I’m holding the door open for Mr. 11A and his dog, but when he sees the Medical Examiner’s van and the police car parked in front of the building, he stops, leans in close to me, and asks in a stage whisper, “Do they suspect foul play?”

     I tell him that the police had only been waiting for someone from the medical examiner’s office to pick up the body and they have no suspicions that 3C died of anything other than natural causes. He seems to accept my explanation, but he’s lingering in the doorway like he wants to be reassured by someone with more authority than the summer doorman.  I’d like to spend the last twenty minutes of my shift in peace, but 11A won’t go away. Luckily for me, the dog is more interested in emptying his bladder than in finding out if 3C was killed in the conservatory with the candlestick. The golden retriever whines and pulls on his leash until his master lets himself be led down the street.

     Much to the tenant’s disappointment, there have been no crime scene technicians, and the two detectives who were here stayed for about ten minutes. For most of the last five hours, the only representative of the law enforcement community in the building has been the rookie cop who got stuck with the job of waiting for the guys from the morgue. “I didn’t become a cop so I could babysit stiffs,” he griped. I tried to be sympathetic, but the truth is I would have been happy to trade places with him.

                                                                                 ***

          Earlier today, a very anxious-looking woman approached my desk. She told me that her name was Carol and she was a co-worker of Teri Peters. “Teri didn’t show up for work,” she said. “She didn’t call and she’s not answering her phone. Could someone go up and see if she’s there and all right?”

      “I’ll try her on the intercom,” I said. “Maybe her phone isn’t working.” I buzzed 3C, but got no response. “Are you sure she’s home?”

     “I don’t know where else she could be,” Carol said, drumming her fingers nervously on the desk. “We had a meeting with a new client today. There’s no way she’d miss it.”

     “She might be taking a nap.”

      I pressed the intercom buzzer again, holding it long enough to rouse the deepest sleeper, but still there was no reply. “She could be in the shower,” I suggested, trying to sound optimistic, but by this time I was as worried as Carol. I gave the buzzer one last thirty second-long push. To avoid looking at Carol while we waited for a call that wasn’t coming, I pretended to adjust the settings on my walkie-talkie before finally calling the super. “John, can you come up to the lobby, please?”

     John got the spare keys, and he and Carol went up to 3C where they found Teri Peters dead on the bathroom floor.

     The EMTs were first on the scene. They quickly confirmed the super’s diagnosis. Ms. Peters had been beyond their help for many hours. When the police arrived a few minutes later, I directed them to 3C. “3C,” said the sergeant, sounding disappointed. “So it isn’t Esther?”

     Esther, the old woman in 15C, has been terrorizing the local precinct for years. In her pre-Alzheimer’s days, she was a community activist who was—even by the standards of the Upper West Side—a loudmouthed, pain-in-the-ass busybody. The super told me that in the old days she was always on the phone to her councilwoman or assemblyman or the Manhattan borough president’s office to complain about dog shit on the sidewalk, or a fruit vendor’s umbrella being too big, or a bank’s sign being too bright. But now that her ability to make a nuisance of herself has been constrained by her diminishing mental capacity, she limits herself to calling the police—usually to complain about the opera singer across the street. The baritone in question moved away more than a year ago, but she insists she can still hear him. “How would you like it,” she demanded of me one morning, “if you had to listen to Der Vogelfanger bin ich ja all night?”

     A police car double-parked in front of most buildings would probably cause the residents arriving home from work a little anxiety. They’d likely ask the doorman in a concerned tone: “Is everything all right?”  But thanks to Esther, a police car in front of The Fenwick Arms is such a common sight that nobody imagined something terrible might really have happened. To the contrary, when the tenants started pouring in around six o’clock, some of them came in cracking jokes.

     “Give ‘em Hell, Esther.”

     “So they finally caught up with you.”

     “You didn’t tell them what apartment I live in, did you?”

     I had to ruin the mood by saying in my most somber mortician’s tone, “There’s been a death in the building.” Because I’ve only been working here a month, I never knew if the particular tenant to whom I was breaking the news had been a friend of the deceased. If I’d known what kind of relationship each tenant had had with Ms. Peters, I could have adjusted my delivery accordingly, and I could have braced myself for the more emotional responses.

     In my role as Death’s messenger I experienced the full range of reactions: Mr. 12D, who, like most of the tenants, didn’t know 3C, offered polite expressions of regret; Mrs. 9E got a little choked up once I confirmed that 3C was indeed “the heavyset woman with short, gray hair who did something in advertising;” a hysterical 6A collapsed theatrically onto the couch and howled, “She was a young woman!”

     To describe 3C as young might be an overstatement. She was probably in her mid-fifties. She was also, as 9E politely put it, “heavyset.” I learned from Carol that Ms. Peters had taken medication for some kind of heart ailment and last month her doctor had rebuked her for not losing weight.

     This news was an uncomfortable reminder of a conversation I had had with 3C. One afternoon last week she had come into the building and said in mock-horror, “I have terrible news: The Hot & Crusty is now selling Carvel ice cream.”

     “Sounds like good news to me,” I said.

      “That’s not a temptation I need,” she said, making a gesture that indicated her ample physique.

     “Don’t give up one of life’s great pleasure for the sake of vanity.”

     I don’t know if she took my advice. I’d feel awful if the fat and cholesterol in that one butterscotch chocolate sundae that I might have persuaded her to eat was what caused her heart to give out. On the other hand, if her heart was already damaged beyond repair, I’m glad my suggestion might have brought a little happiness to her last days on Earth.

     As the news spread throughout the building, people—mostly older tenants—started coming down to the lobby for the latest updates. Carol was still here and she’d been joined by some of her co-workers. They were talking to Mrs. 9E about 3C’s sister in Philadelphia. Esther couldn’t remember Ms. Peters, but was otherwise surprisingly lucid as she sat on the couch commiserating with 11B. I was telling 4C, Mr. 3B, Mrs. 14C, and 11C everything I knew when I noticed 16B approaching us from the elevator. When she saw who I was talking to she hesitated for a second, but her curiosity was greater than her hatred of 4C, and so she crept into our little huddle.

     I had witnessed my first battle in this long-running war a few days earlier when one of the passenger elevators was broken.  4C had been waiting for the one working passenger car with her two dachshunds. Dogs are only allowed in the service car, but Carmelo was using it to pick up the garbage and 4C didn’t want to wait. 16B walked into the building still sweating from her jog around the reservoir. “You know you’re supposed to take the service elevator,” she snapped. The elevator door opened and 4C said, “Fine. Go ahead. I’ll wait.” While the elevator carried 16B upward, 4C stood there fuming. After the elevator reached 16, it began its descent to the lobby. But first it stopped on 15. And then 14. And then 13. “Can you believe her,” cried 4C. “She pressed every floor.”

     4C was telling us about the last time she’d seen Ms. Peters when she spied her old nemesis. She turned violently toward 16B and looked like she was about to say something nasty, but she held her tongue, and a cease-fire was silently declared to allow both sides to mourn the dead, or at least catch up on the gossip. “Anyway,” 4C continued, “I was talking to her in the laundry room just the other day and I noticed her color was terrible.”

     When two men pushing a gurney showed up a little after ten o’clock, the few tenants still hanging around the lobby returned to their apartments.  Whether out of respect or superstition, no one wanted to be around when the body was taken away.

     A few minutes after the super took the men from the medical examiner’s office up to 3C, the sergeant returned to pick up his disgruntled rookie. “If Esther should have some kind of accident, maybe fall down the elevator shaft,” he said as he got into the elevator. “I can promise you there’d be no investigation. Think about it.”

                                                                         ***

     11A has returned from walking his dog. “One day last year when my daughter had a broken leg,” he says, “Teri had the driver from her car service drop us off at Amanda’s school.”

     “Everyone seemed to like her a lot.”   

     All evening I’ve been hearing about small acts of kindness performed by 3C for her neighbors. Mrs. 14D mentioned that Teri had hired her son as a summer intern and then wrote a letter of recommendation that helped him get into NYU Business School. 3B told me that Teri had been so helpful when his family sat shiva after his wife died.  

     11A says goodnight and gets in the elevator. As the door slides shut, Paddy, the night doorman, enters the lobby. I’m telling him about 3C when the service car opens and the cops, the super, and the morgue guys, pushing the polyethylene-enshrouded remains of Teri Peters, pile out of the elevator.

     After the M.E.’s van drives away, I ask John and Paddy how many times they’ve been through this before. “Findin’ the body, ya mean?” asks John. “Once every couple of years.” The two Irishmen between them have almost fifty years working in this and other buildings, so “once every couple of years” adds up to a lot of corpses.

      “It happens to everyone if they work in a building long enough,” adds Paddy, who, in addition to this job, is the super of a small building on the East Side. “I remember the worst one I ever seen. It was in my building. The silly cunt hung himself.” Paddy grimaces at the memory. “Around his mouth was all dark, like, from the blood not circulatin’. The tongue hangin’ out of his head.  And the shit.”

     “What about 8C?” John reminds him. “With the diabetes. Christ the smell! She must’ve been dead a week.”

     As John and Paddy reminisce about the dead tenants they’ve found over the years, I notice that the particulars of the deaths are vivid in their memories, but the details of the lives of the deceased tenants are a lot hazier. “The old fella in 10B,” Paddy is saying. “Or was it 11B? You know the one I mean. He always wore a hat.”

     But John can’t remember him.

     And that’s probably for the best. If you have to suffer the posthumous indignity of being found naked and befouled by the porter or super, you can take solace in the fact that, while the image of your humiliating demise might stay with him till his dying day, any memory of you as a person will likely be buried under the memories of the lives and deaths of other tenants. All that will be left is, “He always wore a hat.”

     And it won’t be any different with the neighbors. 3C is the talk of the building tonight, but 4C and 16B will be screaming at each other within a few days because one of them is hogging the washing machines or some other nonsense. And Esther, who has already forgotten 3C, will keep calling the police until she’s put in a nursing home, or until the day the sergeant gets the call he’s been hoping for.

     Those tenants mourning in the lobby earlier may not grieve too deeply or for very long, but they will at least postpone Teri Peter’s relegation to the ash heap of Fenwick Arms history. The majority of the tenants, however, won’t even have the opportunity to forget her.

     A Lincoln Town Car pulls into the space that was vacated by the M.E.’s van. I rush out to open the car door, but 2C is asleep in the backseat. I hold the door open while the driver resuscitates the exhausted young banker. 2C struggles out of the car and drags himself into the building. He nods at John and Paddy on his way to the elevator. With no ambulance or police car out front, and no crowd in the lobby, 2C has no way of knowing about today’s tragedy, and we don’t bother to tell him. He’ll be getting up in a few hours to return to his desk at Deutsche Bank or Morgan Stanley for another sixteen-hour day, oblivious to the death of a woman whose life for the last three years had been separated from his own by a few inches of wood and plaster.

Today, although the number of cobblers has dropped to only 7000, the business remains profitable in this high rent neighborhood because of its high level of reliability and service. Although Vito “Jim” Rocco is gone, little more than the shop’s exterior has changed.

“The location was great,” said Vito “Jim” Rocco’s son, Joseph, 78. It was a two way street back then. There was parking on one side and the trolley cars stopped right out front so people could drop off or pick up their shoes easily.” Jim’s is the oldest business on the block since most of the other longtime independently owned businesses like Cambridge Chemists and a barber shop have shuttered or moved away.

It’s no wonder since average retail rents in the area average $979 a square foot according to a May 2009 report released by the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY). Despite the decline of 14 per cent from the market high in the Fall of 2008, the rise in retail vacancies is obvious to anyone who walks along Madison Avenue. Nevertheless, Joe Rocco, Sr. holds on to his heritage and continues to operate the store with his son, Joe, Jr. 51, and three other Roccos; sister-in-law Ellie, 75, daughter, Delores who declined to give her age, and grandson, Anthony, 19.

With consumer spending down at a time when Gucci loafers will set a person back $475 or more and Christian Louboutin peep toe pumps run $850, the demand for shoe repairs may be better than ever. “You want to get your best return from your investment,” said John Mclouglin, president of the Shoe Service Institute of America, “and we see a spike in business.” How much of a spike and over what period of time, McLoughlin didn’t say.

But, truth be told, Jim’s business has slowed despite the shoe service industry’s claim that this is an example of a recession-proof industry.

“Good shoes are expensive and they are worth taking care of at all times,” said Joe Rocco, Jr. the founder’s grandson. He declined to comment on the percent change in repairs since the economy went south. He did concede that business is way down from what it was a year ago.

Jim’s will replace a pair of ladies heels for $8 and up depending on the size while men’s cost $20 for rubber or $21 for English, half rubber/half leather. Rather than replace the shoes, this saves the customer roughly $200 to $500.

“I take very good care of my shoes,” said Joan Easton, a 40-year patron of Jim’s. “If you go to Jim’s, you can wear your shoes for five years.”

Some customers wait for their repairs, seated and shoeless, in one of the six wooden compartments, each with its own black leather seat, foot rest and knee high door, running on one side of the store, from front to back. In the meanwhile, meticulous yet rapid repairs to traditional leather lace ups or black leather pumps are executed behind the service counter with Joe Sr. at the helm. Other patrons choose to drop off their shoes and pick them up upon completion.

“It takes about two weeks for a sole job,” said James Gibson, 54, who’s worked shining shoes and doing repairs for Jim’s since he was 14. “If you want some tips and heels, that takes about a week.” Gibson learned everything he knows from his boss.

Gibson and his co-workers are shoeshine “boys” dressed in dark pants or jeans and navy smocks along the west side of the little shop. They wait their turn to be next to “shine” beside the “stand,” a series of six side-by-side shoeshine thrones, that runs the length of the western side of the store. The code of conduct between the “shiner” and the customer is easy to follow for the seasoned patron.

The shinee enters the store and catches the eye of the shiner who steps back and pats the seat as an invitation for a shine. The customer climbs up three steep steps, turns around, sits down and the shiner gets to work on the shine.

Within five minutes, customers’ shoes are brushed off, wiped with Lexol Leather Cleaner, polished from toes to heels and back again with black or brown goop, massaged and shined with a clean rag and water. The shiner indicates his work is complete with a gentle tap on the side of the one of the shinee’s shoes.

Rather than saying thanks, the customer steps down, heads to the register at the back of the store and pays four dollars for the shine. Moving toward the exit, the shinee can’t help but pass their shoe-shiner and usually, without saying a word, tipping anywhere between two or twenty dollars a shine.

“Some customers come back two or three times a week,” said Shoe Shine Man Antonio Olveira, 61. “They wear different shoes each time so they all look clean and shiny.” But, a sign of difficult economic times, some people that used to come in regularly have cut back, stretching out their shoe-shines to twice a month, down from once a week. Large tips are few and far between.

On average, the four shiners polish 30 to 40 pairs of shoes a day. When they aren’t working with walk-in customers, they turn to shoes that are delivered to the store via U.P.S. from all across the country. A fifth shiner, Reis Jose, has a steady offsite gig in the neighboring office buildings where he shines approximately 50 pairs of shoes a day for five dollars a pop.

“We work harder than the old days,” said Joe, Jr. “but we make less money.” The number of customers is down, we pocket less money due to the slow economy and soaring rents. Even so, he isn’t ready to give up the shop just yet. “If I won the lottery tonight, I wouldn’t stop working.” He might slow down but “working is what keeps people married,” said Joe. It’s like shoe glue, “it keeps my wife and me together.”

Susan Sawyers is a reporter based in New York City. She’s interested in digital media, philanthropy and lifestyle reporting, with a focus on education and leadership. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, School Stories and L.A. Parent. Currently a student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she was the former director and curator of Los Angeles’ Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation. She lives with her husband and their two children not far from Central Park. She knows she’s lucky.

One memorably chaotic St. Patrick’s Day I acquired a sidekick—a thick black man who had painted green shamrocks on his dark cheeks—by the name of Ronald. Ronald approached me while I was buying a beer in a hot, smoky bar on the Upper East Side. His Yankees cap was turned to the side. He woofed like a dog at random moments. It was odd.

“Yo, my man, buy me a drink,” he demanded. Then woofed.

I looked him over. There was nothing menacing in his demand. No implication that if there were no witnesses he would have ended the sentence with “…or I’ll stab your eyes out with my erection.” He just sounded like he was used to getting all sorts of things in life simply because he asked for them. I was all for this behavior, but I wasn’t about to hand over my drinking money for nothing. I looked down at the cigarette dangling from his fingers. This was after the NYC smoking ban, but, putting it mildly, the rules are somewhat lax on St. Patrick’s Day.

“Hook me up with a cigarette,” I countered. I didn’t smoke, but I figured this just might be the night I started.

Ronald licked his lips and did a quick reappraisal. His eyes narrowed in cunning thought.

“I only have one left,” he said, his hand casually going to his chest pocket to pull the flap over an unopened Marlboro pack. His eyes never left mine.

“I just watched you cover that new pack.”

“That’s for my girlfriend. She just had this abortion and now she can smoke again,” Ronald said, playing hardball. I respected the angle, but I wasn’t about to cave.

“Smoke again?” I asked. “It’s not like you were worried about the health of the fetus.”

Ronald opened his mouth to reply, but shut it quickly and looked down to think.

“Good point,” he conceded.

Ronald pulled out the pack, cracked the seal, and handed me a cigarette. I turned, paid for his beer and just like that, the evening was off and running.

I spent the rest of the night smoking the cigarettes that Ronald traded me for beers. I was laying out more money than he was by far, but I really dug the guy’s exuberant, maniacal energy and complete lack of respect for personal space. Without warning he would toss an arm around the closest female to giggle and bark in her ear. The poor woman would summon up a weak smile while her companions looked away, pretending not to see. College girls were cat-called and grabbed at. Girlfriends were hit on directly in front of their boyfriends. Most people didn’t know how to deal with Ronald, I realized. No woman is prepared to find herself clapping along with Irish dance music one second, and the next smothered by a jabbering lunatic asking her for a beer while eyeing up her breasts.

I will say this about my friend Ronald: while he was certainly acting like a loon his manner was so warm that his vibes were nothing less than inviting. He simply wanted people to buy him drinks and party with him. He was a legitimately nice guy and a perfect example of exactly the sort of unpredictable experience that life in a place like New York will throw your way. I haven’t done the research, but I feel confident when I say that a New Guinea tribesman will never spend this sort of night with a man like Ronald.

At one point we shared a deep moment, unexpected given the surroundings but that just goes to prove again how these things happen. We were pretty well boozed at that time, and I felt that the energy for the evening had past its peak. St. Patrick’s Day was dying out, even the most pickled of us getting worn down and unable to continue the violent Irish merry-making.

“I wonder if my girlfriend is ever going to want to keep one of my babies,” Ronald said. “I think I’d like a son”

“How many abortions has she had?” I asked.

“Four.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Don’t you guys use condoms?”

Ronald looked at me in disgust. He shook his head slightly.

“A black man don’t want to go using a condom. That don’t feel right.”

“Well, a white guy don’t want to either,” I offered.

Ronald nodded at this with respect. We slapped five. He tried to end it with some elaborate push/pull maneuver with his thumb, but I messed it all up. He laughed at me.

“You sure are white, God Cousin,” he said. Ronald had taken to introducing me as his God Cousin. He never explained what it meant, but I believe that it was a sign of affection. I hope it was anyway.

I was listening to Ronald woof and bark his way through another bagpipe-laden folk song when I noticed movement in my peripheral. Ronald and I both looked up as a beautiful blonde girl in a green dress approached us. She gave Ronald a wary look as he glared at her, then she turned to me and smiled.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hello,” I said. Man, did she have some deep blue eyes.

Ronald woofed at her. The look on her face let me know almost immediately that if I wanted any good to come out of this situation, I needed to make Ronald get scarce in a hurry. I fished in my pocket and pulled out my last crumpled ten dollar bill.

“Ronald, buddy, why don’t you get us another round of beers?” I slid the money across the table.

Ronald blinked at me, smiled that charming smile of his, then snatched the money up and bolted into the crowd. The blonde and I tracked him with our eyes as he ran right past the bar without missing a beat, then disappeared through the front door out onto 1st Avenue. I thought I heard him cackling and woofing as he went.

“I don’t think he’s coming back,” the blonde said.

I waved it off and pointed to the chair that Ronald had just vacated. She sat and we started a conversation that would last for the next three years.

It was the beginning of a whole new story, and the end of another one. The beautiful blonde was right, it was the last time I ever saw Ronald. Sure, he stole my money but when I look back at that day, the green tinted madness of the city and his socially inept gaiety, I can’t help but think of him with great affection. Affection, and the hope that his girlfriend gives Ronald the heir that he wants. A lil’ Ronald running loose and wild and doing his daddy proud would give me the hope that along with green clothes and drinking and vomiting and violence, encounters with larger than life New York City characters – like the Ronalds – could become a St. Patrick’s Day tradition of its own.

Brian Quinn, a Staten Islander, is a member of The Tenderloins comedy troupe with whom he wrote and produced a Tenderloins television pilot for Spike TV. Currently, he is finishing his second novel and also can be heard on the "Tell Em’ Steve Dave" podcast, which is part of the View Askew Smodcast network.

Anyway, I have had to have many procedures done on my poor teeth. Many root canals, caps, etc. Now it's the time for implants. My dentist now is superlative. I would match him against any dentist anywhere. Frederick Sterling, with offices in the famous House of Pain, at 1 Rockefeller Plaza, overlooking the skating rink, which you can see in a mirror as you recline in Dr. Sterling's chair, but often through half-slanted Venetian blinds, so that if you do look, you may be in danger of a stroboscopically induced, Japanese-style epileptic seizure. The only thing he ever did wrong was say to his assistant, two hours into a three-hour procedure, when there was a break in the action and he saw that I was beginning to relax and unwind, "He thinks it's over!" Mean. A sailor, a fine Waspy man, and the architect of many of my lovely porcelain caps. (Some sycophantic apprentice--a short bald, mincing I'm-pretty-sure-gay dentist who fawned over Cliff as part of his apprenticeship, said, when the capping was done, "cured" --in a darkened room, with some kind of blinding purple light--the caps sanded a little to create a beautifully artificial natural look--"Dr. Sterling, you. are. a. GENIUS!!")

Anyway I went to the dentist on Thursday for the regular cleaning of my teeth, which I think of roughly the way I think of the Maginot Line of the First World War. Dr. Sterling has a new hygienist named Vera, whom I think of as Severa, partly for good reason, partly just because that's the kind of Aspergers pun that I like to make. Vera has taken the place of Margaret, a lunatic yakker in her own right, who gave you like three dozen free toothbrushes and enough floss to girdle the globe. Vera is a monster right out of Saw V, I swear. My daughter bled from the mouth for four days after a "routine" checkup. I had Vera once myself, and she went at the plaque removal--I have no plaque; I am a demon tooth-cleaner now, every night--like a desperate Irish potato farmer of the past trying to hoe the unyielding stony soil in Southwestern Cork as his family starved. The spit bowl looks as though it's marbled with pasta sauce when she tells you to spit. I now believe that my body gave itself lung cancer in order to avoid the regular checkup with Vera.

(I had surgery and have a good prognosis )

But here's the secret. Don't tell any of Dr. Sterling's other patients. There is another hygienist who comes in one or two days a week. The fabulous Maria. Half Puerto Rican, half vaguely "Latin American," she lives on Long Island with her husband and three daughters. Her youngest, now two, was born three months premature, but she's fine!!! Thank God. The neurologist at Long Island General loves her because save for some small lung weakness--two pneumonias in her first year (of which she spent the first three months in the hospital)--she is doing great. Maria said that this neurologist started out very impersonal and then got warmer and warmer, and I suggested to her that he probably can't let himself get too attached in most cases, since the preemies often have serious problems. She found that hypothesis very convincing, as did I, since it was mine. Maria's husband is Italian. His parents, both immigrants, wanted the newly married couple to
live with them forever, in what is apparently the Italian way. After a while, Maria told me, she said to her husband, "It's them or me." So they moved out and began turning out daughters. "My husband is very grateful that we moved out," she says. "Because now he can do so many things for himself, like even the laundry."

Maria does almost all the things that Vera does, but with so much more bonhomie and chairside manner that you don't mind!! And she is pretty. I thought Vera was very pretty when I first saw her--she looked a little like my current fave, Jessica Biel, until she took out her "Hostel" torture tools and an hour later left me a broken man. This time when I went in, she looked more like Rene Zellweger at her worst, which is very bad, like a Sun-Kist prune kist by alum. And she also looked daggers at me, because she just knew that I had insisted on Maria. Evidently, Dr. Sterling's patients in droves are trying to insist on Maria. I don't give Vera long, unless she goes to the dental hygienist's equivalent of anger-management training. But Dr. Sterling's clerical staff, which appears to number in the scores, has cottoned on to the Vera Movement and they try to deny as many patients as possible access to Maria . But when Molly, the receptionist, called me a few weeks ago with her nagging ways about finally coming in for a cleaning--she has the persistence of a great telemarketer--I insisted on Maria and I won. I am "older," you see, and I had lung cancer--may that preterite tense be forever accurate--so she couldn't steamroller me out of it.

This pissed my wife off--did she celebrate my Maria scheduling triumph with me? No, because she was thinking of herself, because she had a month or so earlier allowed herself to be denied Maria--had been hornswoggled into accepting the she's-almost-never-here strategy adopted by the huge clerical staff who may sympathise with Vera and may thus be trying to salvage her position. Anyway, my wife went to Vera for the second time, and it was just as bad as the first.

But so now I have to begin the implant process for my molars, and Dr. Sterling doesn't do implants. So he sends me to a maxillofacial surgeon--have you ever heard a more frightening seven syllables?--named Dr. Richter, who I am sure comes from however long a line of Nazis one can come from. I have been to him before. His operating theater is as clean and clear as a morgue. He has a bald head and glasses so reflective that you can't see his surely beady eyes behind them. He has already done a couple of maxillofacial things to me--I can't even remember what they were, and now he gets to start the implant process. I go to Dr. Sterling for a half an hour, and he numbs me up, as he puts it, and removes--to put it very gently--a couple of the caps on the lower left, and while I am numbed up, I actually go up to Dr. Richter's office on the Upper East Side to have him clean up the rest of those molars' roots, add some crystallized bone grafts (I believe they are from goats or cows or sheep; I'm not kidding) and then screw posts into my actual jawbone, onto which he will six months later screw implanted tooth-like objects, after re-slicing my gum open. And then more of that. Dr, Sterling told me that Dr. Richter might "bulk up" the novocaine when I got to his office. Something else to look forward to.

Dr. Richter appears to be unmarried and is by his own bragging account a great antiques specialist--an extremely troubling combination by itself, but to make matters worse he is also a bow-and-arrow huntsman, as he has proudly told me, at the obviously rehearsed prompting of his mouse-like Irish assistant. "Ask Dr. Richter what he did last June," the assistant says. "What did you do last June, Dr. Richter?" I dutifully ask, knowing that he holds the power of maxillofacial surgery over me. "I went to to a private estate in Ireland that very few outsiders are ever allowed access to," Dr. Richter said. "I got up on a Saturday morning with my guide, and together we crawled on our stomachs for almost a mile to where some great game was to be found. And it was just my luck that morning to come across--guess what?" "I can't guess," I said. "A royal stag!" Dr. Richter said. "Twelve-point antlers! And I felled it with a single arrow to the neck at a range of almost two hundred yards!" "Wow!" I said. "That must have been some kind of thrill!" "It was," he said. "Now, would you like me to explain the procedure I'm about to perform?"

That is my report.

Daniel Menaker is the author of five books, most recently "A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation." He has won two O. Henry awards for short fiction, was an editor at The New Yorker for twenty years, and served as Executive Editor in Chief at Random House for five years. He is now an editorial consultant for Barnes and Noble's eReader The Nook.

I had just turned out the light and pulled the covers when a strong draft slammed the bedroom door shut. This had happened before, but the door had never locked. The problem with my bedroom door (as I would discover later comparing it to the bathroom door) was that the doorknob was installed backwards, with the lock on the outside. So when the push-button lock in the center of the outer knob clicked firmly into place, I was alone and in trouble.

I got out of bed, turned on the light, and tried the door. On my side there was only a keyhole, and of course I had no key.

“No!” I shouted. “This can’t be real.” Then, “This is real.” I was quiet.

I live in a one-bedroom apartment on the 42nd floor of a building by the East River. From my perch I can see a myriad of windows, the gables of the Dakota, and the tower of the Carlyle Hotel. There are tug-boats moving barges along the river and planes taking off from LaGuardia. Nearby are trees in John Jay Park and far away are the wires of the George Washington Bridge.

My building happens to be the one that Cory Lidle’s plane crashed into (two floors below my apartment, although I wasn’t yet living in it). When I originally moved in—I lived for two years in another apartment before moving into mine mid-February—I thought, What more could happen here? The worst is over for this place.

Now I stood at the door and wondered if I shouldn’t get back into bed. Surely I could be more productive with some sleep.

No. Take stock, take stock. Essentials. I looked around the room. Liquid: Cup and a half of water. Latrine: Two tissues, plenty of pillowcases, the Danish planter, and, if need be, the cover to the portable typewriter. Food: None. Fresh air: the left-hand window slides opens two inches.

By design I keep no telephone in the bedroom. I adopted the idea after staying at an apartment where the phones were kept in the “social” rooms. It’s the right idea, I think: the bedroom is a sanctuary (John Donne anyone?) for sleep and other personal activities in the flesh. I keep no computer for the same reason (but of course the electric typewriter is allowed).

The good news, at least for my morale, was that I keep one of my two collage boxes under the dresser. It contains glues, ribbon, tweezers, paint markers, stickers, hole punchers, nails, and other items useful for making paper art. I also keep my collection of postcards in a box under there. Between the boxes and my typewriters, I didn’t feel entirely alone.

I tried picking the lock with a large paper clip, a small paper clip, a stitch remover, and an awl. I considered removing the door hinges. I considered breaking into the door with the ironing board, my lacrosse stick, and a leg of the bed frame.

I attempted to sleep. My legs twitched. I had to pee—again. I thought: yoga. I remained in bed and decided to work on a solution when it was lighter. As usual, roof lights from that Solow building across the street were having their nightly klatch with the lights from the Miraval up the same block, but that’s not the kind of light I needed.

My family was to meet for dinner that evening, at 7 o’ clock. Often my parents cancel. If they did, I would be more stuck than if they didn’t. If they didn’t cancel, I figured they’d come looking for me by 9:30 or so.

I felt in the covers for my stuffed mushroom. It’s wool and washable. I held the cap.

Then I turned on the light. I noticed, as I so often do, my photo of Helen Frankenthaler, excised from The Brooklyn Rail. She is kneeling on the floor before a large canvas, and she is painting.

I took off my nightgown and changed into my favorite corduroys (the ones with paint marks, from when I painted my bookshelves) and a long-sleeved top. I did some yoga.

After that I crouched at the collage box, found a length of raffia, and sat against the door playing cat’s cradle while waiting for the sun to come up.

I thought about a man I know. He wouldn’t care. For him to express spontaneous concern about my being locked in a room I would need to give him several days’ notice.

Around 5:30 a.m., I put on my gray flats, took down the joss papers curtain (I ad-lib shades), wrote large S.O.S. messages on book boards, and stacked them face-out in the right-hand window. Out the narrow strip of air provided by the left-hand window, I lowered signage in my father’s old slouchy overnight bag—with the aid of two leather belts and a fitted sheet—to what I hoped was at least a portion of the 41st floor bedroom window. I tied the end of the sheet around my gooseneck lamp and added a blue and a red Theraband for extra visibility.

I wondered if I shouldn’t take this sealed box of time to sit down and do some work. My little pile includes early drafts pages of my play Sunday Drivers, late draft pages, carbon paper copies, pages of random dialogue, pages about the time I was asleep, TV show pitches, and unsent letters. I stared at the pile of pages.

Now: How could I talk to people on the street without dropping message-wrapped objects that could hurt somebody? Clearly: Paper airplanes—and they would be functional because I had three boxes of veneer pins and copper tacks in the collage box. Tiny nails would steady and weight the noses, important on what I estimated to be a four-hundred-and-something–foot descent.

The sky was light now; it was also gray. A light rain was falling. I considered turning on the radio for a weather report and then decided against it. I would simply send planes until the rain told me otherwise. I planned to send five hundred, since I could also convert paper from my files (the cabinets stand beside the bed). It wasn’t a question of if I would get out, it was only a question of when.

The first plane I sailed was a page from Sunday Drivers, on printer paper. Who knows where it landed.

Next sheet: unused (unecological) plain typing paper—much too light. No doubt it wafted to where hyena laughter disappears. In any case, it felt more responsible to switch back to used paper.

I also decided that writing HELP in thick black letters across the body of each plane would be more visible than writing it twice along each wing near the contact information.

Each plane took the wind differently. One ran large circles (Don’t land on that building!) before coasting into the East River. Another landed at the corner of 72nd and York (Look down! Look down!). A woman walked past. (She didn’t notice?)

Maybe I needed to vary the wording. I imagined what headline writers at The New York Post would do.

WOMAN LOCKED IN ROOM. HELP was poised to descend, a little before 8:00 a.m., when I heard the metallic clack of the front door dead bolt. It was Jonathan, the concierge with the Irish brogue. He looked around my bedroom before placing the Sunday Times in my arms. I thanked him.

He also handed me a damp plane. It was a scene from my play, and was the only plane I’d made with CRAZY BUT TRUE written in the corner of a tail-wing.

“A man across the street found this,” Jonathan said. “You should keep that.” Then he told me to go back to sleep.

Elizabeth Manus is a writer and sometime background actor living in Manhattan. Her most current blog is The Ys Have It.

I usually sit with my back to the room, facing this wall of pictures, and try to lose myself in work, wearing either earphones or earplugs. But recently I took a seat facing outward, where I had a view of the cafeteria and the cafeteria’s entrance. The doors to the cafeteria are open, and just a few steps beyond them are a pair of glass double doors that lead out onto Fifth Avenue. They are glass, floor to ceiling, with the logo of the Guggenheim Café neatly embossed in a frosted glass circle. Beneath that, in small lettering, are the café’s hours, and some small text about when the doors are usable.

Everything about these doors suggests that these doors provide the function of doors everywhere—that they open and close, that they are portals between one place and another. That they are, in other words, doors. But it is a ruse. These doors are almost always locked.

I get a call and hurry through the lunchroom to where there is better reception by the doors. For five minutes I stand there talking, a little ear-bud in my ear. While I’m there several people come towards these doors from Fifth Avenue. I shake me head, sometime shake my finger as though scolding a child, “no no,” then point down the block to the museum’s main entrance, where everyone must come and go.

I see a variety of facial expressions in response to my cue– surprise, indignation, acknowledgement, confusion. Everyone turns around quickly. They are tourists. Their sensitivity to their surroundings is heightened by both the imperative to ’see,’ and also the paranoia that they may make some mistake ranging from the fatal to the merely embarrassing. So they are unusually responsive to my directives. It’s kind of fun being the man who stands behind glass doors and says, “No.” I wonder if the little black wire in my ear adds to the ambiance of my authority. I’m secret service, plugged into the undercover security detail that in seeded throughout the museum, throughout the city.

Back at my table at the back of the room, I am now aware of the drama afforded by these locked doors. I find myself looking up to see if anyone else is coming towards them from the avenue, or trying to get out through them. I see a bit of both. It’s totally horrifying, the little pang of pleasure I get at the various scenarios. People coming from the outside are more quickly discouraged. Those coming from the cafeteria often struggle for a while. Logic says that they should now complete their visit with lunch and stroll out onto the avenue through these doors, rather then walk up a staircase and across the crowded museum lobby, to exit through the same doors through which they entered. So they pull on one door, then another. They pull and they push. One woman plants her feet and sticks her ass way out, to get leverage. She pulls and pulls. Then she stands there for a moment while the physical reality of the locked doors sink in.

A couple approaches from Fifth Avenue while another couple, coats just on, steps out of the cafeteria. They converge on the doors. First the outside couple tugs on one door while the inside couple tugs on the other. Then they switch doors, and they each tug again. It’s like a Marx brothers routine. Four people, two doors, face to face through glass. True to form, the outsiders give up a moment before the people inside. Perhaps this testifies to an innate desire to get out which is slightly stronger than the innate desire to get in.

Now an ancient, Fellini-esque figure has hobbled down the walk from Fifth Avenue with a gigantic bag on his back. It is drizzling. His clothes are grey with wet. He is completely hunched over. I’d think he was homeless but it looks like a nice bag. An art vagabond. He tugs tragically on the doors, then begins his hunched walk back to the avenue.

I keep looking up in the hopes of seeing someone else wrestling with the doors.

The Guggenheim Museum seems a particularly mean context for this—my own education in art took place when I first started roaming around galleries in the late eighties and early nineties, when almost every young artist was a conceptual artist doing installations. My response to most modern art involves feeling slightly defensive, wondering if I am being tricked, mocked, implicated in something without knowing. Can I simply make aesthetic judgments or do I have to engage in a philosophical debate with Baudrillard and Lacan every time my gaze falls upon an object?

I would guess this defensiveness and anxiety is present, to some degree, in many of the people visiting the Guggenheim. They see the art-work, they have lunch, and now the city awaits them, a place where their attention can return to the less complicated gestures of pleasure and survival. But no, they can see the city but can not enter it. Their route is impeded by these locked doors, which feature no visible signage to alert them to the fact that this is really a glass wall with handles, not doors at all. They have lowered their defenses too soon. The Guggenheim has implicated them in one last practical joke, and as they might have worried all along, the joke is on them.

�

Thomas Beller is the author of two works of fiction, “Seduction Theory,” and “The Sleep-Over Artist,” and a collection of essays, “How To Be A Man: Scenes from a Protracted Boyhood”. He is editor of the recently released anthology, “Lost and Found: Stories From New York.” He is a founder and co-editor of Open City magazine and mrbellersneighborhood.com. More information at, thomasbeller.com

The store’s sluggish business gave me reason to approach my teacher, Sister Mercedes.

“Sister, you know the religious article store is going down the tube?”

She gave me a funny look, but I kept talking.

“If kids won’t go to the store, let’s bring the store to the kids. I’ll go to each classroom on Friday selling religious articles and do my best to separate weekend money from each kid’s pocket.”

I watched the nun’s expression.

Her lips pulled to one side of her face and her eyes narrowed bringing her bushy brows together as one. Her “mmmmm,” and chin stroking finger meant I had a pilot program. She knew I had years of business experience selling milk and toast during morning recess. Besides, the priests and nuns were unified on only one thing: anything other than illegal drug sales was a legitimate way to raise money for St. Stephen’s parish.

I started slow, selling a few catechisms and rosary beads. The first two weeks, I made a measly six dollars for the parish. I worried I might have to go back to class – then my clarion called. Joe Skrapits approached me in the classroom.

“Hey Pryor, do you have a St. Anthony statue for sale?”

“No, why?”

“My father’s always losing things and cursing around the house. Mom says she’s had it and she’s leaving all of us unless Dad stops his ranting and raving. Mom’s a great cook, Dad can’t cook, and I love to eat. St. Anthony is the patron saint for finding lost articles, stupid.”

Normally, I would’ve been hurt by the insult. Not that time. I replied, “Thank you Joe, I’ll fill your order next Friday.”

I grabbed my milk box and ran out of the classroom. I discovered my secret weapon – the Catholic Church’s roster of saints – a lineup more powerful than the 1961 New York Yankees. Oh yes, Joe Skrapits would get his St. Anthony statue next Friday, and I’d spend my week researching everyone’s birthday. Each day of the year, the Catholic Church celebrates a martyr or a pious saint. My plan was to storm my way into the heart of every kid and get them to purchase a statue of the saint who shared their special day.

I didn’t stop with birthdays. Every profession has a patron saint. I sold three Michael the Archangel statues to kids whose dads were cops. Attila Krupinzca bought a St. Vincent Ferrer statue for his grandfather, a plumber. I sold a St. Julian to Marianne Stranklee whose uncle was in a Hungarian circus. St. Julian is the patron saint for jugglers. Gaza Zak had four cats, a parakeet and a turtle. Gaza purchased a Saint Francis of Assisi. I told Gaza, “Unlike Doctor Doolittle, St. Francis really did talk to the animals.”

Freddy “Straight to Hell” Smith was always getting into trouble with the nuns, his parents, with everybody. He also had a wicked neck twitch. I palmed a St. Jude Thaddeus and slipped it to Freddy.

“Here Freddy, put this in your pocket and keep it there.”

“Why?”

“Just do it. Trust me.”

I didn’t have to the heart to tell Freddy that St. Jude is the patron saint for hopeless cases.

With the sudden burst in sales, I needed to expand my operation. Sister Mercedes, now functioning as my business manager, borrowed a metal two-shelved cart from “Mom,” the school lunch lady. I circled the steel steed, knelt on one knee and said, “I dub thee, The Holy Cart.”

Traveling the school’s halls, I reminded everyone to save their pennies till Friday, when the Holy Cart rolled into town with gifts and notions for every occasion. I assured my fellow altar boys that the Holy Ghost loved making sales calls with me.

“Each Friday he leaves his perch on the side of the altar to fly alongside the Holy Cart on its rounds. We’re a liturgical team!”

My colleagues made circles around the sides of their heads while whistling.

Father Edward, our Monsignor, heard about my venture and decided we’d have a talk.

“Thomas, you need to promote the Church when you visit the classrooms. Say things to get the children excited about religion.”

I gave this some thought. From the library, I borrowed a thick book titled, “The Lives and Deaths of 1000 Saints.” Great stuff. Gory murders, disembowelments, stone crushings, more methods for dying violently then I ever imagined. It was a quick read.

Armed with this knowledge, I developed a routine for my Holy Cart visits. Every week, I brought three “Fun Facts about the Saints” with me. I’d try to mix it up, one famous saint, one obscure saint and a third saint who had an extremely bad day.

Sometimes, I’d pick a bizarre one.

I described the saint to the class, “Wulfstan was smitten by a fair young lady at a village dance. To distract himself from the impure thoughts running through his head, Wulfstan threw himself into a nearby thicket of thorn bushes. He stayed there till the impure thoughts painfully passed away. God was so impressed by the saint’s efforts, that he prevented Wulfstan from ever having those feelings again.”

I closed the book with a slap and said, “Isn’t that great kids?”

All ears were perked up for this one. Sister Mercedes seemed edgy during the telling.

My best seller was a plastic statue of Mother Mary in an alcove appearing to the faithful. The alcove was a miniature missile silo with two pieces meeting in the front like a curtain. You slid the pieces apart to reveal Mary inside a grotto with open arms standing on a rock. The problem with the item was the manufacturer made the alcove before he made the Mary statue. The alcove was long and thin. Mary was an afterthought. The only way to fit Mary in there was make her long and thin – real long and catwalk thin.

The quirky product tested my sales skill. First time I looked it over; I didn’t know what to say. I recovered and stepped up to the front of the class.

“Folks, I have something special for you today. Something the Church has hidden for years, but now proudly presents to you for the first time.”

I turned away from the kids, picked up the item and spun back to the class opening the alcove doors.

“I give you Skinny Mary, Pre-Pregnancy Mary, the Mary with a twinkle in her eye and a song in her heart.”

I opened, closed and re-opened the alcove doors.

“The Mary who plays ‘Peek-a-boo.”

The class took a deep breath in, and then exploded. Based on normal nun behavior, I expected to be wrestled to the ground like a presidential assassin. It didn’t happen. Sister Mercedes stood to the side of the class covering her mouth but not enough to completely remove the evidence she was laughing.

As a kid, there are rare blue moons when the stars align and everything falls in place despite your best efforts to blow the bridge up, and you with it. If you’re a kid and reading this, save those memories and bank them. When you grow up and stuff happens to you all the time, you can use your recollection as a balm. It doesn’t always work, but a well oiled memory can sometimes ease the pain.

Thomas Pryor’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, A Prairie Home Companion, Underground Voices Magazine and Ducts. His story blog, Yorkville: Stoops to Nuts, is listed in the Blog Roll of the New York Times City Room.

As you get older the word hate drifts from your conversation. It’s a bad word, and a silly emotion to hang onto. Life’s too short.

If you’re lucky, you lose it all together. If you’re really lucky, you save it for one person, one particular thing, or in my case, one professional sports team.

If I hear the two words together, Dallas and Cowboys, my middle finger lifts to attention and points at the speaker. I immediately hate the person and think they’re stupid. If that person is wearing a Cowboy jacket, I pray they were overcharged. It always thrills me when they also have a bad haircut.

Schadenfreude heaven is the tangible pleasure I derive from hating the Anti-Christs from Dallas.

This morning, I swooned over the NFC East Division standings, particularly, first and second place

New York Giants 11-2
Dallas Cowboys 8-5

I stared at the standings the way a GI in a swampy World War II trench stared at his wallet-sized picture of Rita Hayworth in a nightie.

Some background, two memories.

First memory is the year the Giants went 2-12. I was pretty happy about it because… That’s right they won 2 of 14 games. BUT, they beat the Anti-Christs Cowboys 14-6, and also beat the Kansas City Chiefs 33-27, led by Hank Stram, who perfectly fit the response the kid in Annie Hall had for Joey Nickle, “What an Asshole.”

Second memory. Robby Zimmel was an obsessive Dallas Cowboy fan. I’d be down the park in June suffering abuse over how terrible the Yankees were, and Zimmel would come down the park and start busting my chops over the Giants stinking, a month before training camp opened, temporarily wiping out my hallucinations that the Giants were getting better. I was always close to putting a garbage can over his head. I went in a different direction.

As good as the Cowboys were in the 70s and 80s they only won the championship twice, and got knocked out of the playoffs every other year.

On the day your team gets knocked out of the playoffs, no matter how well you did during the regular season, you feel horrible. Your world ends, it’s hard to eat, music sounds lousy and it’s raining in your soul. It’s the perfect time to send that person a post.

Every year, the Dallas Cowboys got knocked out the playoffs I went to St.Joseph’s rectory and bought a fancy $5 Mass Card. Not the cheap $2 card, the fancy card, the one with a glittering Jesus or Mary on the front. In case you don’t know what a Mass Card is, here’s a definition.

Mass Card

Roman Catholic Church — A card sent to a bereaved person or family indicating that the sender has arranged for a Mass to be said in memory of the deceased.

There was always a lady at the rectory desk, who was really proud of her penmanship, dying to write in the name of the deceased. If I told her, she’d never sell me the card, which was remarkable considering how many money raising scams the Church ran. The conversation went like this.

Lady: “Son, the name of the deceased?”

Me: “Can’t tell you. Mom didn’t spell it for me. She told me to get the card and we’d learn the spelling at the funeral home and after we find out, I’ll come back and tell you so you can put the name in for the Mass.”

I’d get the card and put all of my calligraphy skill into spelling out the name of the deceased.

Dallas Cowboys

May they rest in peace.

Every year, I mailed it to Zimmel, happily spending the extra postage on the fat card. My only regret, I wasn’t there when Zimmel opened it.

Thomas Pryor’s tales burrow through Manhattan’s Yorkville neighborhood in the 1960s. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Mr. Bellers Neighborhood, A Prairie Home Companion and Underground Voices Magazine. He can be contacted at

What’s that about?

“I gotta get my pengé fixed,” he tells me. He has prostate cancer.

It is in times of crisis that friendships are truly tested, and I’m proud to say that Vince and Hector have rallied ’round our fallen comrade: They both volunteer to satisfy Mrs. Roberto’s needs while her husband recovers from his surgery. Hector also offers to peel off the “Elevator Men Always Get It Up” bumper sticker on Roberto’s locker. He promises to replace it when Roberto is “back in the saddle.”

Vince suggests that maybe someone else should be Mrs. Roberto’s love surrogate. “Maybe Brian should do it. He do his job at work, he can do his job at home, too.”

“Brian’s coming back?” I ask. Before anyone can give me the details, the freight car rings, so I wish Roberto well and get back to work. There is a Chinese food delivery guy waiting for me in the lobby. I’m so preoccupied by thoughts of Roberto’s illness and Brian’s return that I take him to the wrong floor. Mrs. 12B scolds me for letting the delivery guy disturb her and I blame Brian for my carelessness. He’s not even here yet and he’s already causing me trouble.

Brian worked here for a few weeks last summer. He stayed in the boss’s (his uncle’s) apartment and filled in for Hector and Jimmy when they went on vacation before he returned to college in September. Now he has quit school and will be starting a stock broker training program here in Manhattan next month, just about the time Roberto is due back at work.

In his short time here, Brian developed a cult of adoring tenants, including 2C and 10D, whom I see chatting with Brian as I enter the building Friday morning. “It’s so nice to have you back,” says 10D, as they head toward the door, which, although I am not yet on duty or in uniform, I am considerately holding open for them. “He’s always so friendly,” shouts 2C as they walk out the door without acknowledging my presence. “Not like some of the sourpusses working here.”

Can they really be this rude? Maybe not. Maybe 2C did nod her head at me as she passed. Maybe 10D did say thank you too softly to be heard over her hard-of-hearing and very loud friend. Maybe I exaggerate everything that relates to Brian McClune. Vince, who is also in thrall to Brian’s charms, thinks so. He tells me I’m jealous. “He young and good looking like you was before you get fat. Now you old and ugly like me.”

Brian approaches me with hand extended. “So you’ve come to make your fortune,” I say.

“There’s too much money to be made for me to be wasting my time in a classroom.”

He tells me about his plans and how he hopes to fill in here at the building even after he starts his new career. “The pay’s gonna suck for awhile,” he explains. “And I figure all the connections I can make here, not to mention the occasional stock tip, could really get me started.”

When I relieve him for his break at 6:30 (I don’t like him, but there’s no questioning the lad’s work ethic—first day back and he’s doing a double shift) he’s already laying the groundwork for his networking blitzkrieg. “4A. Know where he works?”

“I don’t know. Wall Street.”

“Obviously. I mean what company. What kind of business?”

“Pork bellies? Frozen orange juice futures?”

“Seriously. Aren’t you even a little curious about what these people do to afford a place like this?”

Before I can annoy him further he storms off into the boss’s apartment, frustrated by my inability to see how “a couple of sharp guys like us” could use our proximity to these Wall Street insiders to our financial advantage.

I’m feeling a bit self-satisfied by this encounter with Brian because it confirms the impression I got of him last summer, but I’m also feeling a bit guilty. For one thing, I do know where 4A works. Also, I’m wondering if there’s anything really wrong with his ambition. I don’t begrudge the tenants their prosperity, so why do I find Brian’s desire to get rich so offensive? Perhaps when I look at Brian I should see a Horatio Alger hero, a decent, hardworking young man eager to live the American Dream, rather than a scheming social climber–Uriah Heep in an elevator-operator’s uniform.

In less than two weeks Brian has learned the occupation and place of business of almost everyone in the building. He’s accomplished this with admirable subtlety. Rather than just blurt out his intention to become a stock broker or ask the tenants straight out what they do for a living, he has come up with a way to get the tenants to initiate the conversation. He leaves his stock broker trainee prep book next to the package list clipboard and when people ask him about it he tells them he studies between calls. This is ridiculous. The boss yells at us for flipping through the newspaper and he would never let Brian study on duty. But it is an effective prop.

Not only has he gotten the specific information he was looking for, but he has also picked up some Wall Street history and folklore. 9B told him that when he was starting out there were plenty of guys like Brian. Outer-borough guys who didn’t go to fancy colleges, or any college at all, but who would start out in the mailroom and if they were smart and hard-working, could rise to the top of their firms and get rich in the process. “Like Dick Grasso, the head of the Exchange? Now at places like Goldman you need an Ivy League MBA just to get your foot in the door.”

He’s not too worried, though. He knows how little he knows about the intricacies of high finance, but he also knows he doesn’t have to understand AOL’s or Amazon’s price-to-earnings ratios to sell their stock. His potential as a salesman is so obvious that last summer 14C, a psychiatrist who gave up her practice to sell Amway products full-time, tried to recruit him for her sales team. The prospect of harassing his friends and family into buying jumbo-sized boxes of laundry detergent was not sufficiently enticing to keep him from returning to school, and he politely turned her down.

It was Brian’s bad luck that he was here in August when most of the tenants were away. Had he been here at any other time, he might have been offered a real job, and he’d be well on his way to his first million.

“You know the one thing I’ve learned since I’ve been here?” he asks one afternoon while I’m cleaning the glass in the lobby. “Most of these rich people aren’t any smarter than me.” While he pauses dramatically I spray some more Windex on the mirror. “And they’re definitely not smarter than you.” This perceptiveness will take him far in the business world. I don’t mean he’s perceptive because he recognizes my intelligence; he’s perceptive because he recognizes my vanity about my intelligence. And he has no qualms about stroking my ego to get what he wants. In this case, it’s just a little good will, but some time soon he’ll be using this kind of flattery to cheat some old lady out of her life’s savings.

Mr. Murphy works as a doorman on the Upper East Side.

“Those homosexuals.” At least that’s what you think you hear spew out of the fat, twenty-something cashier, several feet away.

Her team member, a buzz-cut blond chimes in, “Well, I knew a kid who was, and it wasn’t a choice for him.” He continues to fold tees with delicate creases.

“But when you’re older,” Buffalo Girl says, then tugs at the skin tight black jeans, “you grow up, and know the difference between right and wrong.” Rolls of fat protrude from her midsection, overhang the jeans. She gathers your well-pressed finds into a large ball of fabric.

“How much are they?” You ask, still in disbelief over their apparent conversation. Maybe you want to pretend you’re not hearing what you think you hear?

“Eighteen each,” Blond Guy answers.

“We were created to procreate,” Buffalo Girl adds then zaps each tee with her scan gun. “Otherwise, it’s a choice.”

Your eyes burn, you close them and retrieve your wallet from your Nike belly bag.

“It’s just wrong,” she continues.

You picture yourself in fifth grade again, at Saint Gregory Elementary School’s hallway with a sign taped to your back: WRONG. You command yourself to shake off the visual.

“God created Adam and Eve,” she adds, “not Adam and Steve.”

Jesus. You ask yourself how many times you’ve heard that one.

Eve pushes your T-shirts toward Adam who refolds them–or is he Steve?

“Excuse me?” You pull out your American Express card, which you’d swear you’ve used a zillion times in this store.

“Yes?” She cocks her head to the side and supports one arm on her hip.

“Did you say wrong?” Your exhale feels like an eternity.

“I wasn’t talking to you.” Her eyes widen as if to ask: WTF?

“Funny,” you say while making sure your dark eyes register to her dark eyes the fuck in WTF?, “because I heard you loud and clear from across the room.”

She cups the giggle with her hand. “Well, I said–”

“I heard exactly what you said.” Yes, her eyes are as dark as yours; you squint to try and make out what’s inside. Not much; fear, maybe?

Deep exhale: “It’s not a choice,” you add. She grabs your AMEX; plump, yes, but her hand is not much darker than yours. You realize now, more than ever, that the human being who stares back at you wouldn’t take kindly to being told that she chose the color of her skin.

Blond Guy maintains his mute state while taking care to fold your tees.

“We didn’t say that.” She forces your plastic money through the machine. The movement reminds you of the sword draw exercise you always give your fitness class. She slaps the card onto the counter; its underbelly, your signature stares at you.

“So you didn’t say it’s a choice, and it’s something wrong?” You will yourself another deep exhale for the boy inside the man who hates to call attention to himself. She nods.

“Well, I’m gay.” You smile inside as you say it. “And I can tell you for a fact, it’s not a choice.”

“Really.” She looks directly at you with pursed lips then slams the receipt on the counter next to the credit card. She gives a wide-eyed glance to her blond accomplice who continues his silent, tee-folding exercises.

“Yes, really,” you counter. “And you should be more careful what you say in front of customers. Believe it or not one of them standing right before you could be gay.” As you sign the receipt, you make certain to put bold loops in the two “R’s” of your name: Russell Ricard. Blond Guy carefully, yet quickly, shoves your crisply folded T-shirts in the plastic bag.

You maintain eye contact with Miss America who sizes up your signature on the receipt with the one on back of your credit card. That’s right, bitch, you think to yourself, remember my name! You smile as you see the brilliant-colored tees bleed through the Niketown bag. You can’t wait to wear them and give an awesome fitness class.

You scoop up the credit card and receipt. “Have a nice day,” you offer, surprised that you add a wink. She obliges you with a tiny harrumph then looks the other way.

“Thank you, sir,” Blond Guy affirms, with a smile, as he hands you the shopping bag.

“You’re very welcome,” you respond and return the smile. You swing the bag to and fro as you stroll toward then burst through the revolving doors.

Russell Ricard received his MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. He lives in Forest Hills with his partner and two cats where he is at work on his first novel.