Page 15 of No Place Like You

Lucy

When I arrive at JFK,I make quick work to gather my luggage and snag a cab. The forty-five-minute cab ride turns into an hour and a half with unexpected road closures and the expected rush hour traffic. The cab comes to a stop in front of a tall five-story brownstone, where there’s a short flight of stairs leading up to a maroon-colored door with brass hardware that looks dull and rusted. I huff a sigh before lifting the retractable handles to my bags and dragging them up the stairs.

“You need some help?” I hear someone call.

When I turn to look over my shoulder, I see a man dressed in semi-casual business attire and a pair of hunter green loafers, sans socks, walking toward the same building I’m about to enter.

“Oh,” I answer through a controlled breath, already winded from the first three steps. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Well, let me at least get the door for you,” he says, walking around me to the entrance. I make it up the final steps and angle my luggage to fit through the frame. I give a purse-lipped smile before looking at the narrowstairs, catching another glimpse of the too hard to miss green shoes and bare ankles below cropped dress pants.Ugh, that is such a weird fashion trend.

“Elevator’s out,” No Socks comments, adding insult to injury as he continues to watch me struggle.

I sigh. “Thanks,” I deadpan.

He opens his mouth at the same time a small smile tips up the corners of his mouth when we’re interrupted by a low thud. The door we just entered through reopens with a bang. A man who looks to be about four-foot-ten-inches tall waddles through the door and peers up at me. His eyes scatter over my luggage.

“Hi, Horace,” No Socks calls.

“Gary,” Horace mumbles. “I’m not here to make small talk. I had to rush here to meet a new tenant. Unless you need the downstairs shower drain snaked again.”

“Uh, no. I’m good, Horace.”

Horace harrumphs and fumbles with a set of keys on a large key ring.

I glance over at No Socks—or Gary, I guess—and my mouth suddenly feels dry.

“You don’t happen to be the new tenant?” he asks, gesturing toward my luggage and my haggard appearance.

“I’m afraid so,” I say in a low whisper.

At the same time Gary lets out a small smirk, Horace grumbles, “You Lucia?”

“Lucy,” I correct.

He doesn’t acknowledge my answer. Instead, he starts trudging up the steps with no indication for me to follow. But taking his lack of social cues and just general social indecency, I grab my luggage and follow.

“I’ll see you around, Lucia.” I look over my shoulder and get one last glimpse of Gary disappearing down a hallway.

After we come to a stop at the second floor, Horace rounds the corner down a narrow hallway. I maneuver with my luggage, and we finally stop in front of a door marked twenty-four. Horace remains silent, though ragged breaths filter through his nostrils from the trek up the stairs, while he unlocks the door using the same large jingly key holder he was playing with downstairs.

He continues through the threshold, his heavy steps thumping against the hard floor. He doesn’t make it very far because it takes about four and a half steps to walk from one end of the smallest apartment I’ve ever seen in my life to the other. I know the listing said micro apartment, but this has got to be a new level of tiny living.

He lifts his index finger, vaguely gesturing toward the single window at the far wall. “Bed. Closet.” He drags his finger across the room as if he has it pressed against a large touch screen at a kiosk. “Kitchen.” He reaches into his pocket and retrieves a set of keys. “The bathroom’s around the corner in the hallway. You need one of these keys to open it. The other two are for the door and the front entrance downstairs.”

A rise of panic climbs up my throat. “I-I’m sorry. Where’s the bathroom?”

He silently stalks out the front door and gestures his entire hand to the hallway on his right.

“It’s not inside the apartment?”

He shakes his head. “It’s communal,” he curtly explains. “There’s one on each floor, but you only have the key to this one.” He lifts his hand again, pointing lazily at the bathroom I have yet to see. “You and about six other tenants.”

“They didn’t mention that in the listing.”

“It’s there,” he says with an annoyed sigh. “But if there’s an issue, you need to take it up with the property manager. I’m just the super here.”

He juts out the keys in my direction, urging me to take them from him. “I’m on the first floor. Apartment twelve if you need anything.” He gives a sympathetic nod before leaving. Perhaps he’s offering a small gesture of compassion for this girl, wide-eyed like a deer in headlights as if she just landed in a foreign country where they eat octopus for breakfast.

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