I heard a man yell in the apartment above me, a door slam, and heavy footsteps on the stairs.
When I woke up, I discovered a cat who seemed to live on the fire escape. He wasn’t conversational after I opened the window and tried to talk to him over my steaming cup of tea. I finally left him so I could do a housecleaning job for I Dream of Cleanie: a Midtown loft, which made my new place look even worse.
Still, it was home, so when I got off the bus at my stop, I was determined to make the best of things. I immediately stepped into a small pond. My feet made sloshing noises with every step I took. I crossed against traffic to a deli on the corner and used my debit card to stock up on orange juice and Ramen.
Finally, I entered the ugly brown behemoth of a tenement building I now called home. Even though I’d lived there less than twenty-four hours, I checked my mailbox. I liked writing people more than talking to them on my cell phone. Now that I no longer had a computer and e-mail, anyone who wanted to keep in touch would have to buy a stamp.
I hadn’t unpacked anything but a box of kitchen stuff. The rest of my boxes, bags, and other things were piled just inside the doorway of the apartment. I closed the door and rooted through a Duane Reade bag filled with toiletries until I found a half-full bottle of NyQuil, uncapped it, and chugged. A knock on the door startled me, almost causing me to choke.
The first of my roommates had arrived.
I had only the vaguest acquaintance with Kendra Bowers. We’d sat next to each other in a class during my first semester at college, bitched together about the instructor, and found out that we liked the same music. Then we bumped into each other by chance in a restaurant where Kendra was waiting tables. During our conversation, we discovered that we were both looking for a place to live.
Kendra’s sunny disposition made her an appealing roommate prospect. Most of the people I knew were creative and seemed to think that cynicism and angst were mandatory traits of an artist. Kendra was definitely one of those glass-is-half-full people. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have somebody with her attitude in my life.
Kendra’s brightness seemed to dim while I showed her around the apartment, a three-minute tour. It was hard for me not to take it personally, and I said, “Maybe you shouldn’t have left it up to me to find the place. But since you’re working two jobs—”
“It probably looks better when it’s not so gloomy outside,” Kendra said hopefully. I figured sunlight would only illuminate the apartment’s flaws, so I kept quiet. After a minute, she said, “Morgan will be here soon. I guess she and I should take the bedroom. Girls need a closed door.”
“Sure, whatever,” I said, unable to come up with a decent argument.
Kendra turned down my offer of help. While she rolled her bags into the bedroom, I went to the kitchen and emptied the pockets of my cargo pants, taking inventory of the day’s piracy. The spoon and cup from the diner went into the sink. Another pocket held a bungee cord I’d found on the street, and two refrigerator magnets. One for a restaurant, the other for a plumber. Shit in, shit out. I slapped them on the refrigerator and dug in the next pocket. Two pens, a small spiral tablet that I kept to make notes of my boss’s instructions about the places I cleaned, and in the bottom, two condoms. With a sigh, I dropped those on the counter and reached inside another pocket, where I found what I was looking for: a bag of green tea that I took from the loft I’d cleaned that morning.
I didn’t normally steal from I Dream of Cleanie’s clients, but who’d miss a single tea bag? Green tea was supposed to be healthy. I’d done my bit for good karma by wiping down the inside of the client’s refrigerator, which wasn’t on my list of duties.
I turned on the burner under the kettle and glanced at Kendra as she walked in. She homed right in on the condoms and raised her eyebrows. That distracted me for a second. I’d never noticed that her eyebrows were black, which made me wonder if she was a real blonde. I checked out her roots, thinking about my friend Davii, a genius with hair color who often provided commentary on the hair don’ts of people around us. I figured Kendra’s hair color must be real, because even with two jobs, she seemed as broke as I was. She couldn’t afford someone like Davii to make her look naturally blond.
“Is there something in my hair?” she asked, nervously running her fingers through it as if she might find a roach.
“No. Sorry I was staring,” I said.
“Are you having those with your tea?” she asked, pointing at the condoms.
I slipped them back in my pants pocket and said, “I don’t know where they came from. I guess one of my tormentors.” She cocked her head. “My uncle and his friends,” I explained. “My friend Blythe calls them my gay mentors. I call them my tormentors.”
“Like bondage or something?” Kendra asked, her blue eyes huge.
“Ew. No. Uncle Blaine, his boyfriend, their housekeeper, all their friends. They’re always giving me advice and warnings about the dangers of living in a big city. How to avoid being bashed, mugged, or otherwise assaulted. How to have safe sex. I’m sure one of them dropped those in my pants when I was at my uncle’s.”
“It’s sweet that they look out for you,” Kendra said warmly, as if I’d restored her faith in humanity.
I was still staring impatiently at the kettle when Kendra’s friend Morgan showed up. I stayed in the kitchen while Kendra let her in. I tried to ignore the furious whispers that indicated that Morgan, too, might be finding the place less than luxurious. Then her voice went from whisper to bitch in ten seconds as she condemned her last landlord to eternal damnation and declared that her moving men were know-nothing pigs.
My anxiety about Morgan’s desirability as a roommate boiled a lot faster than the kettle of water when she stepped into the kitchen and I saw two snakes wrapped around her arms.
“Uh…” I said, trying not to back away.
Morgan was short and dumpy. Her uneven hair was black—definitely an unprofessional dye job—and her skin was pale and doughy. Her eyes were like little black currants set deep in her face, and their expression was hard and challenging, as if the snakes were some kind of initiation I had to pass.
“Lucifer,” she said, holding up one arm to better display a yellowish snake. It eyed me with a look that made me remember a fifth grade teacher who’d been pure evil. “Hugsie,” she added, pointing a black snake at me. That one began to writhe as the kettle shrieked at us.
I was grateful to have a reason to turn away and said over my shoulder, “Nick Dunhill. I guess you’re Morgan.”
“Brilliant. If you ever enter my room without my permission, you can kiss your ass good-bye. Which will be easy, because I’ll make sure your head’s stuffed up your ass, just like every other man in Manhattan.”
“I’m pretty sure not every man in Manhattan has been stuffed up my ass,” I said, turning around and locking my eyes on hers. It almost seemed like she was going to smile, in that Wednesday Addams if-I-smile-I’ll-die way. Then she left the kitchen as abruptly as she’d entered, snake bodies trailing behind her like feather boas. Maybe they were actual boas. I had no idea.
When Kendra came back in, looking a little fearful, I hissed, “What did you say she does?”
“She works for an animated children’s program,” Kendra whispered hesitantly, as if she knew the probability of that was highly questionable. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know about the snakes.”
“You’re the one who has to sleep with them,” I said, adding with sadistic satisfaction, “behind a closed door.”
Roberto finally showed up with the clothes on his back, two milk crates full of CDs, and furniture he’d found on the street: a futon, a tiny café table, and two rickety wooden dining chairs. I tried to cover up how lousy I felt when I helped him haul his loot into the apartment. Not that he was paying attention. He answered three calls on his cell phone while we trudged up and down stairs. If it