t was an incredible location. A hidden gem. What they referred to as “up and coming” though the advantage of up was unknown and the implication that something was on the horizon, not quite there yet, was slightly unnerving.
It had two bedrooms and one bathroom but one bedroom was really a hallway and the bathroom was really an idea and the whole thing was all better if you closed your eyes and dreamed instead. The walls? They were buttercream yellow with shapes that moved under them in the dark.
The backyard was spacious by city standards and oppressive by all other standards and seemed to shrink the longer you stood in it. The cinder block walls shifted and held heat but also secrets and the sizzle of summer released them, whispering out the worst of your block from decades before you were born.
It had a basement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Imagine the storage!!!!!!!! You could put your camping gear down there! Your holiday décor! The tools your dad keeps giving you! Your off season clothes! Your old yearbooks! Memories you no longer need! A crawl space, just a sliver of jagged dark peeking through at the back wall, will fuel a new set of nightmares for you, of feral squatters who sneak out at night while you sleep to eat your snacks and murderers who are motivated only by the idea of your endless pleading and wet whimpers.
There is no closet, except the whole house is a closet. The floors are all shelves. And as you walk across the floors, you will become aware that you are just a doll, floating through predestined scenarios in which you have no control. The cinder blocks whispered your fate to you already. The specific creak of the laminate flooring near the stairs is a familiar cry. The rusted hinges on your bedroom sound like a primordial scream you heard in dream. The appliances are stainless steel. You’ll never know about the ways in which they may have been stained, because their surfaces will never reveal their history – they are stainless!!
There is a Nest camera. Well, something like a Nest camera. It is just an ancient eye, hot glued to an old CD and hanging near the door. It will keep you just as safe and just as surveilled.
The water makes its own choices whether it runs hot or cold. Be nice to the water, get on its good side. It may show you favor.
The parking is abysmal but you have come to expect this. You circle the block again, and again, and again, each time extending your radius out, away from your desired locale. Hours pass you. Your teeth start to ache. Finally, staring into the sun and a hundred miles from the house, you step out of the car and let it ride off on its own, back to the wild. You’re free now, Camry! Go on home, boy! The car putters off to its own destiny and you walk back past the pizza menu and empty chip bag tumbleweeds and wonder who is eating all these Doritos. Walking is nice, you remind yourself. Only in the city! You say again to no one. The pavement actively hates your feet, tenses itself under your shoes. You have wronged it in some way you’ll never know.
There are bars on all the windows and panic buttons in the room. This is comforting as you imagine bears and burglars trying to get in but you can’t help but wonder how you would get out.
The old loveseat in the living room comes with the house. More than that actually, it needs to remain in the house. In that spot. Do not touch it. Do not move it. If you disobey these rules, you do so at your own risk. We cannot guarantee the outcome but we know it will be devastating.
The price is double whatever you think it might be. We can see directly into your mind, see the number written on the chalkboard of your brain, and we double it. That is the price. You must tell us NOW if you want it. NOW!
On move in day all the cars that were set free back to the wild will have a grand homecoming and blink their four ways from their resting places in the middle of the street. It’s nice to have a weekend back in their old stomping grounds just to relax. You will be unable to maneuver your friend’s van down the block so all your boxes and trash bags and futons and poorly packed IKEA bags stuffed with forgotten dishes and books and batteries will be paraded from a great distance, a ceremonial entrance into your new home. A procession. “This is all they have to show for themselves. This is the summation of their existence. They have traded their time for currency and the currency for this. These batteries. That futon. A life spent.”
On the first night you will hear the favorite songs of every driver who passes your window. It is everyone’s birthday and they want to party. You will hear a hundred birds arguing directly outside your ears, doing their best impressions of a megaphone while perched on your air conditioning unit. You will hear footsteps in any quiet moment and you will convince yourself that as long as your eyes are shut, they are coming from the neighbor’s house.
It smells like nothing and that is so frightening when you really think about it.
There is construction on both sides and also somehow above you. Everyone is hammering hammers. This isn’t your industry though so maybe that’s something that needs to happen. Trust the process, you whisper to the plant you are trying to nurture on your stoop. An old shovel factory is being turned into 4,812 apartments with 18 bike parking spaces and 4 car parking spaces. The 4 car parking spaces will be given to the winners of a game called Big Stick. The game starts at dusk and the losers never speak of it. There is a first floor retail space that must always remain empty as part of the building agreement. The shovel ghosts demanded it.
It is a hundred blocks from the El and you will see so few people as you walk there that you will wonder if anyone else lives here. If there has been a rapture and you are the only person left in the city. If maybe you are not even left either. If the you that you think you are is really just a shell, a figment, a pearlescent figure floating past the remnants of an extinct planet, hearing the echo of dirt bikes bounce off the stucco and bricks. The cinder blocks sizzle their approval. You’re finally getting it.
The views are incredible. You can stand on your soft and dangerous roof and see everything. All the loose shopping carts and spraying hydrants, all the hammers and shovels, the promise of 4,812 new faces attached to lives that have also traded time for futons. You keep looking up and up and up and up to see what else may be coming.
