by Ariella Papa
We should have gone for Italian, I would have done wonders with spaghetti.
I don’t talk to Roseanne about Zeke for a few days. She’s got her own problems stressing about a job and searching for an apartment. I found this one on the Net and convinced her we should go after I got out of work. I’ve taken a new policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” If she gets a job she will undoubtedly tell me. Until then I will neither inquire about her search, nor offer constructive criticism about things like not wearing such a glossy lipstick or how much nicer her black pantsuit looks than the cotton-lycra skirt set.
The Realtor, Craig, gives us a little attitude about being late for our appointment. There was a subway delay. I give him attitude right back. Roseanne says nothing. I hope she isn’t this quiet and miserable on job interviews, but remember, I am beyond advice.
The apartment is not exactly near the subway, but I guess it’s still considered “in the vicinity.” Craig is very elusive about this apartment. Since Roseanne won’t talk (again), I have to be the spokeswoman. “So how is the place?”
“It’s great and so charming.” Okay, small—I gathered that from the ad. And I am sure the advertised EIK (that’s Eat In Kitchen, for you nonresidents) is minuscule. Craig chats up the apartment all the way there. He must feel guilty about the ridiculous fee that Realtors charge and somehow hopes to feel like he’s earning his money. Whatever.
We turn onto this nice block. I’m not jazzed about the Upper East Side and the only reason I’m checking out this place is because I feel bad about making Rosie do all this work in her fragile state. Despite all the telltale signs from the ad that it would suck (EIK, charming, 1BR converted, prewar), I suggested we check it out so I could put in some effort.
We stop at a really nice brownstone. I am fighting that hopeful feeling but, I can’t help thinking that this could be it. I look to Rosie, who is staring at the cracks in the sidewalk. I didn’t want to do this alone. I take a deep breath.
“Okay,” says Craig, stopping in front of the building, beginning his hard sell. “Now, it will be painted before you move in.” Don’t get too far ahead of yourself there, buddy. But, wait, he is headed downstairs! Downstairs? No one said anything about a basement apartment.
He opens the door to one of the tiniest apartments I have ever seen. Maybe if Rosie and I were Siamese twins we might have an enjoyable life here, but we’d probably also have a book deal and do the talk show circuit and could afford to live somewhere else. One bedroom converted? Converted to what? Two tiny closets? Yes, you can eat in the kitchen. The kitchen, the living room and the “converted” bedrooms are one big room. If you plan on eating in the apartment, you will virtually always be in the kitchen.
“Feel free to look around,” says Craig encouragingly. There is nothing I need to look at; the entire apartment is right in my field of vision. Including the bathroom. Craig must read my mind. “They’re definitely going to put the bathroom door on before you move in.”
That’s reassuring. I look at Rosie. She is turning a color I’ve never quite seen before. “There is no way in hell I will ever live in this doody apartment.” Rosie starts out slowly, but I can see it getting worse. That’s pretty crass for her.
Craig looks shocked—as shocked as I am. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me, this is ridiculous. How much are you charging for this place? Fourteen hundred? The worst part is some schmuck is actually going to pay.” I note her use of “schmuck.”
“Listen, miss, I don’t where you’re from, but this is New York.”
“This is garbage!” Wow! Craig can’t believe it, either. He sweeps his arm around the tiny apartment and up toward the barred window that is barely street level.
“Where in New York do you think you will get a view like this one?”
Rosie shakes her head and physically grabs me and pulls me out of the apartment. As we’re out the door she turns back towards him and shouts.
“Up your ass!” Those are the harshest I’ve ever heard from those lips. I am holding on to the wall of the brownstone, so I won’t fall over laughing. What balls! The well-dressed people walking by will probably have us arrested for loitering, but I can’t stop laughing. My stomach starts to hurt and I am about to cry from the hysteria. I look at Rosie, expecting the same, but she really is crying, sobbing and it takes me by surprise.
“Roseanne.” I touch her shoulder. “Are you okay?” She doesn’t speak for a while. She shakes her head and keeps trying to stop.
“I’ve gone through two thousand dollars in three weeks.”
“How?”
“Little things—drinks, food—I swear I’ve only bought like one skirt and it wasn’t that. Just little things. It wouldn’t be a big deal if I were working, but what if I go through my entire savings and still don’t have a job? We are going to have to put a deposit down on the apartment. What am I going to do?”
“You are going to get a job.”
“No one has called back for more than a second interview. I was even thinking of putting in a résumé at Prescott.”
“Well, you should. I believe sooner or later everyone works for Uncle Pres.”
“And I just roam around the streets of New York all day, which would be great if I were on vacation, but I feel guilty, like I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“I know.” But I don’t.
“And today, you know how it rained this morning? Well, I went to The Virgin Megastore and I was reading and I just sort of fell asleep. One of the employees woke me up and told me I wasn’t allowed to sleep there. Like I was freaking homeless or something.” Wow! What do you say to that? There’s really only one thing.
“Let’s get a drink.”
We wind up back in the Village in a dark little bar. There is nothing like drowning your sorrows in the creature. I foot the bill. It’s the least I can do. I opt not to call Tabitha, although she loves this place and she’ll kill me if she finds out we’re here without her. I attempt to console Roseanne. “We just have to keep a positive attitude.”
“I know, but, I can’t stand another dead interview and I can’t stand another ‘charming’ apartment. What the heck is prewar, anyway?”
“No idea. But, there’s a guy looking at you.” Okay, I’m lying, he’s not. But Roseanne is pretty in that All-American way, which really means Northern European. (I only know that because of my sister’s Social Politics master.) She also is an exercise junkie. Anyway, I know I shouldn’t have, but if she just makes eye contact with this guy, it might work wonders for her self-confidence. Besides, he looks real cheesy and Tabitha thinks that’s totally Rosie’s type. I tend to agree.
“He is not.” She checks him out quickly. This is called setting the bait, he definitely saw her. These meat market games are so freshman year, but times are tough. The girl needs love. Within minutes, said guy comes over to us with his fat friend. They buy us drinks.
Roseanne and I play good cop/bad cop for a while getting Brad’s (of course) employment history out. It figures he works in advertising. Rosie is into it. I can imagine Tabitha smirking as we are in the process of picking up the cheesiest men in the bar. That is, Rosie is. I am not interested in Paul, the fat friend.
“So you work for a publishing company,” Paul asks, smiling at me with bad teeth.
“Yeah.”
“You girls got an apartment here in the city?”
“No, we are visiting from Tulsa, and we’ll be leaving tomorrow.” Roseanne shoots me a look. It’s amazing that she can hear me so clearly with her back to me yet she needs to lean so close to Brad’s lips to understand him. I correct myself, for her sake. For the sake of love, if you will.
Anyway, we imbibe quite a bit. So much so that at one point I must mistakenly give Paul the go ahead to kiss me (maybe it’s just the example set by face sucking Roseanne and Brad), but I quickly put a stop to that.
Roseanne walks away with a business card and a date for next Thursday night (p
rops to her). Luckily, it’s the night I’m going to the Fashion Awards with Tabitha. Once again we are back on the bus, but this time we get to pass out. I wake up just in time for our stop and note that Rosie has a smile on her face as she sleeps. It warms the cockles of my cold heart.
“I found it!” Roseanne says when I pick up the phone. Herb happens to be standing near my desk, talking to one of the writers.
“What’s that?” I try to sound professional.
“The most wonderful apartment!” Let me just say that ever since her date prospect, she’s been a little happier, but finding the perfect apartment is nothing to joke about. I feel my heart start to beat. This could be the new beginning.
“Where?”
“Chelsea. Right on 7th Avenue. It’s amazing. The landlady’s cousin showed it to me. She says they’re making their decision tomorrow. Eve, there were like thirty other people there.”
“How much?”
“Only fourteen. Only? Gosh, I never thought I would say that. Shit, I’m becoming a New Yorker. Eve, I am serious, we have to get this apartment. Have to. Call the landlady and schmooze her. You’re good at that.” Really?
“Okay, give me the number.” She gives it to me. Her name is Mrs. Yakimoto. “How many bedrooms?”
“Well it’s just one bedroom with this alcove and a sleep loft. The bedroom and the loft aren’t that big, but the living room and everything else is huge. It’s unbelievable, it’s amazing. Eve, I haven’t seen an apartment this nice. Oh, shit.” Roseanne is getting real accustomed to this cursing thing. She is loving her new New Yorkness. It’s actually rubbing off on me and I find myself wanting this apartment sight unseen.
I hang up the phone. I smile up at Herb, who just sort of stares at me, like I am somehow representative of a generation of young women that he would never want to attempt to understand.
“Searching for an apartment,” I say.
“I hear it’s tough these days.” I smile and nod, hoping he will go away so I can make personal phone calls.
“Can you send this out for me, Eve?” He hands me a big puffy envelope full of stuff. Now as I said, Herb is a very self-sufficient man, but little things like “sending stuff out” are beyond him. This man has published books and had honorary and real degrees from all over but can’t figure out the Prescott Nelson mail system. Basically, our mail system entails just dropping it in a bin for someone else to come and take care of postage. It’s wonderful. My mother gives me care packages to send to my sister all the time. No one questions anything. All it takes is a Bicycle Boy or Prescott Nelson label. Since Herb has already written out the address, all I have to do is put the package in the mail bin next to my desk. It’s easy enough, and the nice thing is it makes both Herb and I feel like I am earning my title as “assistant.”
I take the package from him. I ooze efficiency. “Great. I’ll do it right away.”
I call Mrs. Yakimoto. She lives on Long Island. Her son answers the phone. He can’t be more than six. He screams for his mother to get the phone. She answers and speaks in slightly accented English.
“Mrs. Yakimoto, my name is Eve Vitali. My roommate Roseanne looked at the apartment today.”
“Yes, I think my cousin mentioned her. There have been so many calls today.” Mrs. Yakimoto sounds a little stressed. I can hear her kids in the background.
“Well, we are really interested in the apartment and we are really hoping to get it.”
“I know, but I wasn’t expecting to rent to two people and you haven’t even see the apartment yet. I never expected to even have this apartment to rent. My cousin decided to get married and now she wants to move uptown. She said she would handle it, but I still have to talk to all these people. Do you believe people are offering me six months’ rent?”
“Yes, I do. It’s really tough to get an apartment in the city.” I hear one of Mrs. Yakimoto’s children bawling and she yells at them in another language and gets back on the phone with me.
“Are those your kids?”
“Yes, I have four.”
“Well, Mrs. Yakimoto, I’m sure the last thing you want to do is worry about all of this. I just want to tell you how great my roommate Roseanne thinks the apartment is and how much we would really love it.”
“Well, I have to talk to my husband about this. You girls seem very nice, but it’s a lot to decide. I will call you back tomorrow.”
“Okay, but Mrs. Yakimoto, we are really interested in the apartment. We’ll be great tenants. Really.”
When we get off the phone, I get an idea. I call Adrian.
“I was wondering if you had any extra Little Nell toys lying around.”
“We’ve got tons. Come down and get some. I could use a visit.”
It’s always nice to visit Adrian, because he notices things that most men wouldn’t. Today he said my lipstick was glam and very New York. He’s so cute. I can understand why Rosie had her little crush on him.
Not only did he give me a bunch of Little Nells, he gave me all kinds of cartoon T-shirts and some promotional toys from Little Nell’s advertisers. I look up Mrs. Yakimoto’s address on the Net and FedEx all the stuff to her with a note telling her (again) how much we’d like to live in the place and hoping her kids enjoy the stuff.
I can tell Tabitha is impressed with my cunning and maybe a tad jealous that I will live in a much cooler area plus be closer to Adrian and Krispy Kreme donuts. I neglect to tell her about my night out at the bar and the guy Roseanne kind of picked up. I am too tired to go out tonight, but I promise to go out tomorrow night, Friday, to kick off what might be one of the last warm weekends of the year.
She bugs me again about what I am going to wear to the Fashion Awards next Tuesday. Again, I say the same black Bebe sweater and some skirt I got in Soho for really cheap. I can tell Tabitha isn’t all that excited about it. All we are doing is seat filling. She finds the whole thing a tad beneath her. She wishes we had actual tickets instead of having to hop around from seat to seat whenever someone vacates. She is also dying to find a post event invite, but the Big C only got one.
“Eve, you’re a real peach today.”
“I’m just worrying about the apartment thing.”
“I’d worry, too, especially if only Roseanne has seen it. You’re giving her an awful lot of responsibility, don’t you think?”
“Well, I trust her, Tabitha.”
“What are you gonna do if she can’t get a job?”
“She’s been looking for three weeks. Only three weeks. She’ll get one.”
“As what? An aerobics instructor?” I don’t say anything for a full twenty seconds. I count it on my phone’s time display.
“Look, Tabitha, just give me a call tomorrow when you decide what you want to do this weekend.”
“Maybe try to scout out some more pseudo celebrities. Roseanne will like that. I hear there’s a bar where old cast members from the Real World are put out to pasture.”
“Whatever.” I hang up. That’s something I never do to Tabitha. I just can’t take the excess drama.
My parents are delighted about the apartment possibility. Well, I’m exaggerating, my mom dabs her eyes a little and congratulates us in her typical martyrish way and my dad makes some comment about Chinese people. I remind him that Mrs. Yakimoto is most likely Japanese, but it doesn’t seem to register. Thankfully my sister Monica isn’t around to start a political correctness war with them.
Roseanne describes the entire apartment to me. The things she keeps raving about are the hardwood floors and all the space. It’s unbelievable that it’s so cheap. There are only two other tenants in the apartment building. One above us, one below. We have the entire floor. It sounds too good to be true.
And we definitely need to get out of Jersey.
I call Mrs. Yakimoto first thing in the morning. A different kid answers this time, this one is probably nine. I ask to speak to Mrs. Yakimoto and he starts screaming.
“It’s the lady, the toy l
ady!” Mrs. Yakimoto comes to the phone.
“Eve?” She sounds weary.
“Hi. Mrs. Yakimoto.”
“Thank you for the stuff. The kids love it. They told me to give the apartment to the toy lady.”
“Well you should,” I say, pleased.
“Well, Eve, to be honest, my husband isn’t thrilled about the idea of giving it to two girls. What if something breaks? We’re just not sure about girls.” We’re women, thank you. I will get this apartment one way or another even if I have to sue her for sexual discrimination.
“Well, Mrs. Yakimoto, we’re very self-sufficient women. Actually, my father owns a plumbing business. He’s really handy. So, really, we’ll never ask for anything.”
“But, you’re so young, and how do we know you can pay the rent? We have a lot of other interested people.”
“I know, but we love the apartment. It’s our dream. We will be the best tenants ever. Really.” Mrs. Yakimoto laughs. “We will definitely be able to pay the rent.”
“What about Roseanne, she doesn’t have a job?” Damn!
“Yes she does.” Shit.
“Really?” Fuck.
“Yes, actually she got a job working here, working for…” Help! Help! “A different magazine, she just found out last night.” Mrs. Yakimoto is silent for a long time.
“Well. I would like to see a copy of your last pay stub and I need something from Roseanne. Can she get a letter from her employer?” That Mrs. Yakimoto is sharp, depressingly sharp.
“Of course, I’ll send it right over.”
“You can fax it to my husband’s office.” The awful Mr. Yakimoto once again standing in the way of all that is rightfully ours.
Shit! Shit! Shit! I call Roseanne. She has just returned from a grueling run that she starts to tell me about. I cut her off right away to tell her the news.
“What are we going to do?” She sounds like she’s on the verge of tears. Why must I always be the pillar? I don’t have time to start wondering why; instead I come up with a brilliant plan. “Roseanne, I’ll call you back.” Immediately I call Tabitha.