the disposal? I ran the water and flipped  on the disposal. I let it run, growling furiously. On impulse, I took a  shot glass and shoved it down the disposal just to hear the sound of it  darting and banging, trapped within the metal walls, then resigning  itself to being shaved with violent shrieking into slivers by the savage  spinning metal blades, ground back into the sand it once was before  someone melted it into hard fragile smoothness. Miraculously, the  fucking roach climbed out of the disposal unscathed. With my bare  palm … crack … squish.

I don't feel anything.

The disposal continued to growl. My eye was caught by the light trying  to pry into my cave between the cracks of the leveler blind in front of  the sink. When was the last time any of the curtains or blinds had been  opened? Since I moved in three years ago, I'd close them only when I was  working simply to contain the banging on my piano keys and prevent my  warbling from leaking to the courtyard or the neighbors. Then half a  year ago, I kept them closed simply because opening and closing them  every day became a hassle.

Neighbors. Curious word. It implies more than just proximity. Certainly  the connotation of neighborly assumes some degree of watchfulness,  friendliness, and interaction. But this was New York City. Those folks  across the courtyard were the puppets who occupied the apartments of  whatever windows you can see from yours. No more. Nobody cared for more,  apart from entertainment. I don't think the occupants I could see from  my window across the courtyard were any more or less entertaining than  any other apartment's view.

In the building to the left at the top were the Couch Potatoes-a gay  couple who did nothing every single evening of their smashingly  glamorous life but plop their plump selves onto the couch with a plate  of pasta and watch The Walking X Glee Revenge Dead Factor.

Underneath them lived Schlongzilla, a half black, half Brazilian,  six-foot three, thirty-something guy perpetually dressing to go out to  somewhere where one sees and is seen. His indispensable contribution to  society could be reduced to one Saturday last summer when he spent no  less than an hour and forty-five minutes in front of the mirror  deliberating on whether or not to wear the distressed low-cut jeans, the  boat-collared ribbed sweater, the paper-thin sky-blue hoodie that  draped off his gigantic pecs and rear deltoid boulders with just the  right waterfall fluidity, the kicky printed Airforce-sort-of T, or the  metallic silver gangsta hightops. Then he grabbed his laundry bag and  box of Tide detergent and headed out the door. An hour and forty-five  minutes! For Christ's sake, when you've got shoulders and hips that are  broad and narrow enough to essentially give you the proportions of a  six-foot three crucifix, everything hangs well on you.

To be fair, Schlongzilla served more purpose in this world than being  one of New York's walking coat hangers. He was, in fact, hung to his  knee and didn't care two shits which neighbors took notice. Every time  Schongzilla received a phone call and then hurriedly bolted out the door  with his collapsible massage table in tow, some Upper East Side wife  could count on some major migraine alleviation. If you're hung like  Saddlebred, you practically have a social obligation to prance like one  too. That's what Johanna used to say anyway.         

     



 

In the brownstone directly in front of my window on the second story  lived The Princess. She would have her hair up tight in a bun when she'd  come home from work, and then let her hair down in a long, flowing  perfect, Pre-Raphaelite mane. Her studio apartment was small and  shimmering in white, with a four-poster bed draped in sheer white gauze,  perfectly placed oversized white pillows, and glimmers of silver combs  and frames and knickknacks on her silver mirrored dressing table. I'd  watched her tentatively date and tentatively retreat into the safety of  her shiny white palace at least four times since she moved in. She'd  spend a sad two months reading alone on her white quilt, retrench, and  paint that smile back on again for the next round.

Above her, occupying the top two floors of the brownstone, lived the  Perfects. He was a dashing forty-something man with salt and pepper hair  and the kind of body that requires working out three hours a day every  day. She was a stunningly gorgeous brunette. He had a propensity for  suits that would be quite at home in any Condé Nast magazine, and she  wore chic dresses Johanna used to recognize from Parisian ready-to-wear  runway shows. In fact, Johanna was quite familiar with Mrs. Perfect,  recognizing her as the president of some competing luxury women's design  company. Mrs. Perfect had a name fashion folks all knew, but I never  registered it. They had two rambunctious children under ten years old  and an enormous apartment straight out of Architectural Digest. The  household was rarely still during the week: chasing the son to sit him  down for homework hour, calming the daughter's anxious crying fits,  excited family pizza nights. The family would disappear on Friday  nights, so I assumed they'd weekend in Connecticut or Bucks County or  the Hamptons. Frequently Mr. Perfect would stay home and work on the  weekend alone. I supposed he was a CEO or a partner of a firm.

When Johanna would come over, she would often first check to see if the  Perfects were home, then close our curtains if they were. I assumed the  reason was that she didn't want word spreading in her world that she was  dating a slob like me. Correction: she did not want to curtail her  future employment possibilities through any embarrassing associations.

In the building on the right at the top lived the Beached Whale, an  enormous multi-chinned lady in her forties who ate popcorn every night  on her side, propped on her forearm, watching television, until she'd  fall asleep and spill the popcorn on the floor. I don't think I ever saw  her go out in the evening. Not once.

Below her lived the Broadway Dancer, milk-white and smooth with zero  body fat and abdominal definition I could distinctly see across the  courtyard. He had the energy of a whippet on Red Bull. When he was in a  show, I only saw him in the afternoons. When he wasn't, he would spend  his evenings unselfconsciously in his underwear on the dark brown love  seat sofa with his laptop in his lap and the television on for hours on  end.

On the courtyard level below the Broadway Dancer lived the Little Old  Man. Not an inch on him was unwrinkled or undarkened with liver spots.  His body had shrunken as his bones retracted from muscular neglect, and  his diminutive appearance was exaggerated by a growing hunched posture  caused by his looking down at the ground all the time. I'd no idea how  he survived alone, but I'd never seen a nurse enter or leave his  apartment. I'd never seen a family member or friend enter or leave his  apartment. Except …

Once a month, an old, bald, black man with a white mustache appeared at  his doorway and handed the old man a bag full of cans of beef and  chicken soup and a Ziploc bag of weed in exchange for a couple bills  taken from a Chock Full O'Nuts coffee can kept below the sink next to a  plunger. The handover was followed by a dispassionate handshake, and the  black man would disappear until the next month.

Apart from a slow shuffling traverse to the bathroom to pee twice a day  or to the stove in the tiny kitchenette to heat a can of soup over a gas  flame, the Little Old man spent almost his entire existence under a  maroon sheet in his bed, propped up by sagging yellowed pillows that  held his head aloft to watch television and light up a joint. He never  closed his curtains; he'd lived too many years to give a flying fuck if  any neighbor saw his sagging skin wearily clinging to his frail frame,  let alone his skeletal ass or stretched grey testicles.