Super in the City (8 page)

Roxana took a last glance around the room, studied Mercedes
and me carefully for a moment—which I found immensely flattering—and then headed upstairs.

“You think we’ll ever be that hot?” Mercedes wondered. I shook my head.

“Ready to be super?” Mercedes asked, and slipped through the tape and out onto the landing.

“No. Not at all.” She laughed, but I wasn’t kidding. I wanted to go stick twenty keys into a garbage hold about as much as I wanted to be a lawyer or a doctor.

Mercedes considered me across the police tape. For the first time in the fourteen years I’d known her, I detected the faintest hint, the barest trace, the most infinitesimal squeak of… disapproval. My heart sank. Since the age of six, she had sawed away at her viola for an hour every morning before school and then for four hours—
four hours—
every day after school and what seemed like all day on weekends. Summers were filled with music camps and competitions and auditions and more practicing. At every turn, from her auditions for conservatory to her acceptance as third chair violist in the New York Philharmonic, she had battled the subtle prejudices that no one in the music world would ever admit to harboring. And not once had she complained.

I sighed. I could live, just barely, with my parents’ disappointment, but I could not wake up in the morning if I thought my friends were disgusted with me.

Lemonade. I had to go make lemonade. Out of garbage.

O
NE WEEK LATER, I’D NOT ONLY BECOME AT EASE IN JAMES’S
apartment, I’d begun to think of it as my office. Every inch of the living room was covered in crumpled, smudged paper, and not one single scrap reflected anything I’d ever, in my dullest, tamest dreams, given a second thought to: receipts for washers and extension cords and faucet handles and drill bits and plywood and Sheetrock. Old invoices and canceled checks to electricians, exterminators, the fire department, an ironsmith. Tax assessments, water/sewer bills, battered repair logs, sprinkler inspection reports, fuel oil storage permits.

In the few moments that weren’t riddled with panic, anxiety, and confusion, I sometimes felt like I was perusing the unearthed papers of an old friend and discovering clues to the parts of him I didn’t know. Finding an old engineer’s report was like coming across an EKG— I didn’t know Joe had a heart murmur! I didn’t know the bricks of my building’s east wall needed to be repointed! Occasionally, sifting through James’s questionable record- keeping meant learning about the essence of my
childhood home. But mostly, it meant a passionate new relationship with antacids.

Before I’d spread them across the floor, the tatty records had lived in close quarters in three large file boxes, all jumbled together. When Lucy, who admitted she probably had just a soupçon of OCD, heard about this, she snuck out of her office and was at my door an hour later to minister to me. She arrived dressed for work: sweatpants, one of her father’s old army T-shirts, and her thin blond hair pulled back in an eighties- era terry-cloth headband.

Lucy had insisted on helping all the Sterling Girls move into their respective apartments, and she was still peeved she hadn’t been able to fly to California to help Abigail unpack out there. We all knew where to find things in one another’s homes because they were organized in almost precisely the same manner. Our dressers held underwear and bras in the top drawer, sweaters and foldable shirts in the next drawer, and jeans in the bottom one. In our closets, from left to right, were pants (by weight), skirts, dresses, and at the far right were blouses and random un-foldables. Sweaty workout clothes aired out on permanent hooks on the back of the bedroom door. It was the same story with the kitchen, the bathroom, the bookshelves, and the CD racks.

“Here’s another plumbing- looking thing,” Lucy said, handing me a coffee- stained yellow carbon copy to put in the “plumbing stuff” pile. Only after every last scrap had been laid out and organized would Lucy let me start putting papers away in the color-coded folders with color- coded labels to store in the color- coded rolling storage crates she had bought. Lucy was the only non- CPA I knew who had her own personal stash of “sign here” stickies. She wandered through the aisles of stationery stores the way some women haunted shoe stores: longingly, lovingly, and always leaving with something she didn’t need but couldn’t live without.

I surreptitiously glanced at my watch. Tag had promised to
unexpectedly stop by to tell us how gorgeous it was outside and suggest we go kayaking from Pier 66.

“Do you or don’t you want me to help you?” Lucy demanded, following my glance.

“No, I do,” I assured her. “This is great. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You’d still be sitting here in a near- catatonic state.” She handed me an invoice. “This goes with tax records. Do you have any snacks?”

I jumped up. “I’ll go get some!”

“Sit
down.
We’ll take a break at two- oh- five.”

Deep breath. “Okay.” I reluctantly grabbed another mush of papers and started smoothing them out. We’d been at this for two hours already. But just as I started running a bored eye down a tax assessment, the intercom buzzed.

Tag!

“I’ll get it!” I yelled, jumping up. Lucy just shook her head in disgust. I bounded down the creaky, carpeted steps to the front door.

On the stoop was a tall man who immediately scrambled my social sensors. He wore a navy blue jumpsuit embroidered with the name “Ridofem” and an image of a cockroach and a rat holding their antennae and paws to the sides of their faces in a Munch-like
The Scream
pose. He was carrying a spray can with a long hose. I would have confidently concluded that he was an exterminator, but, all avowals of class- blindness to the contrary, I knew blue collar from white collar, laborer from lawyer, and something about this young verminator didn’t compute.

He was angular and pale, but not unattractively so. His nose was just big enough to keep him from being vain—I guessed— but not so big as to be a deal- breaker. He had a mop of chestnut hair that needed a trim, a brooding brow, and big eyes— ish-colored, like mine—fanned by thick black lashes. The long, bony
fingers wrapped around the nozzle looked like they should be covered in paint splatters, caked in ceramics mud, or leafing through precious, rare books. He looked, I realized, Jewish, and I didn’t know Jews could be exterminators.

I must not have been the first person to regard him with some degree of surprise, because he sighed as if he was waiting for me to finish my mental computations.

“I thought I rang James’s bell,” he said a little impatiently.

“You did, you did. But James isn’t here right now. Can I help you?”

Now
he
looked confused, and I realized he was trying to figure out what I was doing in James’s apartment. Was he wondering whether I was James’s girlfriend? Did he deal with Brooklyn James or English James? Which one did he think I dated? What would it be like to date James anyway? Did he escort his women to Hooters or did he invite them to swirl mojitos at Gotham? I was finding a fleeting satisfaction in presenting this oxymoronic Jewish exterminator with a mysterious front. I was rarely—no, never—mysterious to anyone.

He lifted up his spray can. “I’m supposed to do this building today.”

I had no reason not to believe him, especially since I’d seen bills from Ridofem in the mess upstairs. But the new me, the responsible, lemonade- making, Super me, figured I should ask some questions before allowing a stranger to spread poison throughout my building.

I nodded at his canister. “What do you use?”

He looked at me squarely. “Are you familiar with pesticides?”

“Somewhat,” I lied.

“Will it make a difference if I tell you we use cypermethrin instead of bendiocarb?”

Now, I could have been a chemist for all he knew. Or a public health researcher, or maybe my best friend in grade school
had been a DDT baby. My hackles were up, but rather than directly address his impudence, I chose instead to take my pique out on a passing double- decker tour bus that had turned illegally onto our narrow street.

“Sign on the corner says no commercial traffic!” I shrieked, bolting out onto the stoop in my bare feet. “Get out and walk, you fat Americans!” Carl, a neighbor who ran a biofeedback therapy clinic out of his living room across the street, waved cheerfully to me.

The exterminator stepped back and pretended to wipe spit from his cheek. “So you’re doing
your
part to improve New York’s image.”

“We’re the most helpful people on the planet,” I retorted, self- conscious about my outburst, which, on some very uncomfortable level, I immediately knew to be a show of bravado for this guy I’d just met. Why, Zephyr?
Why?

“As long as other people don’t drive down your block.”

“Not when they should be walking, no. Not when those polluting buses wreck our air and break the branches on our trees. If they want to sit on their asses, they should stay back in Idowa. I mean Idaho.”

The exterminator grinned. “You don’t know the difference between Idaho and Iowa.”

“Of course I do.” I sneered unconvincingly

“Where’s Idaho?”

“I can’t
explain
it.”

“Sure you can.” He crossed his arms.

“There are three ‘I’ states in a row in the Midwest,” I said impatiently. “It’s one
of them.”

“You mean Illinois, Iowa, and Indiana?”

“Yeah.”

“Idaho isn’t any of those.” He looked so smug I wanted to smack him.

“What… ? Why are we— This is ridiculous!” I waved my hands as if to erase the conversation.

“I’m from Idaho,” he said victoriously.

“You are not.” I inspected his face for signs of Idaho- ness, but I realized that I had no clue whether he was really from the potato state, and that we both knew I had no way of figuring that out.

He looked directly at me and before I could stop myself, I pictured myself kissing him. A delicious flutter hit my belly and I jumped back, as surprised as if we had actually locked lips. He raised his eyebrows in a question and then pointedly looked at his watch.

“Well, look, I
am
from Ridofem and we have a standing contract with James to do your building once a month. Would you like me to come back another time when he’s here?”

I shook off the hazy aftermath of our non- kiss. “No, no, he’s not gonna be here anytime soon.” I didn’t want to admit to this guy that our super had gone to jail. “Just tell me what you need and we’ll set you up,” I said, trying to sound on top of things. I motioned him inside with as much dignity as I could muster.

He followed me into the foyer and I bolted the door behind him. The sudden quiet felt intimate.

“Who are you?” he asked bluntly.

I extended my hand officiously “Zephyr Zuckerman.”

He took it and laughed. “Seriously?”

I pulled my hand away, flabbergasted.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He was still laughing. “It’s just an unusual name.”

“What’s
your
name? John Doe?” I spat.

“Gregory. Samson. I mean, Gregory Samson.”

I frowned at him for a moment, then broke into a triumphant grin.

“Don’t say it,” he warned.

“Gregor Samsa was the guy who turned into a bug in
The Metamorphosis!”
I crowed. But my next thought was: how many vermin protagonists can there be in literature, and why do I keep meeting men who share traits with them? I was pretty sure that in the annals of romantic turbulence, this was an unprecedented pattern.

“Do you live here?” he tried again.

“I own the building,” I said pompously. “My family does. And James, as I said, isn’t here right now, so why don’t you just tell me what you need from me.”

I thought I saw a brief flicker of remorse cross his face, but just as quickly, it was gone.

“I need access to all the apartments. And, legally, if you are who you say you are, you need to accompany me.”

“Why shouldn’t she be who she says she is?” Lucy was on the landing above, sliding her hands and upper body down the banister so that she was, effectively, upside down.

Gregory looked up and I snuck a long peek at his profile. Was he really a Jewish exterminator? Maybe he was an undercover cop
posing
as an exterminator! (Were there many Jewish cops?) What if he’d been sent by the NYPD to investigate whether my family played a part in James’s nefarious activities? Oh my God,
had
I done anything illegal? At the very least, I’d been treating a crime scene as a home office.

But maybe Gregory had been sent to protect me, not investigate me. Maybe someone James had stolen from was after him, and Gregory had been assigned to cover me night and day. Where would he be stationed? In my living room? I tried to remember the last time I’d vacuumed.

Both Gregory and Lucy waited for me to say something.

“Sorry, Luce. I’ll be right up.”

Lucy looked at me pointedly.

“Oh. John Doe, this is Lucy. Lucy, this is John Doe,” I said.

“Seriously?” Lucy raised her eyebrows, in a refreshing moment of unprofessional insensitivity.

I laughed and Gregory rolled his eyes.

“I mean …” Lucy hurriedly straightened and came down the steps to look Gregory in the eye, as she did all her clients, as well as salespeople, waiters, and anyone else who might need to feel validated, to be
seen.
“I mean—”

“I’m the exterminator,” Gregory interrupted. “Are you also an owner of the building? Do I need your permission to spray, too?”

“What? No. Just Zeph’s.” I saw Lucy giving Gregory the same once- over I had, trying to mentally catalog him and being thwarted by his contradictory indicators. Suddenly her eyes lit up. “Hey, which apartments are you doing?”

“All of them,” said Gregory.

“Oh, yay!” Lucy clapped her hands. “Now we can label all those keys!”

Lucy jogged up the steps, looking back over her shoulder to throw Gregory a flirtatious little half smile that purposely forced the dimple in her left cheek to appear. She was shameless! Gregory followed her up the stairs and I stomped after them, trying to imagine the toast I’d give at their wedding. Instead, I envisioned myself tearfully telling my children about my perfidious former friend named Lucy.