by Joshua Cohen
It unnerved, that after a move was over, the crew would never leave together: after they split the tip, they split up into the hordes, dispersing their creaturely reeks among the harried commuters.
Yoav wasn’t sure what permissions he had—to ask a ride from his coworkers, even just to ask directions—and so he’d be left on his own standing in twilight trying to figure out what corner he was on and how he was going to get out of there.
On foot, because the buses were still incomprehensible to him, and as for the trains, they were underground, and he’d had enough of tunnels.
—
A pregnant couple transitioning from a single room situation to an extra room situation…a pair of grown siblings who’d already evacuated their geriatric parents into assistedliving from out of the classic 6 condo they were looting…
The customers: they’d lead the way in a taxi up front and the moving truck, a boxtruck or tractortrailer, would follow just behind—taking the transverse through the Park, crosstown. From where the sun rises on the Upper East, to where it sets on the Upper West. No matter who drove or rode, Yoav would be sitting bitch. In the middle.
This was always the fragile time, the breakable time, the time of slip and slide and jostle. The ride between the old apartment already moved out, and the new apartment not yet moved into, during which life itself would come to seem like just another vehicle set in motion between unrelated emptinesses. For a moment, your burdens were suspended. For a certain span of mileage, you were weightless, you were free.
This was Yoav’s passage, his reprieve: sitting high above a taxi, its windows steamed from grievance, and feeling the rumbling coming up from below, springs poking his balls through the vinyl, stickshift rattling between his legs.
Each move had its own logistics, each party to a move its own subterfuges. Because the customers would misrepresent their possessions on the online form, Ruth would have to call and followup: buildings vet prospective tenants, movers vet prospective loads. Prewar or Postwar were no indications, the preferred criterion was: Yes Elevator, No Elevator. All planning proceeded from there: what floor, the number of flights of stairs, the number of stairs per flight, the number of rooms (incl. attic, incl. basement).
The desire to get finished earlier vs. the desire to drag a job out, because the crews got paid for their time. The desire to take a break vs. the desire to finish earlier, because the crews didn’t get paid for their breaks. Whether to work by the room or by item size. Whether to work by the room as arranged at move out or as it would be arranged at move in. Load the big stuff first, to maximize truckspace (crew philosophy). Load the big stuff last, to waste truckspace but require more trips, which meant more time, maximizing profit (philosophy of Paul Gall).
Because packing was distinct from moving, both in terms of expertise and pricing structure, the chief distinction to be found amongst the customers wasn’t related to anything indelible like melanin or age, but to money—between those who’d packed themselves and those who hadn’t. Or between those who were present at their moves and those rich enough to be moved while away on vacation. Yoav and the others would storm up to their residential fortresses that were like something out of some fantastic antique duchy of Middle Europe: blocksize, gated, the turrets set with spikes, the bastions lacking only cannon. The doorman, dressed like a general, wouldn’t want them in the lobby. The super, dressed like his adjutant, wouldn’t want them in the halls. Elevator policy was enforced, one was for service, the other for the served. Each to their own capacities. The movers had to wear sticker IDs that read Contractor. They had to read a screen and click Agree. They were warned, they were being watched, listened to, backgroundchecked, and screened for cimices, termites, roaches, warrants, priors. The patrols weren’t armed by building ownership or management, but by the city, because they were cops, just offduty. Rules included no cursing and keep your pants up at your fucking waists and don’t take your motherfucking shirts off. Finally, they’d be let into an apartment, and everything would just be out, immaculately staged and dusted. Nothing would be boxed. Nothing would even be labeled. The movers would take it slow. They’d drive slow. They’d unload slow and make their own decisions. Slow. They’d sit around after, atop corpulent flatulent shrinkwrapped settees, waiting on Tinks, who’d once spent all of a paid weekend getting certified to move fine art and pianos. Someone would thump that pretty shaky on the stairs theme from the Moonlight Sonata. Someone had to argue that the sky was a lake and so the stars just reflections, which meant the painting was hanging upsidedown.
If the customer was present, odds were they’d turn out to be customers—a couple. Which meant friction. What you did was, you instructed one member of the couple to stay at the old unit and the other member to wait at the new. This tamped down dissension. Still, typically what you’d get would be one member of the couple at the old unit able to be calm and without opinion, only because there’d always be that other member at the new unit yelling at you about vase placement, about what the hell were you doing taking up that crevice with that deflowered vase, and what shocked Yoav was that every couple he’d jobbed for had evinced this divide—straight or gay, irrespective of gender, there was always a leader, a commander, as implacable as an apartment’s dimensions, or a circuitbreaker impeding at midwall. The low leather suspended from tubular metal futons had to go across from each other and perpendicular to the recliner, the workbenchlike table had to be set with a chair at each extremity and disposited flush with the counter partiwalling the kitchen, and the Shaker dresser that Yoav noted was missing two drawerhandles prior to transport was to be situated, regardless of all physical limitations, in the bedroom athwart the bed, the customer having calculated, or having sworn that they’d calculated, the minimum clearance by which an open drawer wouldn’t bump an open door. If you couldn’t angle a table you had to amputate its limbs and hump the rest across the banisters. If you couldn’t get a dresser through the door just by taping its drawers you had to remove the drawers and then, in turning, let the hollows accommodate the knob. If the argument was with you, give in. If the argument was within the couple, stay out of it. Customers fought, as you labored, on their own time. And the nastier the fight, the nicer the tip.
Another thing about couples: they tended to move in together (hiring one crew for both members), but move out separately (hiring one crew for each member)—the lesson being that while making a life together took more toil, unmaking that life took more cash.
Ruth would put it differently, while giving estimates: if you try to save time, you’ll just wind up getting charged for an additional vehicle plus tolls.
Yoav once moved a couple from their separate apartments in Chelsea and Murray Hill to a loftbuilding still being refurbished in Astoria. The couple had doubles of everything, but didn’t want to get rid of the excess, and definitely didn’t want the movers to do the ridding for them, so: four bedstands, two beds. The building had once been a factory for coffins. The elevator was for freight and operated by a crank you tugged with your hand not like you were directing it up or down but like you were directly cranking its engine or pulleying. Eighth floor. The couple was in a fit. They were insisting they’d signed a contract for 8G, but the broker or building rep kept saying they hadn’t and that 8H was “fundamentally the same unit: same size, same layout, same view.”
The couple didn’t agree: 8H had a tinier laundrynook, the tinier laundrynook was adjacent to the kitchen, and the windows faced airshaft, not street.
The broker was a freckled redhead in a baggy suit and an exterminator’s cologne.
Yoav and Tinks and Mark from Philly who was Tinks’ current roommate and this weakling asthmatic guy with a do-rag, braces, and a lanyarded inhaler who called himself D’Bruce and never showed for work again, continued to unload in the hall, as the couple demanded to be let into 8G to compare, but the broker didn’t have the key. The man called the management company, the woman slit tape and mauled cardboard in search of the
ir contract, which they’d packed.
Yoav never found out how it all got resolved, after the couple signed for Leland and returned the clipboard and pen, which the broker was claiming was his pen, he was yelling about how they couldn’t leave, they couldn’t obstruct the exits, “my pen,” and Leland exited, shrugging.
The couple’s stuff was left heaped in the hall: suitcases, crates, a shrieking sawdusted cage of albino mice.
Gowanus, this other couple that lived together was no longer together—meaning they no longer shared the bedroom but shared the rest. Sheets and blankets had been folded on the gashed velvet of a loveseat. The couple was on the floor, still snatching at paperbacks, reacquiring their libraries, haggling over LPs and a tattered poster of sunflowers not flirtatiously but with passion, their feud degenerating from the issue of what was whose before the merger to what should or could be whose if certain trades or admissions of guilt or sincere psychologically reparative apologies were tendered. Ronriguez was still out with the truck, doubleparked between a driveway and a hydrant. Talc took a phonecall and because it was about his landscaping business, or the landscaping business he’d be founding the moment any bank approved him for a loan, he took it outside, and came back waving a $120 ticket.
The couple’s final disagreement—after Jon insisted their moves had to happen today—was over the order of the moving: who’d vacate the premises first.
The woman said, “Him first,” but the man said, “You’re going to Connecticut, I’m just down the block,” and the woman said, “Shouldn’t keep your new slut waiting,” and the man said, “Couldn’t stop banging your boss,” and the woman said, “Whoever cheated first, moves first.”
“If you keep on like this,” Tinks said, “we’re going to have to send Yo uptown to get us one of them UN negotiators.”
After returning from moving the man, Talc and Ronriguez were cut loose because of conflicts: Talc had to testdrive some preowned hedgers, edgers, and pruners, Ronriguez had his second job at a carwash. The woman was sobbing.
Her stuff was loaded and the sun was low in the clouds and Connecticut, like childhood, just kept getting farther.
“We’re ready,” Jon said, “whenever you are,” but the woman just sat on the stoop with her totebag open in her lap for her tears.
“I’m not going—I’m crashing at a friend’s—tell my Dad—or I told him already but still,” she said, “I was supposed to get my friend’s keys, but then she was called into a meeting and said not to come to the office, she’d come to me, when she’s out of the meeting, or if it goes late I’m supposed to be in touch with her boyfriend, or not her boyfriend but this guy she’s, who works at the climbingwall restaurant, she met him online, and at my Dad’s house everything can go in the basement except my lilies, which he’s going to have to water.”
“Word.”
Jon’s phone calculated the route with such immediacy, it was as if they didn’t have to drive it, the roads had already driven themselves.
New Canaan—1010 WINS here, even the GPS here, was too loud, so Jon turned them down, and Tinks had stopped talking, about girls of his who’d OD’d, or noosed themselves, or slashed their wrists wrongly across and not lengthwise, and this festival of documentaries he was going to, or had a documentary he’d made in competition in.
The house glowed like a bulb from out of the dark socket of culdesac. Two figures flustered like moths: the wife trim and grinning with hair flapping just past her ears, the husband bloated with round thick architect’s glasses that, because he wasn’t an architect, his wife must’ve picked.
“I can’t thank you enough,” she said and shook Jon’s hand. “I’m the stepmother.”
The husband was intent on pitching in, but she wouldn’t let him, and told Jon not to let him, so Jon told him he’d best be of help guarding the truck, to ensure that nothing was taken, and they left the man standing curbside redundant and sullen, in a neighborhood that never took, because there was nothing it didn’t already own.
After Jon, Yoav, and Tinks had stoked the basement, the wife invited them to stay—there was still stirfry leftover from supper and the movers gathered around the table as she warmed it in a pan on the stove. The microwave heated unevenly and wasn’t healthy. Stirfry with white meat, mixed veggies. The husband was into stocks. The wife had retired as a speechlanguage pathologist. They’d talk about anything not to talk about their girl. For example, the rain (how bad would it be?). For example, Yoav’s origins (the Middle East?).
“Israel,” Yoav said.
Tinks said, “And I’m from Atlanta.”
The wife said, “George.”
The husband was picking at the triveted pan. “What?”
“You already ate supper.”
“But I’m hungry.”
The wife got him a fork. “At least don’t use your nasty hands—I bet they don’t eat like that in Israel.”
Tinks said, “Suburban Atlanta.”
The wife said, “George.”
“What, darling?”
“Not straight from the pan,” and then she served her husband a miserable portion. “The boy said he’s from Israel.”
The husband bowed his head and bit into a babycorn.
“That food’s so delicious,” the wife went on. “The hummus—and the nuggets? What are they called? Don’t tell me—I’ll get it. You know, I never knew until there was this cooking event at the church that the nuggets were just made from the same thing the hummus is—the beans? Barganzos?”
The husband got up, went to a cabinet for glasses and wine. “Anyone?”
The wife said, “Enough red. White.”
Tinks said, “Please.”
Jon said, “We’re OK. I’m driving.”
The husband said, “Red.”
The wife said, “You’ve got gout.”
The husband said, “And you’ve got your sleeve in the soysauce.”
The wife got up, rinsed her sleeve in the sink. “So Israel—I’d love to have gone, but unfortunately.”
The husband said, “Strong pharma in that country of yours. Tech sector too. Energy’s developing. You in with any funds?”
“I’d love to have gone, but George couldn’t.”
“Not true.” The husband drained the bottle in his glass.
The wife said, “The church was having this tour, Red Sea, Dead Sea, Nazareth, Jerusalem. But George didn’t feel up to it, not with his ankle. All those stairs out of stone. All those quaint winding streets.”
The husband forked at Yoav, “That’s what it’s like, isn’t it?”
Yoav said, “In Jerusalem the most.”
The wife said, “That’s what it said in the pamphlet: follow in the footsteps of Jesus—but it didn’t say how many steps.”
“Outside Jerusalem, it very modern.”
“We went into Manhattan to visit—we went to a matinee of The Lion King, just this past Labor Day weekend, and George could barely make it the two avenue blocks back to the garage.”
Coming out of Connecticut, it was raining moonless and the roads were slick—Jon remaining vigilant about the driveways, which were hidden like the mouths to caves by bush and shrub, the burrowed hibernacles of affluence.
The only voice in the truck was machinic, robotic—the GPS giving directions and constantly rerouting, Thruway to the Expressway rerouting, until the Major Deegan slowed, then stopped. The access road was better.
And then it might’ve been Woodlawn, because there were woods, out of which scampered a child, because a deer can still be a child, frozen knockkneed atop the dotted line, and Jon stomped the brake and turned into the skid, tossing them all forward into the impact. Tinks bucked and Yoav reached out to keep from hitting the dash and then—pressured in his chest—was wrenched back by his seatbelt, pinching him like the strap of a ghost rifle.
The truck was slung across an intersection, cab and trailer splayed like clockhands. They might also have been hit from the rear. The most vexing thin
g about a sizable vehicle is that you can’t keep track of most of it. You’re like an enormous metal animal that doesn’t know it’s picked up an enormous metal tick, until the tick explodes. Out the truck’s windows, the houses went rubbling away into darkness and a fog swirled up with the stench of scorched rubber. The wind strewed trash across the street, spooked trashbags out of their mounds into the air. Yoav kept checking the mirrors. He didn’t know where the shooting was coming from. They were pinned. The vehicle shook and the radiophone was blaring. He ducked but swiveled around, as the shooting kept coming in bursts from 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock and down on the roof like rain. Then he realized, the doors were open and he was alone. You weren’t supposed to get out of the vehicle, but wherever the others were, they were out of the vehicle. Yoav thought that maybe he was the driver now. He thought that maybe if he’d honk too the rest of the crew would return and not just strand him. The fire sprayed and did not discriminate. You killed the windows to kill the buildings. You killed the corner buildings to kill the streets. He sat, immobilized, with a motor’s buzz under the hood of his ears, and the glint of glass like life in his eye, like some star, to take direction from until its fading. Someone was approaching, blood spurting from the nose like a siren. You weren’t supposed to get out of the vehicle, and yet here he was, getting dragged out. He was being shoved toward the trees.