So, I’ve been a bit edge lately, because there are mice in my apartment. Every night, at 10:45 p.m., I’ll see a silvery blur out of the corner of my eye, streaking across the living room. When I realize it’s a mouse, I let out of a high-pitched scream and jump out of my skin.
It doesn’t matter I was here first or that I’m paying obscene amounts of money for this apartment. From the mouse’s point of view, this is a time-share and like it or not, it’s his turn to use the apartment.
My childhood friend from Chicago was recently visiting me. At 5’9”, back when we were 10 years old, she was the toughest girl in the 5th grade. When half the class wanted to murder me, she valiantly stepped up and protected me. This time, though, when the mouse appeared, she failed to save me. Instead, my friend, an uber feminist like me, shrieked and said the unthinkable:
“Lisa, I think what we need here is a M-A-N.”
Sadly, I had to agree. I called Doug, the apartment’s caretaker, a somewhat ineffectual man with wire-rimmed glasses, who wore a baseball cap, I suspected, in order, to cover a bald spot. Each time I called Doug with a new mouse spotting, he trekked over to my apartment with two more mouse traps.
One day, when my apartment was littered with 14 mouse traps and no dead mice, I insisted he call an exterminator. After the exterminator had come and gone, Doug swore I wouldn’t see any more mice. “You’ve said that so many more times before. I don’t believe you," I said.
I told Doug I was scarred for life and was probably going to need therapy. Not traditional talk therapy, but Freudian, three-times-a-week on the couch analysis, and possibly some deep hypnosis.
“I know what you mean about trauma,” Doug said, taking off his hat, and surprisingly, displaying a full head of fluffy hair. “I’m going through a divorce.”
I looked at him, surprised, wondering what a divorce had to do with mice. “I only mention it because you said you were divorced and, well, this is, uh, kind of difficult.”
“Yes, it is difficult,” I said. What I wanted to say was, The marriage was the difficult part. The divorce was easy.
I was happy, though because Doug was the first person in NYC to say something personal to me. I must admit, it’s been difficult making new friends in New York.
I’ve been going to a lot of writers’ groups lately, which are sprinkled around the city like AA meetings. Everyone there is like me—neurotic and compulsive.
Most recently, I meet an Israeli woman at a meeting. I’m excited, thinking we could be friends. We exchange phone numbers and ride the train back to Brooklyn together. Then, I open my big mouth. “Don’t you think the Israelis ought to have a cease fire in Gaza?” I ask.
She looks at me horrified. “No, the Hamas are terrible, terrible people. They need to be eliminated. Every single one of them.”
I move on to Donald Trump. “Are you worried he’s going to become president again? It’s because of him Roe vs. Wade was dismantled.”
She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Israelis love Trump. He’s done so much for us. And abortion is barbaric,” she says.
“Oh,” I say, undeterred. “Well, let’s go to the movies sometime.”
She nods but when I text later, she never responds.
Another day, I spot a different woman from the writer’s group on the train. I bound over to her with my unbridled California friendliness. “I loved what you read at the meeting,” I say.
She nods and smiles wryly as if she’s used to hearing such things.
“And I loved what the guy next to you read,” I say.
“The guy next to me was an idiot!” she spats out. “Oh! Here’s my stop!” and she jumps off the train.
Despite these disappointments, I still love the train. One day I spot a young Asian woman exiting the train in her pajamas, curlers in her hair, clutching a pink dildo. Or maybe it’s vibrator. I don’t know. I whip out my iphone camera, set to sports mode and get a few shots. It turns out to be a pink curling iron, plugged into her backpack.
Another time I’m on the subway with my sister and brother-in-law who are visiting. My brother-in-law is enumerating the dangers of NYC subways. As I’m telling him how safe the subways are, a guy stumbles on to the train, mumbling loudly to himself and sits across from us. Just as if this were an SNL skit parodying subway safety, the guy pulls a vodka bottle out of his shorts and starts slugging. Then, he takes a slim, purple marijuana vape, sucks hard, and exhales, enveloping us all in big clouds of smoke.
The guy gets a big smile on his face and begins speaking to no one in particular. “First, she got arrested, and then she went to jail, and then.” He breaks off here and makes the universal death sign, holding a finger in the air and running an imaginary knife across his throat.
It’s moments like these that keep me going when I’m bored and lonely. Normally, I’m home by dark, so as to avoid any chance of running into a late-night rat. The other day, though, I’m feeling brave and join a speakeasy tour of Manhattan. I meet a young couple—a gorgeous, Amazonian-looking woman with long blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes, and her boyfriend, a strong, stocky, military man. They’re getting drunk tonight and waking up early tomorrow to scale a Manhattan skyscraper.
“We like your vibe, Lisa,” they say, so, I stay with them late into the night.
I ask the Amazonian about the tattoo on her arm with Keltic scripted style numbers. “That was the day I punched a shark in the face,” she says.
She stares off into the middle distances, as she tells the story of how she punched the shark in the face when he tried to bite off her leg. The young guy sits beside her, listening as she speaks, not interrupting, not interjecting, not checking his cell phone, though I’m sure he’s heard this tale before.
“She’s beautiful,” I tell him when she goes to the restroom.
“Yes, she is—inside and out,” he says.
“You should marry her,” I say, surprising myself.
When she returns, I say to her tipsily, “He’s a good guy. He respects women. I can tell.”
I laugh at myself later, like I’m SUCH an expert on good guys-- I who have dated and married criminals, psychopaths and conmen.
I’m in the process of trying to sell my diamond encrusted wedding ring I no longer need. I go to the diamond district of on 57th Street, run mostly by Hasidic Jews—men with side curls, wearing wire-rimmed glasses, and despite the summer heat, dark suits and black hats. I stare at them like I’m looking at some alternate version of myself. They are my people, and I am theirs. Yet we are so different.
I follow the prospective buyers up and down narrow hallways, climb steep steps, squeeze into tiny offices, old world-Mezuzahs scotch taped to the doors. They examine the ring, and ask, “How much do you want?”
They laugh when I give them the number. I accept an offer for much less. I walk around midtown, dejected. The ring is worth less than I thought. So, too, was the marriage. I buy a soft serve chocolate ice cream cone and sit down on a bench. I look up through the mass of slick and shiny skyscrapers and think to myself, God give me a sign that I’m on the right track—that all of this is going to make sense one day.
That’s when I notice the sign on the building right across from me. Simon and Shuster—the famous publisher of books. This, for me, is Mecca--the sacred gateway to the Emerald City. This is the place I want to be—not the wedding halls, not the glorious NYC pizza places, and God knows, not the speed dating events. One day, hopefully soon, I’ll be there.