Dear Diary: Chaillot
Because it is very late and I really haven’t got anything better to talk about, I’m going to go topical: the picture attached to this entry shows the lady who lives across the street. As always, when one sees her, she is positioned on the steps — the stoop, as one calls such a flight in Gotham — of what someone from the midwest might call a “town house.” As well it may be. There is no apparent way in which tenants could come and go. The stoop, as you can see, is littered with buckets and other impedimenta. These are carefully rearranged from time to time, usually in the morning. I’m sure that one of my neighbors has made a study of Our Lady of the Steps, and knows all about what she’s up to. I’ve only recently begun paying half-assed attention.
Not to be ghoulish, really, but the lady across the street reminds me of the tenant who occupied our apartment until his demise in 1983. He was an older Jewish guy with a black girlfriend — that’s what everyone said — and a number of his belongings remained in the apartment after we took possession. Some bookshelves, some strange carvings, and a lot of shag carpeting. However it worked out, it was not the sort of detail that my brain finds interesting. What I do recall is that the sliding closet doors in the master bedroom (the one with an en suite bathroom) had been removed, and the interior of the closet was painted pitch black. A sort of Turkish corner, perhaps — Sixties style. That was the feeling that the apartment still exhaled when we were given the key, about a week before we actually moved in. Middle-aged intellectual Manhattan hippie — right out of Saul Bellow, right?
I was a little older than half my current age, but not much. As for Kathleen, I do believe that she has spent more than half of her life time in this apartment.
When we took possession, of course, we thought that the previous tenant, now a dead man, had lived here forever. How could we imagine that we would occupy the premises far beyond the term of his tenancy? That’s not the sort of thing that occurs to you (unless you’re a pessimist) when you’re in your early thirties.
In those days, a lovely woman by the name of Rose was the rental agent. Rose decided who got which apartment. Kathleen was very sweet to Rose when she rented the studio on the sixteenth floor in 1980. Kathleen was even sweeter to Rose when we rented the one-bedroom on the seventh floor a year later, in 1981. Kathleen was extraordinarily sweet to Rose when we were offered the apartment that we have been in since 1983. It is not unlikely that Rose expected us to be sweetissimo. What she told us, though, was that she’d given the apartment to us because she she was “grossed out” by the tenants who called her the minute they read our precedent’s death notice in the Times. A case of faux faute de mieux, no?
Being sweet, we half believed her. We were in any case glad to get up here, and not just because the apartment was larger. Our studio had faced north — a dull view, but very quiet. Our new apartment faced east, and was back from 86th Street. The apartment in between had been in the front of building, right on top of Yorkville High Street, and early mornings were a nightmare. As a callow young man, I looked out at the view of Citibank (now blocked) all the time, but I never looked down on the streetscape. I have no idea if Our Lady of the Steps was busy then. I half think that she was. As I say, though, one of my many, many neighbors is sure to know.