Ben Winters - Countdown City

“Well,” Alex said sardonically when she described the mournful scene, “welcome to the neighborhood.”

The movers were done by quarter to five, and Alex dipped into his low, all-business voice to thank each one for his hard work and slip him a twenty. Then Emma, Susan, and Alex wandered around their new home, navigating the monolithic wardrobe boxes, upside-down furniture, and lumpy duffel bags filled with clothing, pillowcases, and knick-knacks.

“Well, folks, we’ve got our work cut out for us,” said Susan.

“First we get the TV set up, right?” Alex replied, half joking.

“Where’s Mr. Boogle?” said Emma.

“We didn’t put Mr. Boogle in a box, honey. He’s around.”

Just before six, Andrea Scharfstein knocked on the door holding a bottle of cheap champagne and an autumnal bouquet in a disposable plastic vase.

“You made it!” she growled pleasantly.

“That is so sweet of you,” said Susan, and she meant it. The last time she’d been welcomed, when she and Alex moved in together on Union Square, it was with a three-page bulleted list of rules and regulations that had been slid under the door by someone from the management company, even though they were home at the time. Andrea’s hair was tied back with a green cotton headband, and she wore a plain blue sheath dress. Susan reflected in passing how pretty she must have been, years ago—and still was, in her old-lady way, with wide deep-set eyes and high cheekbones.

“Hi, Andrea!” piped Emma.

“Hello, young lady.”

“Did you bring your pet dinosaur?”

“So clever, this one is! You should be on television, dear heart.”

Alex invited Andrea to join them for dinner, but she declined, to Susan’s relief.

“Oh, please. Get settled first. Another time.” On her way out, Andrea gestured to a thin stack of take-out menus she had left on top of a box, and Susan noticed that her hand trembled just the slightest bit. “Try the vegetarian Chinese place, on Montague. I forget what it’s called, but it’s good.”

The vegetarian Chinese place on Montague Street was called the Greens, as it turned out, and it was good. They ordered vegetarian moo goo gai pan, miso mushroom soup, and something called General Tso’s Soy Protein, which Alex proclaimed “vastly better than it sounds.” After dinner they dug up towels and shower stuff, plus enough books and toys for Emma to have a decent playtime before she bustled happily off to bed.

“I don’t miss old house at all ,” Emma intoned solemnly as Susan tucked her carefully into her white IKEA bed, which the movers had reassembled before leaving.

“Really, sweets? It’s OK if you do”

“Of course it’s OK,” said Emma, her eyes already drifting shut. “But I don’t .”

The movers had also reassembled the big queen-size bed in the master bedroom, a process that Susan had anxiously overseen. The bed was very possibly her favorite possession, and she had agonized over its purchase for several months for reasons both aesthetic and financial. It was a sleek low-slung modernist beauty with a sturdy slatted frame and a black-oak headboard, sold by Design Within Reach for $2,550 plus tax—a significant chunk of change, even back when she was working.

True to form, Alex had protested, mildly, that their old double bed was just fine. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Well, I’ve had it since college, for one thing. Plus we’re two people. We need a queen.”

“But aren’t doubles for two people? Two? Double?”

Susan had prevailed, arguing in part that a decent bed would help her sleep. She was a chronic insomniac, unlike Alex, who bragged that he could fall asleep in a muddy ditch or stay sleeping through artillery fire—a gift that had been maddening to Susan during Emma’s infancy, when he slumbered peacefully through many a late-night screaming session.

After Emma was down they puttered around for a couple hours, drinking Andrea’s champagne from plastic cups and unpacking a few boxes marked UNPACK ME FIRST! Susan found the box of perishables and arranged its contents in the pantry while Alex focused on his treasured kitchen gadgets: the coffee grinder, the rice cooker, the nonstick frying pans, the knife block and full set of Henckels Twin Select cooking knives. Finally he yawned, announced that he was exhausted, and headed upstairs.

“I can’t believe we have two floors,” he said, pausing midway up the steps and gesturing expansively at all their space, in the manner of a Roman emperor. “Nice work, Sue.”

Susan finished her champagne and poured herself another cup, adding new items to her to-do list, until her eyes were drooping shut and she admitted to herself there was nothing else that could realistically be accomplished that night. She went upstairs to the bathroom, unzipped her gold toiletries bag, and fished around until she found the Altoids tin in which she kept her Ambien. She counted the pills, each one a perfect little white oblong: there were twenty-seven ten-milligram tablets left, out of an original stash of fifty, prescribed eighteen months ago with instructions to take half a pill when anxiety made it impossible to asleep. On nights like this one, however, with her mind racing through all the upcoming tasks, Susan gave herself a dispensation. Carefully she split a pill with her fingernail, put one half back in the Altoids tin and placed the other half on her tongue, cupped her hands to collect a scoopful of water from the faucet, and washed it down.

But if the Ambien worked, it didn’t work nearly enough. The minute Susan’s head hit the pillow, her mind busily began annotating and revising the to-do list, which she could see in her mind’s eye as clearly as if it were displayed on the iPhone screen in front of her. Unpacking, of course, was at the top of the list, broken down into several subcategories: Emma’s things, her and Alex’s things, kitchen things, sheets and towels. Now that they had more space, they would need more furniture, and there was a sublist for that, too: small end-tables for the living room, some sort of sideboard for the kitchen.

…and could they afford new furniture? How much had the movers ended up charging? Alex would know the exact figure, but Susan couldn’t remember—four thousand? five?—plus that massive security deposit—moves were a money sieve, Alex was right…

Susan’s restless mind jumped to the universe of small activities, mundane but crucial, that went with setting up a new household: the making of keys, the filling out of address-change forms, the search for good grocery stores. It was to Susan, of course, that most of these tasks would fall.

…since you’re not working right now… since you’re not working right now…

She looked at her husband, his thick torso, his face squashed in his pillow, a thin line of drool connecting his lower lip to the collar of his ancient Pearl Jam T-shirt, and wondered just how angry he really was at her, just below, or not even below, the surface, how much resentment he harbored. Alex had artistic ambitions, too, after all, which he had long ago boxed up and stashed away, just as she had. But now she was taking hers back out again, unpacking the dreams of her youth like antique linens from an old chest, while he was stuck shooting pictures of watches and diamond rings, pretending to take pride in it… supporting her and their child, her and her dilettante ambitions.

Of course he’s resentful, he must be, he…

Susan took a deep breath. Alex had never expressed any such feelings to her, of course—everything he had said on the subject was quite to the contrary ( “To tell you the truth, Sue, I think it’s a great idea!”)