“Cam’s from North Carolina,” she said. “Do you know him?”
“Who?”
“Cameron Broughton. One of the left-behinds in the lobby.”
I hadn’t looked closely at any of the men although Cameron and Broughton are both prominent names in the state. I glanced up at Dwight, who gave a negative shrug.
“Sorry,” I said.
“It’s a big state, Luna,” said the other woman with an amused shake of her head. “You’ll have to excuse her. Cam’s got her thinking that everybody in the South knows everyone else. Or is related if you go back far enough.”
“Well, just look at yesterday,” the blonde said as if scoring a definite point. She turned back to us. “Two couples came out of the hotel down the block, and just as we were passing, they realized that they were all from North Carolina and that one of them was the sister-in-law to the other woman’s cousin. Cam says it happens anytime four Southerners get together. There’s never the full six degrees of separation.”
In keeping with the Arts and Crafts ambiance of the lobby, the small elevator was probably original to the building. Sidney had manually closed the brass accordion-type gate before turning a thick brass lever that let us rise. Once we left the lobby’s fixed door, there was nothing between the gate and the ugly concrete shaft. We passed the numbered floors and stopped in front of the door marked with a large black 6.
The two women exited and Sidney unbent enough to tell us that 6-A was on the right, which made the blonde called Luna turn back with renewed interest.
“You’re staying in Jordy Lacour’s place? Cool! We’re neighbors. How long will you be here?”
“Just a week,” I told her.
“Then we’ll be seeing you again,” she said.
They went on down the hall to the apartment at the other end and Sidney did not linger to watch us open the door, which was just as well, given how long it would have taken us to figure out which key turned which of the two locks. I had forgotten how most city dwellers have more than one on their doors and I had a sudden flashback to the law student I’d lived with after Mother died when I dropped out of school and ran away from home. The door of Lev Schuster’s West Village efficiency had three locks and a deadbolt and his jaw used to tighten if I left any of them unlocked.
In the end it didn’t matter, because Dwight had barely inserted the first key before the knob turned and a stocky man filled the open doorway. His dark brown coveralls were the same shade as Sidney’s uniform and his own brass name tag read PHIL. Unlike Sidney, who was so sleek and trim he could have stepped off a wedding cake, this middle-aged man filled his coveralls to the bursting point with lumpy bulges. His hair was a tangle of salt-and-ginger curls that probably sneered at combs. His square face was clean-shaven, but his bushy eyebrows more than made up for it. Like the hair on his head, his brows were so thick and wiry they reminded me of woolly bear caterpillars foretelling a hard winter. His nose looked as if it’d been broken at least once, but his smile was welcoming.
“You the people Miz Bryant said was coming?” He had a smoker’s gravelly voice but no smoky odor emanated from his coveralls.
“That’s right,” said Dwight. “And you are?”
“Phil Lundigren. I’m the super here. There was a leak in 7-A and I was checking to make sure it didn’t come through the ceiling.” He reached for the handle of my suitcase. “Here, let me give you a hand with that.”
He led us through the vestibule and down a short hall into the master bedroom, switching on more lights as we went. He wasn’t particularly tall, but there was strength in his bulky frame, for he carried my heavy bag as if it were a feather and gently deposited it inside the door.
“My wife cleans for some of the owners and she came in yesterday after Mr. Lacour left and changed the sheets and towels. I didn’t find any water damage, but you folks might want to keep an eye out and call me if you see any damp spots on the ceilings, okay? My number’s there by the house phone and my apartment’s on the ground floor around from the elevator.”
He explained how to adjust the radiators and opened a service door off the kitchen to show us where to leave our garbage after we had separated out the paper, glass, and tins. He told us how the keys worked and how to buzz someone in, and warned us not to let anyone in that we didn’t know. After saying there was a grocery around the corner on Broadway, he finally took himself off so that we could explore the apartment for ourselves.
There were two bedrooms, two baths, full kitchen, separate dining room, and, unexpectedly, French doors that opened off the living room onto a tiny balcony. Two chairs might fit out there in nice weather, but they’d have to be awfully small ones. Leaning over the iron railing, we could make out the upper end of Broadway, half a block over. Knots of people passed on the sidewalks while yellow cabs weaved in and out of the lanes, missing each other by inches. The horns, the lights, the wail of a fire truck—all added to the exhilaration of being in one of the world’s great cities.
“It’s freezing out here,” Dwight said and we stepped back into the warmth of the apartment.
“First things first,” I said as I slung my coat and scarf on the back of the black leather couch. “I’ll call Mrs. Lattimore’s daughter and—”
“No,” said Dwight, taking me into his arms. “First thing is to remember that this is our honeymoon.”
It was after 9:30 before we were ready to think about food. The refrigerator was empty except for a stick of butter, a bottle of salad dressing, and six different kinds of mustard. Rather than go out for supper, we bundled up and headed around to Broadway to find the grocery store the super had described.
Here on a freezing Friday night, Fairway’s aisles were as crowded as our local grocery would have been on a warm Saturday morning. Of course, these aisles and carts were only half as wide as ours, but the shelves and cases were piled high with exotic delicacies of every description. One corner was filled by a dozen different varieties of olives in open barrels, hundreds of cheeses were stacked in another section. Hot foods, cold cuts, salads, baked goods, custards—we hardly knew where to begin. Every turning brought unfamiliar smells and entrancing temptations.
In the end, our eyes were limited by how much we thought we could carry, and we went back to the apartment with eggplant parmigiana, ravioli, artichoke salad, a small packet of bruschetta, and a Washington State merlot.
