Tenant 4C: The Marlboro Buddha (Part 1)

The day I moved into the building he was sitting cross-legged on the left side of the stoop smoking a Marlboro. The skin on his face was weathered with light brown age spots and his eyes told me they’d seen more than most. He wore a silver chain around his neck. He looked like someone you didn’t want to cross. Maybe it was the way he held his cigarette between his thumb and index finger when he took a drag or his lunch of Odwalla Mango Tango and dried apricots or the copper bracelet he wore around his wrist. Maybe it was just that his casual Buddha-like posture reminded me of my west coast hippie friends and I could see the Merry Prankster in him. Whatever it was, I felt like I already knew this guy and I liked him.

My arms were full of boxes and I was fumbling with my keys to open the front door for the first time. There’s no getting around the awkwardness of moving into a new building. Especially in New York. For me, it’s been five times in twelve years and only once that wasn’t right around a blizzard. No matter what time of day or month, no matter how quickly or smoothly it might go, I’ve never been able to get through a move without some new neighbor’s bitch about noise in the stairwells, tracking snow, boxes in the foyer, leaving doors open, leaving doors closed. As much as I thought I had a take on this guy, I knew I didn’t, and he could just as easily become my first enemy in the building as my first friend. I said hello and introduced myself.

“So you’re the new kid on the block,” he said. And there was his smile: right side up, left side down in an impish smirk.

“There’s a chain on the wall behind the second door,” he said. “It has a little latch, and you’ll see a small eyehook in the door you can use to hold the door open. Most people don’t know it’s there, because it blends into the wall, but you can’t miss it.” His voice had the tired timbre of someone who was through with being bothered. “There’s a wedge hidden on the ledge above the door. You can use it to hold the first door open so you don’t have to use your keys every time you’re carrying another load upstairs.” I looked inside the vestibule, but didn’t see any wedge. Then again, if I were taller, it might not be an issue. I didn’t want to ask, but when he noticed that I was searching in vain for the wedge, he unfolded his legs and came inside. He reached above my head and felt along the molding above the door until he found it. I would have never seen it.