Christmas came and went and all in all I'm pleased with my bootie: A new yoga mat, a duvet and some pillows, and a set of antique, silver plated silverware, among other things. I still have to track down my brother Andrew and give him his gifts. He was fun to shop for since he's a hip, young guy with an appreciation for irony.
Anyway, La Madre drove me back into the city on the 26th. As I was carrying the typical post-holiday detritus into my apartment, (gifts, dinner leftovers, fashion mags, etc.) I was startled by a woman standing in my little hallway. There's only one other apartment in my little crook, and you really have to know where you're going to get there (again with the basement apartment nonsense.)
The woman was standing in front of the door knocking. I smiled and said hello and then tossed my pillows into my apartment so I could go back up to the car and get more stuff. When I came back, the woman was sitting on the stairs in the lobby. She asked if I knew Kevin, the guy in the apartment across from me. Of course I did. He was a cool guy and we chatted whenever we did laundry. She told me she was his girlfriend and he never came by her house on Christmas Eve. She was worried. Crying, even. She asked for the name of the super.
I went back down to my apartment, left a bag of groceries on the kitchen floor and brought her back a piece of paper with the super's name on it. As I was bringing yet another batch of Christmas crap down to my apartment, I saw that two policemen arrived and were headed over to this mysterious woman.
Sure, all of this was none of my business, but I'm a journalist to my core. I left my front door open as I put some things away. Soon, Joe the Super showed up and he and the two cops were at Kevin's front door. Were they about to find a body?
Enter me, dragging a trash bag out of my apartment as the super and the fuzz cracked open Kevin's door with an extra key. Through my own rattling all I heard was the super saying. "You're okay? That's all you want us to tell her?"
Whoa. This was getting crazy. Seems that Kev was in the apartment the whole time and just didn't want to talk to this woman. This was nuts. Here she was crying and calling the police and Kev-Nice is around the whole time.
I went back up to the car, took my last bag and sent La Madre off. When I came back, the fuzz and the super were gone.
I mussed around the house for a bit and then decided to go out and shop and find some pillowcases for my new bedding. As I came out of my apartment, the woman was standing out in the hallway, cell phone in hand and crying. Oh geez...
"I don't know what's going on," she said between sniffs. "I keep calling and knocking but he just won't talk to me."
I nodded sympathetically, because there was nothing I could say. Who leaves their woman on Christmas, literally? It was a sad scene to witness. If he was sick he would have said so, so clearly their equation was much more complicated than I could fathom.
I went out and shopped for about two hours or so, hoping that the woman wouldn't be there when I got back. She wasn't.
Do you see why I really need to move out of that building?
