— Collectors are sick.
Hector collected everything, because he had nothing. People never really had what they wanted, because they wanted everything. People who could afford to buy everything were miserable about something. There’s always something missing.
Things were missing in Elizabeth’s life. They weren’t misplaced. In any time or under any regime, it would be the same. Elizabeth couldn’t replace what was lost, and what wasn’t lost may never have existed to begin with. Everyone was dissatisfied, even if they didn’t have much to complain about. Once deprived, always deprived.
Three men are in a nursing home. One of the men says, How old do you think I am? The two men say, Eighty-five. Everyone thinks I look eighty-five, he says proudly. But actually I’m ninety-five. He walks over to an old woman. How old do you think I am? he asks. Drop your pants, she says, and I’ll tell you. He drops his pants and she grasps his penis. She fondles his penis for a while. Well, how old do you think I am? he asks. Ninety-five, she says, her hand still on his penis. How’d you know? he asks. I heard you tell the two men, she says.
When Elizabeth complained to the Big G about the state of the building, she was mindful of Hector. She didn’t criticize him directly or use his name unless compelled. She tempered any criticism of Hector. She didn’t want him fired, she wanted him helped or assisted. The building could be turned around. By any means possible, Roy said.
For Elizabeth’s pains, the landlord and Gloria hated her. They had valid, landlord reasons. Elizabeth was white, mostly employed, though underemployed, and educated. She’d had opportunities. She was the worst kind of tenant. She wasn’t as easy to push around and intimidate as people on welfare, or disadvantaged and handicapped people, or people depressed and frightened by a system that employs people to treat them with disdain while assisting them inadequately.
When a 1930s vintage stove stops working, though its oven wasn’t ever regulated — if it was on, it was always 500 degrees — Elizabeth’s type of tenant doesn’t buy a reconditioned one on time through the landlord. With some money in the bank, her kind of tenant buys a stove for four hundred dollars rather than pay four or five dollars extra each month for the remainder of the lease, and all other leases. You pay forever for one stove. The extra money raises the base rent and increases the amount on which the next rent hike will be figured. If you have four hundred dollars, which Elizabeth and Roy did, you didn’t do this. As Elizabeth explained to Gloria, It doesn’t make sense to increase our rent base. Gloria’s mouth fell open.
The Big G hoped to obstruct them. She’d catch Elizabeth on the street. She’d sidle over and say with a sympathetic smile, But you know you can’t put that stove on the street, or she’d ask, Who’s going to remove that old stove, or she’d insist, more aggressively, You’ll have to move it out of your apartment yourself, you know, we can’t help you.
They bought a new stove anyway. They had never wanted a stove. They owned one now. This made them different from the Lopez family downstairs. The Lopezes had to pay on time.
What do you get when you cross a Mafioso with a deconstructionist?
What?
An offer you can’t understand.
What do you get when you cross a Puerto Rican with a Jew?
What?
A super who thinks he owns the building.
Most of the time Elizabeth couldn’t look Hector in the eye. She couldn’t talk to the Big G. And nothing was accomplished. Nothing was done. Fuzzballs grew fat and fluffy in ancient grease-encrusted corners. Cigarettes and paper bags collected on the floors. It was like living in the Port Authority and paying rent.
On occasion Elizabeth phoned the housing department. Hardly anyone else did. You’re not supposed to expect clean halls in the poor part of the city, or if you don’t own your apartment.
— I’d like to report a violation by my landlord.
— What is your name, address, the name of the landlord? What is the complaint?
— Dirty halls.
— Where?
— The halls.
— All the halls?
— Yes. Six floors of halls and a vestibule. Sort of a vestibule. It’s not really a vestibule. It’s an entrance. You have to enter the building. Six halls and stairways, let’s say.
— For how long has it been like this?
— Weeks and weeks. More.
— What kind of dirt? Caked-in, grease, litter?
— Yes. All kinds of dirt.
— How would you describe the dirt?
— Cigarettes, dust, blood, dope bags, loose dirt, garbage, gum, crack vials, needles, matches, paper bags, condoms, gum wrappers, hair, straws, just plain filth from weeks and weeks of people using the halls, city air is very dirty, and dust accumulates fast, you know.
Describe the dirt.
The conversation magnified the futility of having a conversation with the City. Every time she had one, which wasn’t often, because she didn’t want the City to think she was a lunatic, Elizabeth changed her attitude about civil servants. They were not just incompetent, unhappy, petty bureaucrats, or idiots, they were administrative sadists, sit-down comedians, they were functioning fools.
Invariably, two months later, Elizabeth would receive written notification from the City. An “Acknowledgment of Complaint” was printed on a sheet of hot pink paper.
This acknowledges receipt of your complaint. The owner has been notified to correct this conition: Unsanitary conition in building, No lock on frnt door bldg.
The complaint had been made to the landlord. The landlord’s name on the notice was not the one she’d given the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. This meant either that no complaint could’ve been served, because no landlord was found by that name, or that legally the landlord had a scam going and had many different names for the many buildings it owned. So who was responsible.
The other tenants were amused, bored, or surprised by her efforts. She wasn’t tough or cynical enough, she wasn’t hip to the way things were, the way it all worked. She’d grown up in a house in the suburbs. She’d never accept the fact that sometimes landlords don’t fix buildings with tenants living in them. Some of the tenants were too numb to notice or respond, though. Some of the tenants had different expectations or no expectations. Some of the tenants thought she was an asshole. One tenant smiled at her and secretly hated the dirty floor she walked on.
Three men — a black, a WASP, and a Jew — were walking along the street. One kicked a can, and a genie appeared. The genie said, I can take all of you back to where you and your people came from. The black man said, You can take me and all my people to Africa? The genie said yes. Do it, the black man said, and he disappeared. The Jewish man asked, You can take me and all the Jews in the world to Israel? Yes, the genie said. Do it, the Jew said, and he disappeared. Then the genie turned to the WASP. The WASP said, I’ll have a Diet Coke.
The street was devastated, a war zone, neutralized for the moment, like Elizabeth when she’d had too much to drink at a party and was lying on a couch, her clothes messed up, her lipstick smeared, her mouth parted, her eyes closed. The street looked like a woman who’d seen enough of life and wanted to sleep it off, push the guy away from her, go home, except she couldn’t. She was home.
A few people, one at a time, were walking down the street. They dragged themselves along. A lanky guy with a jacket over his shoulder, a lounge lizard, appeared to have just come from a club or a party, maybe the one where the woman was lying on the couch. His tie was loose. Elizabeth waited to see if he scratched his arm. He didn’t. Sometimes two or three drugsters walked fast down the street, stopped abruptly, huddled together, doing a deal, and one of them shouted, one of them was pissed, and one of them quieted him or her, then they moved on.