Lynne Tillman - No Lease on Life

Jeanine ate a sandwich. Elizabeth told her about wanting to murder someone, anyone, when she couldn’t sleep. Jeanine laughed at her.

— Some nights are really messed up. It gets bad out there. A lot of people are high. A lot of people learn to get for themselves. We’re middlemen, we’re going to purchase it from a certain place. They don’t want to commit a felony themselves. They might get beaten or they might get hurt, so they’re willing to pay us double the price to get it for them. But a lot of customers are getting bold and they’re going themselves. Some people got cleaned up. Once you could make a thousand dollars just out there a night; these days if it’s a hundred bucks you’re lucky. Coke’s played out.

Jeanine drank some more coffee. She had a shower. She came out wrapped in a towel.

— All the guys I have used to be cops. Isn’t that weird? All the cops come over to me. It’s weird. They like me, they’re trying to get me off the block, but they end up giving me money to buy drugs. Cops come and buy drugs, not from here, from elsewhere. From other precincts, whatever. The guy I’ve been seeing for a while, he’s married, and he wanted me to stay stuck in the house, and it was just not a healthy situation. If she’s here, I wouldn’t see him for three or four days in a row, then I won’t see him for two weeks. A really uncomfortable situation, and I become very obsessed with him, and I didn’t think that was cool. Somebody else’s man. He’s alright, he used to be a cop. He’s a very nice guy. Some no-good man — that’s my worst addiction. I’m addicted to no-good men. Or being addicted to anything, you know what I’m saying? Your body has to keep up with your mind. I’ll run to avoid sitting and thinking and facing reality. A lot of people in the neighborhood speak to me, want to help me, say I’m nice. I don’t belong out there. I tell them, I don’t know. It’s my lifestyle now.

Elizabeth said it was a job, she saw her working on the corner almost every day.

— My job? Yeah, it’s my job. True. And before, there used to be a lot of money. The flow was nonstop. A lot of people got clean. A lot of customers went bankrupt. Lost their jobs. A lot of customers had to stop to maintain their lives. A lot of men, their wives don’t know what they’re doing, and they screw up and their wives find out. There’s women too, but it’s usually couples if there’s a woman involved, or like a lot of teenagers. I won’t serve to teenagers, but there’s college kids buying weed and stuff, then you see a lot of girls. A lot of people are smart enough to give it up instead of giving up their lives. Or it’s too expensive. Sign of the times.

Jeanine looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. She had to make her group therapy session. She dressed, brushed her hair and put on orange lipstick.

— The last two months with my leg broken I couldn’t report, and I couldn’t get any outpatient therapy. It wasn’t my fault. You go there, a group meeting, which is so stupid. I can’t understand why parole and probation want to send you somewhere where you sit around and hear stories about drugs. Even in jail. I go to jail and sit in these little encounter groups, and every time I come out the drug I try is different from the one I used before. Because I heard about it in some meeting. They make you go and by the time you’re finished with these meetings you want to get high. It’s like really ridiculous. I don’t want to go back. I won’t sell to someone unless I know them. So many undercovers, you can’t even tell who they are. I’m still on parole. They can lie on you, just ’cause you have a record, you can go to jail forever, you know? You gotta be real careful out there.

It was Jeanine in the doorway. She was gobbling some guy’s dick for the price of a rock.

— You gotta be real careful out there.

Elizabeth wondered if Ernest was awake, lying in bed, or at the window above hers. Maybe he was naked, at his window. Maybe he was watching Jeanine. Maybe he was summer hot or excited. Jeanine in the doorway. Elizabeth liked sex, she liked watching sex.

Maybe Ernest could sleep through noise. Sleep through anything. Like Roy. Lights on in two more apartments. Babies crying. Dogs barking. One horrific scream. Then silence.

Now a door opened across the street.

The young super from the building on the other side of the street walked out his front door. Onto the street. He glanced from east to west. He played the role of an important man expecting someone or something. He couldn’t have expected to catch the morons. They were gone. He shuffled in an aggravated way to the overturned garbage cans. He saw the damage. He cursed loudly. His arms flapped up and down, jerking out from his body. He checked his car. It was OK. The one next to his was dented. He didn’t react. The garbage-can throwers weren’t on the church steps. The young super took his time. He was a creep.

There’s a restaurant on the moon.

Yeah?

Great food, no atmosphere.

Why don’t cannibals eat clowns?

They taste funny.

When the young super first took over the building across the street, he worked on his car every day. sometimes he worked on it early, five A.M., six A.M. He’d rev it up and turn the engine over. Over and over. Elizabeth became aware of him. He woke her up. She’d run to the window, stare out, and see him at dawn looking at his coughing car. Maybe his hands would be tinkering with the car’s insides. Dawn was just another ruined night. Sometimes she’d open the window and shout, Stop it, stop it. Please. He never heard. He couldn’t hear over his engine. The noise went on and on. Furious like churlish garbagetrucks, incessant like boisterous oil trucks fueling boilers in basements.

The young super was revving his engine again. No one else was alive to him. Elizabeth lay there with her eyes open. The noise grew louder. It always did. She started to inch out of bed. To slide to the end of the bed. Her toenails were hard. She gouged Roy on his calf.

— What are you doing? Roy asked.

— I’m not telling you, Elizabeth said.

— Where are you going?

— I’m going for a walk.

— In the middle of the night.

— It’s dawn.

— Get back in bed.

— I can’t sleep.

— Get back here, Lizard. Go to sleep.

— I can’t. He’s revving his engine again.

— He’s got a right to work on his car.

— This is a residential area.

— What are you going to do?

— Tell him to stop.

— You’re going to get killed.

— OK.

— Don’t do anything, don’t be a jerk.

She might have to die to sleep. She laughed out loud. It sounded hollow in the apartment. She put on her robe and Japanese canvas shoes. Roy pulled the blanket over his head. His back was to her. He’d already accepted her death. Maybe she was as good as dead.

Roy didn’t want Elizabeth at an open window in the middle of the night, or at dawn, he didn’t want her getting involved, staring down or checking out a commotion on the street, especially a fight between drugged-out, warring guys or between a man and a woman, over sex, money, or drugs. He didn’t want her sticking her head out the window. He told her about a couple of newlyweds who were on a train, on their honeymoon. They were going to the country. The bridegroom stuck his head out of the window of the train. A pole or something jutting out decapitated him, sliced his head right off. Then he fell back into the compartment, headless. And his bride went mad.

Elizabeth didn’t think that would happen to her. An illegal windowbox could drop from the windowsill above and crush her head, but even then there wouldn’t be enough speed or thrust for her head to be chopped off. Her skull could be flattened to a bloody pulp, but her head wouldn’t be sliced off like a chunk of fat white meat.