The Old Apartment (Grade)

He never wanted to move. He liked his old apartment, liked his neighbors; he even liked the Winston's new puppy that had tore through the hallway at 2 o'clock in the morning, baying like a bloodhound after a fox. He liked the old window in his kitchen, the one that never quite closed all the way and so created a pleasant breeze on those blistering summer days. He liked the creaky floorboard just outside his door, when he could always tell if Veronica from Apt. 13 was listening in on the rare nights he brought a soon-to-be-ex girlfriend home to dinner.

He liked his bathroom, with the chipping tiles and the leaky faucet. The landlord always promised to fix the plumbing, but he still took cold showers every night. He liked the warped mirror that hung on the wall, twisting his reflection so he had to strain to find himself in the morning to shave. He especially liked how his tiny bathroom window peeked right up into the apartment complex next door, where he could watch Mrs. Levine's daughter-in-law practice her violin every day. Even the corner of the sink was held close to his heart, but closer still to his groin, which he had run into the corner so many times it was part of his morning ritual.

His bedroom's walls were cracked, and the paint was peeling in almost every direction. He loved staring at the ceiling and pretending the dark water stains- made from the time Mr. Alvarez had flooded the entire upper floor- were animals romping across the Savannah. He liked the blank wall his desk faced, the one that had given him such fleeting inspiration on the late nights he was up typing an article due the next day. The wall his bed was pushed up against was so thin he could hear Lucy and her fiancé argue over the rent late at night, and he wanted to punch through it when she started crying and whisk her away from all her problems.

He liked the small living room, the way his meager furniture seemed to fill the space just perfectly. The television, with its bunny-eared radar, which he had dedicated a week to finding just the right spot, only received reception once he had pushed it to the middle of the room and stood it on top of seven volumes of Shakespeare he had bought from the Goodwill down the street. He cursed the architect who had built thin walls and thick ceilings whenever his television flickered in-and-out during the Red Sox games, but he secretly enjoyed the adrenaline, the anticipation of when the picture would fade out and he was left sitting alone in the dark, listening to the fuzzy sound of the announcer cheering as David Ortiz shot another ball out of Fenway Park.

He loved his balcony, if you could call it that; the rusted wire posts and the cold feel of the cement on his bare feet made the small square jutting out from the side of the apartment building feel so real. The metal chair he had forced through the tiny door, going so far as to butter the door-frame to squeeze it through, gave him a picture-perfect view of the city. Telephone wires were strung out over the endless sea of roofs, tying the buildings like a huge network; the Italian pizzeria was connected to the Mexican take-out, the Spanish tapas bar to the meat market, connecting all the ethnic corners together into the five blocks that made his neighborhood a place of comfort to so many.

Yes, he liked his old apartment. He hated the boxes that were lined up on the landing, hated the moving van that would pull up to take his possessions away and move him across the city to a new apartment, a new neighborhood. He hated the idea of having to pack up his comfortable world and unveiling it to cold, unfeeling walls that had never known the warmth of housing a human being. He wanted to gather up his view from the landing into a box and take it with him to his new apartment, where he could throw it up on the wall and admire it like a painting. He wanted to capture the smell of the restaurants a block away that wafted up to his window in a jar and release them into the wind off his new balcony, in the hope of bringing some familiarity to a vast, uncharted new territory.

But there was a new opportunity, a chance to jump-start his career. We want you to start the job as soon as possible. All you have to do is move closer, the lady who had interviewed him said. We like our reporters to live near the office. Makes for an easier commute, especially when we have a big story to cover. She had smiled at him with a mouthful of bright, shining teeth, as if it were no big deal to just uproot his world and move clear across the city.

All right, he had said, forcing the words out. I'll be in the office next week. The words sounded like a betrayal, and as if his apartment had heard him deliver the verdict, his key stuck in the lock when he arrived back at his front door.

The man on the telephone had assured him that the new apartment complex was the most recent building in its neighborhood. Four stories, plenty of room for a single man like yourself, he told him. We've already rented out most of the first, second and third floors, but there's a smaller studio on the fourth floor if you'd be interested. Great view of the city.

I'll take it, he told the man.

And so there he stood, with his rabbit-eared television under one arm and a cup of coffee in the other. The boxes were all lined up on the street now, and the movers worked like bees, going back and forth from the landing, carry his world away from where it had stayed for so long. The burly man with the beard nodded at him as he carried the last box down the stairs; it was time to go. He packed the television as neatly as he could on top of his meager boxes and watched as the movers closed the sliding door on his possessions. Climbing into the passenger seat of the truck, he looked out the window one last time as the van pulled away. There sat his old apartment, gray, forlorn, and empty. He raised up his coffee cup as it disappeared around the corner; to new things.