it's weird how in this neighborhood a street will abruptly thins out, and there are no boys sitting on the corner or women with little babies dancing and laughing, and suddenly it's just empty storefronts shuttered by big metal grates and only these aggressive lone men yelling, "Rock, rock, rock!" at you, getting louder and louder if they think you haven't heard. On my street there are always young men there flirting and smiling, but here all the young men look old, and they're leaning on abandoned ledges, twitching, and empty porches with scratches and irregular bruises on their shoulders. The people that live here hurry by quickly past these standing men, whom I suspect don't live here, whipping out keys and opening building doors so fast! amazingly fast! Even the old hobbly grannies with walking sticks.
And, ringing a buzzer several times, finally a women opens the door. She's a vague age (twentythirtyfortysomething; bad sunburn; too tan?); her face is unnervingly serene and too large for her head almost, framed by wild, frizzy sand colored hair. Her sleepy, narrow dark eyes are unblinking. Not warm, but not cold either. Just peaceful.
"Hello, welcome," she says in a singsong bird's voice. "I'm so glad you came..."
Such a strange accent! Can't put your finger on it. The kind of woman you would trust. Just look at her expression, so trustful! You'd expect to see her taking care of the old, the sick, the poor. With those huge, swinging motherly breasts and that giving, suffering face.
Her apartment number is written hastily with magic marker on the brown, ugly door. When she turns I notice the face tattooed on her shoulder. It's an angry face, a weeping angry purple face, with empty purple-rimmed flesh colored blanks for eyes. I can't help staring.
Her apartment is surprisingly homey. The kitchen is painted pink and has neat lists of addresses and phone numbers in meticulous ball point pen handwriting. The living room is plush, flower pinned to the wall. The women shows it off, waving her hand in slow motion. "Don't you want to sit on it? Take a look. Look at all of it." The purple eyeless howling face moves up and down with all the handwaving.
As my friend investigates the bathroom she turns suddenly to me. Her sleepy eyes are surprisingly sharp, turned on me. "And you? Are you looking too?"
"N-no. I'm just here."
"If he doesn't want it, maybe you might." She moves closer. Her face--always the same face! So large and childlike, even close up, her laugh lines vague and smoothed. She could be a child... but she isn't! She's a woman. A peaceful, peacekeeping woman. A woman you can trust. She holds up her hands by her eyes and pulls at the lobes in a sharp, jerky motion. Still smiling. The purple tattoo lost in the creases of her arms. "If he doesn't like it, maybe you would. If you would like it, I might."
My friend steps out of the bathroom. "Mmmm," he nods.
The woman pulls open one of the doors. It's one of those rooms. A bare dirty mattress on the floor, some crumbled incense, and a bare swinging light bulb. "This isn't the room I'm showing but it's one of the rooms here. It's smallish. The one I'm showing you is... biggish." She smiles, this time showing her teeth. They're small and pointed and shine viciously.
"And this is the one..." Down the hall. There are five people living here, but it's dark and quiet. Random doors are shut tightly, the cheap white paint so thick I wonder if I have to kick them open to get inside. She raps politely. "Erin? Erin? Eriiin......" Her bare shoulders are egg yellow lit by the hall light. I edge behind her, careful not to brush her cloud of hair. She turns the knob and pushes the door open, carefully watching our reactions.
"Oh..." we both exclaim.
Two bare mattresses on the floor, the same menacing swinging bulb, and surprisingly large windows with thief's grating across the low end. Thief's grating because it lets you open the window except no thief can crawl through it (my made up words), except for a midget thief, and then you're in trouble. We step hesitantly inside, ashamed at violating "Erin"'s privacy. We're not only assessing the room, we're measuring Erin's worth. Erin has no photographs, no pictures on the wall, just a pathetic melted candle on the linoleum floor and oddly, 12 pairs of dirty striped jock socks wadded in pairs on the bed. No sheets even on the mattress.
It's almost 10pm on a weekday night. Where is Erin? Where is everybody else in this apartment?
I wrap my fingers around the thief bars. The view looks out onto a courtyard below, like those Berlin hof buildings without the green center. Two potbellied men below are smoking, surrounded by rusty refrigerators, stoves, trash, and broken chairs. For some reason they are lit from the ground, as if there were a fire burning, a hearth to roast something (wires? tubes?). It's not a fire but caged bulbs on the ground, their cables threading into the darkness.
"I'd like a $200 finder's fee," the woman says. Not pushy at allt, just measuring up how desperate we are. "And the rent is only $440 a month. No smokers or drugs, we're all young professionals here."
One of the potbellied men looks up at us, squinting. He grins.
"This room comes furnished."
The man mouths her words perfectly. How can he hear? We're upstairs... too far away! He grins, teeth glinting something special.
"... it's very international here... we have someone from France, someone from England..."
As he mouths "France" to the woman's melodious voice he suddenly pinches his earlobes and pulls them down hard. He pulls them down, fists clenched, (letting go? he has to let go! pulling them down past his shoulders. down to his legs. His fingers pinched together pulling his flesh down to his toes. How can he? How can it go that far?)
"... I need a deposit. And two month's notice if you're leaving. Classified ads are very... expensive..."
The other man starts shrieking laughter, like a hyena (high pitched but not loud!!!), and hugs the incredible stretching earlobe man, and pulls him back into the darkness. They melt away, vanishing, and I could swear it's like there's smoke rising up from the whole square, smoke curling up and hinting shapes almost that form before evaporating into the night. The light, the electric light, blinks suddenly and flashes out and there's nothingness.
I let go of the grating, realizing how tightly I held on. My fingers are raw, maybe bleeding. Or just sweat?
"It's nice, but maybe not what I'm looking for," Friend says simply to the woman.
On cue, she spins and urges us out of the room. A hopeless case, she knows. Friend and I dreamily now skipping down the long hall. Everything in slow motion, it seems... And out the door. Outside of the apartment, we look in at the woman, who's closing her door. "Get home safe," she sings.
