“He made a real estate pun.”
“Come on, sweetheart.”
I never did have the willpower to argue with Calvin when he used his terms of endearment on me.
I stepped into the vestibule, and we followed Timothy past the bank of mailboxes on the wall and down a short hallway, but when he reached the stairs, Timothy bypassed them, brought us around the backside, and started down the flight leading to the basement.
“You’ll love this place,” Timothy said over his shoulder. “Recently renovated, all-new kitchen appliances. You have a dog, right? Access to the backyard is restricted to the tenants of B1.”
“Timothy,” I said as we reached the landing. “I was really firm about the no-first-floor-apartments thing.”
He unlocked the door to the unit, flipped a light switch on the wall, and said, “This isn’t the first floor! It’s the basement.”
I turned to look up at Calvin. “Please don’t make me,” I whispered.
“Take a quick peek before saying no.”
“I’m not a nice person.”
“Pretend you are.” Calvin leaned down to kiss the side of my head.
The apartment might have been okay—never mind I wouldn’t live in a basement regardless—but more in the sense that it’d have been easy on my eyes. Except during the renovation Timothy had mentioned, it seemed like they’d installed no less than a thousand recessed lights, all pumped to maximum wattage, and I could barely make out the shape of the kitchen island, let alone any details like the floor tile or potential for crown molding.
“I can’t,” I said, shielding the tops of my sunglasses with a hand. “Sorry. It’s—”
From behind me was a dullthud, followed by a hiss and murmured curse.
I turned to see Calvin rubbing the top of his head. I glanced up at the ceiling, then asked, “Did you hit your head?”
“We’re going to need a taller place, Timothy,” Calvin said from the doorway.
As it turned out, the too-short basement really set the tone for the rest of the day.
Timothy showed us a railroad-style apartment, which he insisted was the same square footage as a “normal” one-bedroom, with the trade-off being it was four feet wide—the only way we’d fit a bed in the back was if it were folded like a taco, and I was likely to begin suffering from a mild case of claustrophobia. But hey, it was so long, we could throw Dillon’s Frisbee from the kitchen to the bedroom with ease and not evenhaveto go to the dog park.
The third apartment was in the process of being gutted and renovated, which I was fine with since I could imagine the end result, but the plumbing was already installed for the tub, and the tub was beside the oven. When I asked Timothy where the tub wasactuallygoing to be located, because I wasn’t interested in being able to soak in the bath and check on dinner at the same time, he pursed his lips and suggested we look at the next unit on his list.
Number four turned out to be a modern loft, the bedroom being accessible only by ladder. I knew how that’d pan out for me too. First week—stumbling out of bed, blind and bleary-eyed—trip on a rung, break my neck, and end up dead on the kitchen floor. But even more important than my neck was the fact that Dillon needed access to Calvin during the night. The dog had really zeroed-in on Calvin’s sleep patterns over the last month, and in the event that a nightmare awoke him, Dillon seemed to always be there, waiting. And he was able to calm Calvin down a lot faster than I could. So the trendy loft was another big fatno.
That’s when Timothy uttered the word that ended our brief tryst. “Midtown.”
I looked at him. “What?”
“I have a great place in Midtown. Forty-third and Sixth—”
“That’s Times Square.”
Timothy made a so-so motion with one hand. “It’s a block away.”
“I think we have to break up, Timothy,” I said solemnly.
“I’m going to have to turn to Craigslist.”
“No situation is that dire,” Calvin said, shuffling around his apartment, locking the door and turning out the lights for the night.
I scooted to make room on his bed, my back pressed up against the exposed bare brick. “In two months we’ve seen every dump, shithole, funhouse, and OSHA violation in the entire East Village.”
“311.”
