Sure enough, the stack of papers had a misprint on the front page, albeit an uninteresting one: nad for and. Not much of a cybergirl, my first inclination was to chuck the pile with the recyclables, but curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to see what was happening on eBay. There were a few listings of the Queens edition misprint, but at such low bidding prices, I couldn’t waste my time for a few nickels. The one thing I did save was the letter—I wasn’t sure what to make of this guy just yet, and I’ve certainly picked up my fair share of weirdoes with my friendliness, so I filed it away in a folder labeled “from neighbor 4C” just in case. In the meantime, I uncovered a valuable clue: his name started with A, and he lived right up the stairs from my front door.
I’m one of those people who can usually remember things with the help of one letter, but this was the last one I’d have picked out of the alphabet for Mr. Marlboro Buddha. Nothing fit: Adam, Albert, Archie, Andrew, Allan, Aaron, Amelio, Ahab, Anonymous. The names on the door plate and the mailbox didn’t offer much either, other than his last name. However, that came in handy a few weeks later when a big box arrived for Alvin Shapiro.
Bingo.
The next time I ran into him, he was watering the rose bushes in front of the building, hose in one hand, cigarette in the other. “Hi Al,” I said, maybe too triumphantly. “So, Monique, who told you?” he asked. “No one,” I offered. That ended that little game, but started something else: the ever so slight shift in his “leave me alone” demeanor, a spring-like thaw toward welcoming friendship.
“I knew you were all right when I walked by your door and heard the Rolling Stones,” Al said to me one day. I have a soft spot for my record collection. I’d already succeeded in pissing off my downstairs neighbor by not having carpeting and being too noisy cleaning my kitchen cupboards at two in the morning. I told Al. “Lisa,” he said knowingly. “Why am I not surprised.” My latest problem with Lisa wasn’t even my problem: water was leaking from her ceiling directly below my bathroom. I didn’t have any leaks. The pipes must be bad in the building because the same thing happened to Elizabeth, who’s below Al. She was a wreck the day it happened, as a flood was pouring into her bathroom. She ran upstairs and grabbed Al, who came and surveyed the situation. He took one look and said, “Elizabeth, got a cigarette?”
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