Joan Is Okay(7)

I’m not that important, I said.

But you are.

I shuffled to the center and stood as straight as I could, with my shoulders back.

That’s more like it, he said, and gave me a nod. Then he told me that as of today, someone has rented out 9B. I lived in 9A and 9B was the apartment across the hall that had been empty for months. Since floors six through nine had only two units each, it had just been me alone on that floor this entire time.

The doorman asked if I wanted to know more about the new renter.

I declined.

Well, he’s a loquacious and helpful fellow who is about your age and doesn’t seem to have a wife.

What? I said.

Congratulations, said the doorman, pushing the button for nine and releasing his hand from the door. Take care, Ms. Joanna, and best of luck.



* * *



—

THE PREVIOUS RENTERS OF 9B were a newlywed couple and their cat. The cat I never saw, but they kept saying she was around. When, one Saturday, they invited me over for dinner, I noticed that each piece of furniture was solid wood and hoisted a foot above the ground on skinny metal legs.

Clean lines, I said, and the couple introduced themselves as architects who had decorated the apartment themselves.

They were looking at me expectantly, so I said I knew nothing about feng shui. I butchered the pronunciation on purpose and said it as I’d assumed that they would to make them feel more at ease. Fun-sway. To sway and have fun, what a frivolous thing to do. The husband immediately corrected me.

Do you mean fēng shuǐ, or wind-water, he explained quietly, since he had studied Mandarin for a semester in school. He knew a handful of characters and could write his name in Chinese with a traditional calligraphy brush.

Fantastic, I said. But what’s a handful? Was that like ten? Or five? Neither will get you very far.

The husband looked at the wife, who was scrolling through her phone for something to put on.

What music do you like? she asked.

I nodded.

I meant what kind, she replied.

I said anything works, I didn’t have good taste. Dinner was fast and finished in under an hour. Though I complimented their utensils, I wasn’t invited back.

A year later, they had their first child, a boy, and two years later a girl. One afternoon, in passing just the wife and her new infant daughter in the hall—and having forgotten about her son—I told the wife, Girls are better to have. Girls are, on average, more punctual, organized. Girls have better handwriting, unless they become surgeons. Surgeon negates girl.

How’s the cat? I would ask, until the wife finally said the cat had passed, the cat had had cancer.

Such a loss, I said, because I still hadn’t met the cat and now never would.

After becoming a dad, the husband became a permanent fixture in the tenth floor laundry. But sometimes he had no laundry with him and just sat next to the washing machines, playing games on his phone. One night, the wife came to my door and asked if I had seen her husband, who seemed to be missing, and she feared something had happened to him or that he had left them. Her fingertips were trembling. She had brown stains on her shirt. I said he was probably in the laundry room shooting space zombies on his phone. Her face slackened, then hardened. How often did he do that? she asked, and I said I didn’t know exactly, but he was always there when I was, always by machine seven, in a frayed, blue hoodie. She took the stairwell and ran up there, two or three steps at a time.

In the weeks before they moved out, to a New Jersey suburb, the family avoided me altogether. Whenever I entered the laundry room, the husband left even though I’d called after him in Chinese to please stay put. The wife would still say hi but simultaneously push the double stroller away. Once the stroller hit a wall, the kids cried, and the wife, for whatever reason, turned back and waved.



* * *



—

THE WIFELESS MAN OF 9B had a name, and we bumped into each other the day after the doorman had wished me luck, in the trash room of our hall, while Mark was breaking down moving boxes. Everything about him was average: five nine, 167 pounds, a face like most faces, like mine, situated somewhere between striking and hideous.

I told him that wasn’t the best way to break down cardboard—he had to tear along with the grain instead of against it.

They’re boxes, he said, and I said, So what if they are, boxes should be shown proper respect as well.

From then on, we kept seeing each other. In the lobby. By the mailboxes. In the hall again, while waiting for the elevator to go down at the same time.

No, you take this one, he said.

No, you, I said.

He was holding an enormous bookshelf that, as he explained, he was selling to another tenant downstairs.

I insisted he take the elevator.

Fine, I’ll take it.

The shelf wasn’t going to fit, and once I realized that, after watching him struggle with it—did he need help? I asked, and he said he had it, just one more push or shove, but also he was heaving and I could count every vein along his neck—I said how about I take this elevator this time, and he could take a break, drink some water, then disassemble the shelf and try again later.

He said it had fit before, when he first moved in.

I said, yes, but that was probably by a miracle and miracles don’t happen twice.

Well, I’m already halfway in.

Can you get halfway out?