You know that feeling when you’re watching a stars eulogy or an episode of E! True Hollywood Story, and you stare out the misty window beside you whilst wondering aloud, “What will my E True Hollywood story be called?” I hope at the end of my life it will be noteworthy enough to earn a title befitting a Calvin Klein perfume (He lived as he died, in…*sexy whisper*…Denial…).
Recent events, however, have made me suspect that it’ll be called The Neighbourhood Killer. Here’s why.
I moved into my apartment in the East Village thinking that most of my neighbours were going to be college kids and young professionals. I’d already been surrounded by the Hipster armies of Brooklyn, ensconced as they were in their butcher-shop-themed-bars (these are populated overwhelmingly by trust-fund babies), before it occurred to me that Brooklyn was getting far too cool for its own good. It used to be that one moved out there for cheap rents, but the rents were growing by the minute, and the closest grocery store to me was so chic that it purposely carried only kale chips instead of potato chips. (I mean, that’s like gastronomical genocide.) Steadily it became apparent to me that Manhattan was so uncool that it was mildly cool again. The East Village is probably the last vestige of affordability left in Manhattan: an island that is otherwise overpriced, overcrowded and overmedicated. It’s not serviced directly by the subway lines, which makes it less expensive; it’s still pretty grungy in a graffiti-urinal-kind of way, and the Cool movement approached it in the 80s but never settled in.
Old Man Living Alone - Watercolour by David Beschi
During my first week in the new building, I was walking out the front door when a small, pleading voice said: “Please could you help me?” Usually you can hear that from Elsa, the homeless woman who lives on my street and only pees in front of the YMCA on principle (don’t ask how I know that), but this was coming from inside the building. I turned around and saw a very old man attached to an oxygen tank, bent double over a portable steel walker. We made eye contact and something about him seemed so very helpless that I went over. I tried to make introductions but he cut me short, asking me to bring him “three coffees, extra sugar, four pastrami-on-rye sandwiches and a diet coke” from the corner deli. He then stuffed money into my hand and slowly rolled back to his ground floor apartment, making sounds like Darth Vader.
“I’m such a good person,” I thought to myself as I balanced all the brown bags in my arms on my way back. “So generous and giving, stopping to help an old man. My parents would be so proud! Maybe this will turn into one of those movies like The Holiday, and we’ll become great friends, he and I. Maybe he’ll tell me about how he asked out a famous actress in the old days, or maybe he’ll have some tragic story about his lovely wife and her ashes that he keeps in a golden urn on the mantel...”
His name was Saul, he was 89 and a former bartender who was addicted to crack in the mid-80s
I knocked on his door and walked in. There was no mantle. Or urn. It was a small, messy studio that stank of stale cigarettes and antiseptic lotion. He told me to put the bags down next to him and, without a thanks, snarled “Go away now!” One my way out he lit a cigarette, which I told him wasn’t the best idea considering the oxygen tank next to him. I can’t print what he said back, but the gist of it was that I should mind my own business, though he put it in more blatantly biological terms.
This became a sort of ritual over the months. He would catch me coming down the stairs, ask me to bring him some things, and then tell me to go way. I did it because I assumed this was a Love/Hate thing, and who knew, he may have an urn somewhere. I found out certain things about him: His name was Saul, he was 89 and a former bartender who was addicted to crack in the mid-80s and had lived in the same apartment for 45 years, which because of rent control only cost him $120 a month.
Saul was rude, but I grew fond of our little interludes. In a twisted way he reminded me of my nosy neighbor Mrs. Marzi from Lahore. Perhaps that’s my fate — to attract geriatric villains and cohabitants across continents.
One day as I was walking down the stairs, I could smell Saul there, except now he was telling some other person to buy him stuff. I hid behind the corner and listened to him give the exact same order, which is when I released that he trawled for people in the hallway to do his bidding (why he didn’t just order delivery I don’t know). Another couple of guys came behind me and seeing me overhearing someone, they stopped as well. “Oh man,” said one, “It’s him isn’t it? I swear, he’s there every time asking for those sandwiches!”
It felt like Saul had been cheating on me and, needless to say, I was livid.
This week I noticed that there were police in my apartment building. I knew immediately that Saul had died. I saw his covered body being taken out on a stretcher and put in the ambulance. Inside, the building looked the same but for the lingering smell of stale cigarettes that was now rapidly being replaced with bleach. We hadn’t spoken for several months, Saul and I, and I doubt he knew what my name was, or even really cared that I existed. I asked the building superintendent what he knew about him, which turned out to be little more than I did. Saul had no visitors, no relatives and no friends. He had lived alone in that little studio for decades. But that he had died leaving no more an impression on this world than that which I carry in my mind scared me, for him and myself.
Here’s to knowing thy neighbour — if only in the hope that someone, someday, will know you too.
