Elizabeth daydreamed that the young super Ahmed would come to her aid. Even though he hated her, he’d help her. He’d overcome his hatred and save her life. They’d forget their enmity, they’d forget the past. They’d become friends, and there would be one less problem in her little world. It was a fairy tale. It was like a dream when an ex-friend appeared and said, I love you. Or something. Elizabeth cried over spilt milk, the irreconcilable.
But Ahmed, wherever he came from, hated her. He still hated her. He would always hate her. He still lived on her block. He would always live on her block. He had a family now. The young super had a wife. They had one or two babies. Some nasty people are loved by apparently nice people. The young super’s wife usually had a benign expression on her face. Elizabeth watched her get into and out of the young super’s new car. Elizabeth decided he slapped her around. The wife’s placid expression masked fear. Her abjection was as great as the enmity between Elizabeth and the young super. But Elizabeth couldn’t ask him, Have you stopped beating your wife? He wouldn’t get the joke.
They found a woman on Fourteenth Street in a bathtub full of milk.
They did?
With a banana jammed up her ass.
You’re kidding.
The cops are looking for a cereal killer.
Why are there so few black serial killers?
Why?
No ambition.
Elizabeth hated the country. Small-town life was jail. Country people huddled together like sheep near one-movie towns, without bookstores or restaurants. They drove to abysmal malls for action. They planted huge antennae and satellite dishes on their lawns to hook themselves up to the world, which they didn’t want any part of. They lived in nature, didn’t see it, didn’t care about it. They knew everything about each other. They saw each other every day and passed the time: Looks like Sally isn’t getting out much anymore.
It was on TV. Elizabeth watched TV. She liked windows. TV’s cranky hermits and serial killers were at the dark heart of the country’s dark side. They were the children taught to distrust anyone not like them, children of incest, thin-blooded, with dead, flat eyes, they were genetic threats. They fucked harnessed animals who kicked them in the head. Hermits passed bleak nights knitting shrouds, cleaning their shotguns, or fuming about grievances long past. Hermits plotted. Serial killers thrived and grew bloodthirsty for company in isolated outposts. The city’s a cold place, the story goes, But in the country, your barn burns down, they raise a new one with you, you get a smile and a howdy in the country.
There was no anonymity for hate, love, or lust in the country. Elizabeth could’ve fucked the super as easily as killed him.
The young super hadn’t revved his engine that early in the morning for a long time. Elizabeth didn’t know if it was because of her. She’d spelled it out to him that she could call the cops and have him arrested for disturbing the peace, which she didn’t, but it may have made an impression on him. It may have made no impression on him. If he hadn’t cared about waking other people, hadn’t thought it was wrong, he wouldn’t have cared about disturbing the peace.
Everybody understood, I’ll call the cops. Everyone on the block understood that.
Maybe he was an illegal immigrant, hiding, living in fear. If she threatened him now after his years in New York — maybe back then he’d just arrived and was adjusting to America, was still peaceful, even content to be here, if he was, maybe he’d escaped a worse situation. Now he’d probably hit her with a car wrench or throw her under his car, grab the jack and let the car drop on her, killing her, not instantly, slowly. Painfully. It could be made to seem like an accident unless people were around to witness it or people knew they’d had an incident in the past. That’s why it’s necessary to tell people about fights you have with crazy people. Later the crazy person might come after you, and if no one knew there was a motive, your life could be ended and the cops would never find your killer. Never bring him to justice. Elizabeth couldn’t convince Roy about the necessity of communicating to other people the malevolent acts of crazy people. Roy didn’t make small talk.
The young super might grab his wrench and strike violently at her skull, knocking out enough brain cells to alter her functioning. She’d be mentally disabled. Or, if the car landed on her legs, maybe she wouldn’t die, she’d only be crippled for life. That would be worse than death. She’d have to move out of her rent-stabilized apartment on the fifth floor. It was a walk-up.
Elizabeth held her vulnerable head in her hands. She rocked.
She knew about several people’s failed suicide attempts. They were in wheelchairs or using canes. Everyone hated them for what they’d done to themselves. There’s no sympathy for failure and no sympathy for failed suicides who end up crippled. Failure doesn’t negate failure. Elizabeth ended a friendship with someone who tried to kill himself. It was cruel, it was inexplicable. Cruelty and kindness are. Elizabeth had the sense that the guy would hurt someone else, her, because you hurt the ones you love, who are within reach, because he failed at killing himself.
Another light went on. A first-floor window. Then a fourth-floor window. Maybe other supers were waking up, readying themselves to meet and greet the day. There’d be garbage on the streets. They knew that. They were prepared for that.
A woman super, Polish or Ukrainian, created a racket every other day, fixing her garbage cans. She was pretty old, so she couldn’t lift them. She’d drag them from one part of the sidewalk to another, drag drag drag, clank clank clank. Elizabeth never called the cops or yelled out the window even though the woman woke her. The old Polish woman did her job, she kept her part of the sidewalk clean. She placed the covers on the garbage cans. She wasn’t Hector.
It was too early for the old Polish super in her weather-beaten brown coat, flannel nightgown, funny plastic shoes, and babushka. Summer or winter. A jogger trotted by. Elizabeth ignored joggers. Especially when they spun their heels at red lights and jogged in place beside her, waiting for the light to change. They panted and sweated and gulped water from plastic bottles. She expected them to drop dead next to her.
If Elizabeth became crippled and ugly, no one would feel sorry for her, even though it wasn’t her fault, and she wasn’t trying to commit suicide, although some people would say, Living in that neighborhood is suicide, what’d she expect? Crippled, she’d have to move. She wouldn’t be able to walk up or down four flights of stairs, and no one would be able to carry her. Not even Roy. He’d probably leave her. She wouldn’t be able to exercise. She’d become enormously fat. She’d wallow in her weight, her rolls of fat. It would be her only reward. Maybe she’d need an oversized wheelchair. She wondered if they were available or if you had to have them custom made. That would cost a fortune. She had no place to keep it.
She didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to be crippled. The man next door was crippled. He had a ground-floor apartment. He’d never move. He couldn’t roll into Kim’s Video Store because it wasn’t wheelchair friendly. The wheelchair man told her that. She thought of speaking to the owner. He’d begun as a dry cleaner and branched into video stores. He probably never thought about wheelchair access.
She dreaded apartment hunting, standing in the center of an empty apartment with a rent she couldn’t afford, even though she’d rather die than live in it. It was grotesque, being enclosed by four shabby walls, and not being able to afford it, or even finding yourself considering renting it. It was tenement despair. What you really wanted was inaccessible. With or without a wheelchair. Pathetic. It made her want a house that wasn’t for rent, that couldn’t be taken from her, anywhere, a house anywhere except in the country. She knew some people who liked to apartment hunt. It was inconceivable. It’s what makes horse racing. No one she knew followed the races.