High Maintenance

by Jennifer Belle

  In the morning I made an appointment with the Bausches’ dentist, Dr. Blum. I told him I had let my husband have the dentist in the divorce. I explained that I didn’t want the same picks and drills, however sterilized, that were in my husband’s mouth, in mine. He said that was very understandable and to come right over.

  I sat in his tiny ground-floor office on Washington Square West, tilted back, mouth wide open. I tried not to look up into his giant nostrils. I looked past him, hovering over me, and realized I was facing the street. The window had no shade, any passerby could stop and watch me.

  “It’s lucky you’re not a gynecologist,” I said, with my mouth full of his hands. Leave it to the Bausches to have a cheapo dentist. My husband’s dentist had an attractive female hygienist who made entertaining jokes about her boyfriend.

  A man walked by, glancing at me through the window. Then another man. Why didn’t he just move his chair right out to the middle of Washington Square Park? I wondered. Give me my cleaning under the arch. Everyone who walked by looked in and smiled, glad not to be me. I had never been more vulnerable. This was worse than people who went to gyms and did the StairMaster in the window. I was sure the next man to walk by would be my husband.

  But the next man wasn’t my husband. It was Dale. She sauntered by in a khaki safari outfit and stopped short as soon as she saw me. I pretended I didn’t see her there, even though she was waving wildly.

  “Is he a friend of yours?” Dr. Blum said. I shook my head no. “I always get the crazies. My wife left me and took the window treatments and now the crazies always come and stand right there where that crazy’s standing. At home I get the pigeons and here I get the crazies.”

  “I get pigeons and crazies, too,” I mumbled.

  “It seems we have had a lot of the same life experiences,” he said.

  I didn’t think I had the same life experiences as an old balding dentist.

  Dale broadly mouthed the words “I’ll wait for you here” and pointed to herself and to me and downward to indicate that spot on the sidewalk.

  “She had the nerve to try and sell me my own window treatments that I had already paid for. She said they were hers because she designed them. She’d only leave them behind if I gave her four thousand dollars for them. So I would essentially be paying for my own window treatments twice. I’m telling you, my wife is the penultimate hard-ass.”

  I wondered who the ultimate hard-ass was. I knew it wasn’t me. I wished I had taken down the custom-made curtains I had agonized over in my husband’s living room and hung them in my new apartment. My new ceiling was half the height of my old one. If I hung those curtains my new windows would look like two small boys wearing their father’s pajamas.

  Suddenly I missed those curtains more than anything. I wanted to wear them myself with the curtain rod still attached like Carol Burnett playing Scarlett O’Hara.

  My husband never even appreciated them. He would wake up in a rage if one beam of sunlight entered the room without his express permission.

  Mrs. Dr. Blum, the penultimate hard-ass, had the right idea.

  “I wish I could see you again before your next cleaning in six months,” Dr. Blum said. The hair on his knuckles made bumps under his latex gloves. I hesitated. “Spit,” he said.

  “I have a boyfriend,” I said quickly. The way I said it I almost felt like I did have a boyfriend. An image of a man was coming to my mind but I wasn’t sure who it was.

  “I thought you said you were just recently separated.”

  “I am,” I said, flashing a smile, suddenly feeling strangely successful. I was sure I had a boyfriend, I just couldn’t quite place him at that exact moment. Then I realized the man I was thinking of was Andrew and I stopped smiling.

  “Well, you know where I am.”

  “Yes, I’ll wave to you when I pass by,” I said.

  Dale stayed right outside the window like a lawn gnome for the rest of my appointment and I was forced to walk with her when I left.

  “This is great!” she said. “How are you? What are you doing now?”

  I couldn’t think fast enough.

  “This is so lucky that I found you. It’s kismet. You know how you’ve been complaining about your apartment?”

  I didn’t recall complaining.

  “The smell and the hole in the kitchen floor and the way the floor is so slanted every time you put a glass on the table it rolls off?”

  I guess I had mentioned one or two details.

  “Well, an apartment just opened up in my building. Right next door to Harri and me! We can be neighbors.”

  “How much?”

  “Only eighteen hundred.”

  “That’s more than I’m paying now.”

  “You can afford it. You’re going to make a lot of money working for me. And you need that kind of motivation in this business. You have to need to make money.”

  “Why don’t you rent it to someone else and get a commission?” I asked.

  “First rule in real estate,” Dale answered. “Don’t shit where you eat. Come on. We might as well jump on the subway. I’m in Chelsea.”

  First we had to stop and get Dale a slice of pizza and then we managed to get on the subway going downtown instead of uptown. Two native New Yorkers, real estate agents, experts on the transit system, constant givers of directions, people who would feel almost confident walking through Central Park at night, familiar with every single block, mews, and alley, heading the wrong way, straight to Brooklyn.

  We got off at Chambers and walked upstairs and then down to the uptown platform. We sat on a bench with just a tiny strip of wood separating us.

  “This is fun,” Dale said. “I feel like I’m seeing things in a whole new light.”

  “That’s great.”

  “You’re great,” she said.

  Our train came, and Dale and I got on through separate doors.

  I sat and Dale stood over me. “If you take the apartment we can ride back and forth together on the subway all the time,” Dale said.

  The whole time I tried to think of somewhere I had to be. Any excuse to get out of going to Dale’s building. There had to be a job somewhere that didn’t involve going on the subway with your boss.

  We entered an old, run-down building with a shabby lobby.

  “Is it a walk-up?” I asked.

  “Would I live in a walk-up?” Dale said, indignantly.

  We got in a tiny groaning elevator that had a round window in the door like a ship’s porthole. First we went down instead of up, the porthole going black like we were underwater. Then we slowly churned to the fifth floor.

  “I’ll show you the available apartment first,” Dale said.

  Dale opened the door with a key. I thought about what it would be like to live next door to Dale with her own key to my apartment. Maybe it would be okay with my gun. We walked into a small square room with another small square room connected to it. One room was painted white and the other black. It would be like living in a domino. “That’s the kitchen,” Dale said, pointing to the black side.

  The white side had a pole going from floor to ceiling right in the center of the room.

  “Oh, this is great,” I said. “I love poles.”

  “I know the pipe is a little awkward but you can work around it.”

  “No, actually it’s really great because I’m a stripper in my spare time and I need a pole at home to practice on.”

  “No place is perfect, Liv,” Dale said, as if I were a client.

  The pole divided the room in such a way that it would be impossible to put a bed in it. You could have a couch and two chairs with the pole in the middle, but no bed.

  “I’m serious, this is perfect,” I said, “because I have a bed that happens to be in the shape of a donut so I can saw it in half and put the pole in the center of the hole.”

  I put my hand
out to lean on it.

  “Careful!” Dale said. “That’s the heating pipe. It’s burning hot. It isn’t insulated.”

  “That’s too bad because I’ve always wanted to hang the American flag in the exact center of my room and if the pole’s hot the flag might burn.”

  “Okay, fine. I just wanted to offer you the opportunity but I see you’re just wasting my time. I thought it would be nice if we were neighbors, that’s all.”

  “How high is the ceiling?”

  “Ten feet,” Dale said, as if I were actually interested.

  “Ten feet? That’s funny because I wouldn’t touch this apartment with a ten-foot pole and that’s exactly what we’ve got here.”

  “Fine,” Dale said.

  “Does your apartment have a pole?”

  “Come on, I’ll show it to you.”

  “Harri, we’re home!” Dale announced. I followed her down a dark, narrow corridor that opened into a tiny living room.

  Harri was lying on the couch watching a large television set. She wore a huge white T-shirt that said “Get out of my way I’m shopping” on it in big black letters. She clutched an old piece of flannel material that looked like a child’s security blanket. The children’s movie Freaky Friday was on. “Harri, look, I’ve brought our star.”

  “Hi, Liv,” Harri said, not taking her eyes off the TV.

  “I told you to cover the couch with a sheet if you’re going to lay on it all day,” Dale said.

  “This isn’t the office,” Harri said. “Here, you aren’t the boss. I’ll do what I want. If I want to take a shit on the couch I will.”

  “What do you pay for this place?” I asked.

  It is totally acceptable in New York to ask someone their rent. In New York it’s rude not to ask a person’s rent. Asking what someone pays for their apartment is a very New York thing. It’s an L.A. thing, too, but it was started by the New Yorkers who moved there.

  “Only four hundred,” Dale said, excitedly. “It’s been in Harri’s family for years. We decided to stay here and use the money we save to spend a month in Italy every year. In fact I was thinking of axing you if you’d like to come with us.”

  I pretended she was joking and laughed.

  “No, I’m serious. You should come. I want us to be more than just boss and employee. I want us to be a team.”

  “Can I use the bathroom?” I said. I didn’t think I should use the couch.

  “Of course,” Dale said. “Harri, show the kid where the powder room is.”

  “It’s right in there,” Harri said, pointing behind her.

  “Thanks, I’ll find it,” I said.

  The toilet seat squished under me, making a sound. Owl figurines, a shelfful of them, eyeballed me. A white wire rack hung from the back of the door displaying winged maxi pads for heavy flow.

  Dale’s apartment was worse than mine. She sat on this toilet every morning and then showed marble bathrooms to people all day, standing by like a bathroom attendant. Bathrooms with Jacuzzis, and mounted televisions, soft recessed lighting, twin pedestal sinks, fish swimming in bowls, cabinets filled with Kiehl’s and Chanel, fat scented candles, sea salts, ginger scrub, savon de Provence.

  “Why did you bring her here?” I heard Harri whisper.

  “I was showing her the apartment next door.”

  “Were you hoping I wouldn’t be here?”

  “You’re going to make me hope that,” Dale answered.

  “I just wish you would show some discretion.”

  “You’re crazy. She’s my employee.”

  Independent contractor, I thought. Suddenly I thought of an excuse for why I had to leave immediately. It was airtight.

  “I have to go,” I said, leaving the bathroom.

  “Why?” Dale asked, suspiciously.

  Then I gave my excuse. “’Cause I want to,” I said.

  Harri laughed. She got up off the couch and showed me to the door.

  Out on the street I looked up at Dale’s building. It had an ornate façade, but when you turned the corner you could see that it was really just an old tenement. The front was just slapped on. My building was a tenement but it was an honest one. I had a fire escape outside my window, like an ugly jagged scar down my chest, but at least it was real. People always take after the buildings they live in the way they look like their dogs.

  I stood next to two boys waiting to cross the street. They were about seventeen, wearing jeans as long and wide as skirts. They were looking at two girls walking away from them.

  “That shit looks good,” one said.

  “I didn’t get to see her face,” his friend said.

  “You don’t have to see her face,” he said. “That shit’s going to be bent over anyway. You just have to like the back of her head.”

  They laughed, and for a minute I remembered what I liked about men.

  13.

  HRDWD FLRS

  I was relieved to open the door to my own apartment and smell the smell and feel the slant. At home I was lopsided like the people in the commercials who should have had a V8. I kicked off my shoes. My apartment was so messy, pieces of paper and cellophane stuck to the bottom of my feet. At least my next-door neighbor was a crack whore and not Dale.

  I lay on my bed and thought about my husband’s curtains. I knew I was better off without them. I wondered if the women he brought home noticed them.

  The phone rang and I answered. “Hello?”

  “How’s my future wife?”

  It was Andrew. I had wondered when he would call. “Who is this?” I asked.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  Water was running. “Are you calling me from the shower? Your girlfriend must be home.”

  “Nooooo. I’m washing dishes,” he said. “I just ate a baked potato. How was your day?”

  “I went to the dentist,” I said, as if I were Mrs. Bausch talking to Mr. Bausch.

  “You sound down,” he said.

  “I’m not,” I said. How did he know that? I didn’t even know when I was down and when I was up.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” he said.

  “I miss my apartment. I miss my windows. I miss my views. I miss my carpeting.”

  “Ohhhh, poor baby,” he said. “Do you miss your husband?”

  “No. I miss my curtains.”

  “That certainly says a lot about your marriage,” Andrew said.

  Andrew listened for an hour while I talked about my old apartment. I told him everything, and he listened patiently, asking questions about the moldings and the lighting and the beams. “I knew the building, it was a great one,” Andrew said solemnly, as if he were trying to find something to say about a person who had just died. It was comforting talking about it. There should be funerals for apartments. There should be apartment obituaries in The New York Times. There should be apartment mourners support groups.

  The water ran steadily. “That’s a lot of dishes for one potato,” I said.

  The next night as soon as I got home my buzzer rang. It was Andrew. I shoved all my mess into my closet. Papers poked out from under the cheap louver doors like bear claws. As a child I would lie in my bed and stare at the crack under my bedroom door expecting to see the claws of a bear trying to get in.

  Andrew was sweating from lugging four enormous garbage bags up the stairs. He was wearing black pants and a black turtleneck and a hilarious black beret with the little stem sticking straight up in the center like a tiny erection. The beret emphasized the arbitrary place on his forehead where his hair began.

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Très chic.”

  He took off the beret and went straight into the kitchen to look at himself in the only full-length mirror, to make sure nothing had happened to him en route. He washed his face in the sink, wetting his hair, and dried off with a dish towel. He pick
ed up my hairbrush and brushed his hair in short, organized strokes like he was doing the box step. I just stood there watching in disbelief. He examined his teeth close up in the mirror, unabashedly.

  “What are you doing?” I said, finally.

  “I want to make sure I look good for you.” He went back to the living room and I followed. “Well, aren’t you going to open them?”

  I looked in one of the garbage bags. Yards and yards of gold silk.

  “It’s just like my …” I said in disbelief.

  He pulled my husband’s curtains out of the bags. The curtains from every single room.

  “Did you want the rods, too?” he asked, concerned. “I could go back.”

  “How did you …”

  “Never mind. I have my ways. I’m an architect.” “Architect” was pronounced like “President of the United States.” “I couldn’t bring you the windows or the views but I did bring you your curtains. And I also have another little souvenir here for you.” He pulled a few square feet of my husband’s pale wool carpeting out of his duffel bag. “I lifted up the couch in the living room and took it from there. I put the couch back so he’ll never know it’s missing. It will be hilarious if he ever moves the couch and sees the hole. I wish we could be there when that happens.”

  I held the carpet in my arms. When I was eleven I couldn’t decide what color carpet to have in my room. I liked pink and red and blue and yellow. My father didn’t feel I should have to choose a color. He had squares of every color put down like a patchwork quilt.

  “Now you can put the carpet on the floor by your bed and feel happy when you put your feet down in the morning. Let’s go try it out.”

  He walked over to the bedroom and laid the carpet. It fit almost perfectly between the wall and my bed.

  “Now what are you going to do with the curtains? Hang them or hold them for ransom?” He picked up the phone pretending to hold a gun to the curtains’ head. “Hey, buddy, listen and listen good. We got your curtains and if you ever wanna see ‘em again you better do what we say. You want proof we got ‘em, listen to this. Say something!” he screamed at the curtains. He put the phone to the curtains and rustled them. Then he talked into the phone again. “Did you hear that? Huh, wise guy? Did you hear that? We got ‘em all right.”