The Neighbor Downstairs

        There’s something about hammocks. Something uninhibited and hip. And urban cool and artsy, like a graffiti mural. And perhaps a bit rebellious as well. Something that would wear a t-shirt emblazoned “fuck you” in bold letters to a protest march and wave a placard and show big brother the middle finger when occasion called, on the one hand...but also don a million dollar designer suit like the godfather when business calls, on the other. A deep well. Whenever I see a hammock I think chutzpah. Guts. I think rakishness, like walking up to your boss when you don't dig your hustle and saying, "I quit!!!" Hell, that takes some nerve but it's mad sexy. It shows character. For the longest time I've wanted to own a hammock like mad! Abraham Maslow must have lain on one when he wrote the Hierarchy of Needs. That’s because lying on a hammock gives you ideas. It is a statement. It says I have arrived.

        This here is not about hammocks, though. It is a story about my neighbor who owns one and reads an author by the name of Mario Vargas Llosa, and the Spanish bible. I looked that author up; he’s a big deal.  Real big deal. A kahuna. See, I stay next to a little recreational park where folks with a bit of spare time come and make merry and unwind. And so I get to see what shit park goers do. My back window [those long French windows that slide] opens into a little porch where you can chill like royalty and feel lazy and have no eff to give [I’ve always wanted to say that, hehe]. That’s where am sitting right now. Across the street is the park. Enough of that; back to my neighbor, will we? I don’t know her real name because I’ve never asked. All we say when we meet is hi-hi [which is boring and uncreative]. The rest of our language is silence; stiff silence, the kind you can cut with a butcher’s knife and step back and watch blood ooze beautifully out of. I think it’s just me she’s afraid of because I hear her sing sometimes when I sit in my apartment doing my work. Or when she laughs. Or when she fights with her boyfriend who comes around quite a bit. I stay on the floor right above hers. Whenever they fight I stop to listen because it’s beautiful. I never heard anyone cuss more colorfully. Her cussing is truly a work of art. I know Boyfriend a little: a tall geeky-looking guy with ruddy cheeks and a permanent look of shock like someone who's seen the buttocks of a snake. Always in skinny pants and those huge-rimmed glasses that geeky folk like to wear. Something about him looks funny or odd in them glasses...I don't get it. I see him at the bars sometimes chasing tail like crazy.

        I know I did say that I don’t know Girlfriend’s name but I secretly call her Katarina [Everyone needs a name]. She looks like one to me. And Katarina is a solid name, if you ask me. And slyly affectionate. Katarina. The sound of it opens the windows of a room, like the first four notes of a hymn. Any room. It belongs to the kind of girl that wears comfortable leather shoes and sports a thin watch and walks like she's her own best thing. With a self-belief like you wouldn't believe. A girl that crosses her legs, leans her elbow on her knees and leans in towards your face when she gets seriously passionate about Pope Francis or Mother Teresa. One who sends you a handwritten letter signed off: Take care dearly!!!, with a heart sign at the end. Am told Katarina in Greek means ‘pure’ but homegirl probably doesn’t even know it because she doesn’t speak Greek; she speaks Spanish.

        Saturday afternoons when it’s warm Katarina walks across the street to the park. She walks in a neat line, a bee-line, clad in a loose floral beach dress and sandals the color of an ox’s heart, her hammock draped over her shoulder like a flag. One hand holds a bottle of something and the other a book. She’s a girl on a mission. After she ties the ends of her hammock to two adjacent tree stems she slips off her sandals and mounts the hammock barefoot like a prophet stepping into a hallowed place – with reverence. That’s when we lose her because from now on she belongs to Mario Vargas Llosa. Mario has her and Mario takes her places we cannot take her and she, in turn, gives herself completely to Mario so that if a wasp were to land on the bridge of her nose it would have to sting her before she’d even be aware it was sitting there. Her face lights up and the corners of her mouth curl into a smile sometimes; Mario must be hell of a funny dude. Occasionally, she reaches for her bottle and takes a swig.

         Now, wouldn’t you know, Friday two weeks ago I woke up in the living room of my apartment feeling like I’d been stepped on by a migrating horde of wildebeests in the Mara? I would have been there all night if the folks in the apartment below hadn’t been having themselves a big old fight at three in the morning. I was startled awake and I was too fried to move, at least right away. Boyfriend was trying to snake Girlfriend, saying he needed space, and she was like, Motherfucker, I’ll give you all the space you need. I already mentioned Boyfriend’s little Rico Suave routine at the bars, didn’t I? Am sure he just needed more space to cheat. Fine, he said, but every time he went for the door Girlfriend got to crying and would be like, Why are you doing this?

        By the time Boyfriend got himself into the hallway I was already in the kitchen to grab a glass of water. I was thirsty. Girlfriend would not stop crying. Twice she stopped, she must have heard me moving around right above her and both times I held my breath until she started up again. I followed her into the bathroom, the two of us separated by a floor. She kept saying something in Spanish that I couldn’t make out, and washed her face over and over again. Now that I think about it I feel bad. I feel horrible for eavesdropping. I feel like shit.

        Next day I told my boy Kofi what happened and he said too bad for her. If I didn’t have my own women problems I’d say let’s go comfort the widow. I agree.

        Boyfriend came around a couple of times the next few days for his things and, I guess, to finish the job. He is a confident prick. He would listen to what she had to say, arguments that had taken her hours to put together, and then he would say it didn’t matter, he needed his space, period. Then she’d let him know her [in the Biblical sense, of course] every time, perhaps hoping that it would make him stay. And you smelled the desperation oozing out of that apartment, her clutching at this guy, her fears rising to the heavens. And you know what’s shabby? The way they talked after. About their beautiful past. About how cool they were together and how they're gonna lose all that. And how it wouldn't be the same again. And I’d think Man, this is sick. Put on your skinny pants and weird f**kin glasses and leave already, sonovabitch. F**k!!!

        I don’t know why I started following her life, but it seemed like a good thing to do. No, make that an interesting thing to do. Most of the time I think people, even at their worst, are pretty boring. But I guess I was already deep in this drama and might as well see it through. Stay and witness how she finds her way home from this harrowing, heart-rending angst. She was a girl lost and hurting and torn painfully apart, as everybody does sometimes.

        After one of their shags, Boyfriend never came back. No phone calls, no nothing. She called a lot of her friends, ones she hadn’t spoken to in the longest. Girlfriend spent a lot of her time crying, either in the bathroom or in front of the TV. She was wrecked. She even stopped singing those bachata songs she sang before. It was absolutely jarring.

        Last weekend I got the cojones to ask her up for coffee, which was mighty manipulative of me. I met her at the laundry room. She hadn’t had much human contact since skinny pants left, so what was she going to say? No? She actually seemed glad to finally speak to someone. I was surprised to see her looking sharp and colorful. I thought she’d be teary and miserable-looking and shit. She said she’d be right up and when she sat across from me on the kitchen table she had on makeup and a gold necklace.

“You have a lot more light in your apartment than I do,” she said…which was a fair call because what I have plenty of in my apartment is light. We drank a pot of coffee and she played some songs on my laptop, which I had brought to the kitchen. I had heard her listen to these songs down there. Good songs. We didn’t have much to talk about. She was depressed and tired and I had the worst gas of my life, God. Twice I had to excuse myself. Twice in an hour. She must have thought that bizarre as hell but both times I came out of the bathroom she was staring deeply into her coffee, the way fortune tellers do. Crying all the time had made her more beautiful. Grief will do that sometimes. Not for me, though. She walked over to the potted plant that I have in my living room and plucked a leaf and smelled it and smiled.

“Do you smoke?” I asked.

“I don’t. Am a Jew. Do you?” she replied.

“Well, it makes me sleepwalk and pick fights…so I generally stay away from it.” I don't know what bit of that response she found funny but she just cracked up like a female hyena making away with a carcass.

“Honey will stop that. It’s an old cure. Just take a teaspoon a night.”

“Really!? T'will stop the sleepwalking or the fighting?"

"Both."

"Ok, am down if you say so.” 

        She told me she’s Elizibet [hehehe...what!!!]. Well, you folks out there who butcher names, please don’t butcher this one. Please. Ever seen those notices they put in libraries that say DO NOT RE-SHELVE BOOKS. A MIS-SHELVED BOOK IS A LOST BOOK…? Same with names. A butchered name is a wasted name. So guys it’s not Elizabeth, Olisabeth…hell, it’s not Liz, for those who like fancy.  It’s simply Elizibet, from Cuba. Ladies and gentlemen. My neighbor, the hammock owner!