Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

comer of the park, the kibitzers standing all around watching every move. It was getting kind of cool for outdoor chess but the players would be there until the snow came, maybe even afterwards. That’s how it was when you had an obsession. Something that would make another person stop and think, or turn away, foul weather, say, or the fear of running afoul of the law, might not even slow you down. Was that the way it had been for Leon? And what, I wondered, had it been for Sally?

CHAPTER 3

    I unlocked the wrought iron gate that leads to the tunnel formed by the town houses on either side, picked up my mail and watched Dashiell run ahead into the cool October light that filled my garden. The small brick back cottage I rented was in the far left comer of the garden, an herb patch I’d planted on the side facing the town house my landlords owned, a cobalt blue water bowl on the far side of the stairs where Dashiell was taking a long, noisy drink. I sat down on the steps leading to my front door and opened the mail, three offers of credit cards, all preapproved, a free pass to one of the local gyms, an envelope full of discount coupons, three catalogs.
    I unlocked the door and left it open for Dashiell, who was inspecting the land, first checking the perimeter, then quartering the yard looking for something that would require his attention. Today was also the day we’d check out the town house to make sure no one had broken in and that everything was working properly, the job that earned me a rent so low I could afford to live in Greenwich Village, the increasingly unaffordable neighborhood where no matter what changed, I still felt most at home.
    Leon had a different kind of deal. I knew the building anyway, but the signs were all there as well, no doorman during the day, a small, no-frills lobby, halls that could have used a paint job. Leon’s deal was called rent stabilization, one of the factors that gave the city its remarkable diversity, allowing the old, the young, the newly arrived, the fresh out of school as well as artists, writers, actors and photographers to live here. The young managed by taking on roommates. Others, the newly arrived, lived in the outer boroughs, the Russians in Brooklyn, the Chinese in Queens, And the luckiest ones, many of the city’s elderly and everyone in Leon’s building, survived because their landlords were bound by laws which limited the percentage they could raise a tenant’s rent.
    I picked up the key to the town house, whistled to Dashiell, and we went back out the front gate, locking it behind us. We went up the steps to the front door of the town house, unlocking both locks and stepping into the small hall that led first to the library and next to the living room. The Siegals had been home only for three weeks in the last six months and the house looked more like a museum to me than a home. The Siegals’ house, since they owned more than one, was not crammed full of a lifetime of personal artifacts. But even with the ones that were here, photos of their parents and their children, the collection of hand-carved wooden animals from all over the globe, the paintings of flowers in the living room, the house didn’t seem to have the personal feeling of a lived-in space.
    Leon’s apartment was different, and though the living room had a sparse coolness to it, little furniture and black-and-white photos on the white walls, the rest of the apartment, at least the parts I had seen so far, were cluttered with the detritus of the occupants—peeled-off clothing that had been tossed on the backs of the dining room chairs, piles of negatives and contact sheets on Leon’s messy desk, a red wagon, like the one I used as a coffee table, filled with toilet paper parked between the kitchen and the bathroom. There were canisters on the kitchen counters, tea and coffee, perhaps cookies in one, signs of life that were missing in the Siegal house. In fact, on those occasions when my landlords blew into town, they ate out every night, went to the opera, the theater, a museum or two, and then they’d be off again, to England or Italy or Greece.
    Would the way Leon’s space looked make more sense when I got to know him better, the blackboard scribbled with notes over his busy desk, the dining room table covered with at least a week’s worth of mail, most of it not yet opened, and then the stark living room? There were no plants, no rugs, no knickknacks, no doodads, nothing collected