Elizabeth didn’t think that would happen to her. An illegal windowbox could drop from the windowsill above and crush her head, but even then there wouldn’t be enough speed or thrust for her head to be chopped off. Her skull could be flattened to a bloody pulp, but her head wouldn’t be sliced off like a chunk of fat white meat.
Roy returned to Roy’s world.
Elizabeth opened her door and walked down the stairs. The halls were even bleaker in the middle of the night. Dawn. Farmers woke like this every morning, at the break of day, milked cows, sloshed around in the heat or cold, fed pigs who were more intelligent than they were, grew wrinkled and weather-beaten, and their wives cooked heartbreaking breakfasts, shriveled under the sun, nursed belligerent youngsters or died in childbirth. Everyone’s a hero. Elizabeth giggled then stifled herself. There were cigarette butts on the stairs and floors, tissues, candy wrappers, an empty paper bag. Nothing big. No vomit or blood or needles. Only some Phillies Blunt tobacco the kids mixed with marijuana. Grass. Weed. Tree.
Elizabeth marched stiffly across the street to the super at his car. She was in her robe, outside, on the street. She knew she looked ridiculous. People do when they act on principle. Like clowns in the circus. She’d only been to one circus. It was a crazy theater, the rings, the animals, the red-lipped clowns hanging from ropes. The audience fears the worst and waits for it. She counted herself a silent, anonymous member of Clowns for Progress. The group plastered its posters around the neighborhood.
Elizabeth stood beside the super until he decided to notice her. She was closer than she’d ever been to him. It was a grotesque intimacy. When he noticed her, she spoke as calmly as she could.
— You may not realize it, but some people are still trying to sleep. Maybe even until eight or nine this morning. Do you realize how loud your engine is? And do you know that it’s against the law? It’s noise pollution. Disturbing the peace. I could call the cops. I won’t, but I could. I can’t sleep. I can’t stand it anymore. Don’t you ever think about anyone else?
She stood there. She had finished her speech. She waited beside him, in her robe. He stared at her. His answer was silent revulsion. His disgust should have been reserved for battle, when a soldier calls up the desire to destroy from a vat of villainous mixed emotions. Pleasure, revulsion, and fear animate the killing machine. Soldiers are allowed legal murder.
The young super, smartly dressed but his nose streaked with grease, had no understanding of quiet in the morning. No respect for other people who needed their sleep. Elizabeth could see that. She enlivened his killing machine. He and she stood their ground. Her ground felt puny and groundless. They were locked in a barbaric embrace. It was public. They could be watched by anyone. Someone might be videotaping them for a stupid TV show. She was candid and conspicuous. The young super despised her. His rage shaped and reshaped his face. She would’ve slapped him if she thought he wouldn’t murder her. She wanted to wipe the expression off his face. Murder was too good for him. That’s what her mother would say. He didn’t raise a hand, and the law held Elizabeth’s hand. They were both held in check. An abyss yawned, wide and filthy, like a domestic Persian Gulf. She hated her own voice which repeated:
— Don’t you understand that there are other people on the block? Don’t you understand? People need to sleep. There are other people on the block.
The young super’s face had hardened into furious incomprehension. Then he turned away from her, turned his back to her, returned to his car’s engine, ignored her existence, and she walked back across the street to her building, walked back up the filthy stairs, went back to her position at the window. Elizabeth wondered who, if anyone, had witnessed the event. A friend or an enemy. Roy slept through it.
Now one of the dogwalkers marched out. He was usually the first on the block. He carried a single paper towel. He had a little dog. Most carried newspapers or plastic bags. Roy picked up newspaper from the street and used it for Fatboy, their dog. His dog. Dogwalkers walked their dogs and waited until the dog took a shit and then they scooped it up. They threw it into garbage cans. Most of them did this flawlessly. Gracefully. They’d had practice. There were a variety of methods. Newspaper under their dogs’ asses. The dogs were trained to do it on the paper. Plastic bag on the hand like a glove. Owner grabs the shit and like a surgeon removes the glove with the shit and drops it into the garbage can. Each one had a technique, different for different dogs. The pooper scooper law was enacted under Mayor Koch. It was his legacy to the city, what he’d be remembered for, New Yorkers picking up dog shit. Along with an impartial judicial review board and handing over the city, opening it up like a high-class brothel, to the real estate clowns. That was years ago.
Now she wouldn’t confront the young super, or anyone, alone on the street. Crime was down, but on what basis do they figure those stats, and even if there were fewer murders, she still wouldn’t take the chance. People were more apathetic, exhausted, they were back on heroin, off crack, it didn’t matter, it could change, and statistics lie any way you want them to, and if you’re lying in the street, blood flowing from a wound in your head or stomach, because one of the fewer murders has been attempted, or achieved, it’s you lying on the street, it’s your bloody body, lifeless or hurt, and it doesn’t matter what the stats are.
Elizabeth didn’t have that many chances. No one did.
Now she considered the enduring consequences of announcing her grievances to her neighbors. Elizabeth had been ignorant of the fact that Hector the super had befriended the young super. His name was Ahmed, she didn’t know which Middle Eastern country he was from, and Hector was Ahmed’s block mentor. She hadn’t known that. After Hector heard about what she did, he was barely civil to her.
Roy told Elizabeth she had to learn to accept the unacceptable.
She tried and slipped and told the woman on the first floor, Diane, that the woman on the top floor bothered her. The top floor woman screamed at her boyfriend’s child from early morning on, and when she was high on coke, ran out in the night, forgot her keys and screamed for her mate to throw her a key, to let her in. He’d punish her, want to teach her a lesson. He’d be disgusted. He’d want out. He’d pretend not to hear the wailing, subhuman shrieks everyone else heard. Finally he’d give in, let her in. She’d whimper all the way up the stairs. Past Elizabeth’s door. Then they’d fuck probably. Elizabeth complained to the woman on the first floor about how the craziness was driving her crazy. The first-floor woman said she was friends with the top-floor woman.
— Do you want me to talk with her? she asked.
— No, no, please, I’ll handle it, Elizabeth said.
Elizabeth retreated. She had to be more careful. Roy thought she was a jerk. She had to let people know what she felt or thought. He told her she was chronicling her life. He’d watched a TV news special about women talking on the telephone. It said they were chronicling their lives.
The young super never looked at her on the street. He wouldn’t help her if someone was trying to cut her, cap her, molest her. He was an enemy on the block. He wouldn’t lift a finger to save her life. In the city, you can have enemies and never see them. It’s urbane, humane. But if you have enemies on your block, you can’t count on them. Not even in a lethal situation. They might applaud the bad guys or be apathetic bystanders, even grandstanders. Yeah, they could say later grinning, yeah, I saw him take that bitch and grab her head and slam it against the wall…