Death of the rabbits

Literary Review, Spring, 2004 by Mariana Romo-Carmona

They all died like a hero sandwich dies in the garment district at twelve o'clock in the afternoon social security number to ashes union dues to dust

--Pedro Pietri, from Puerto Rican Obituary

The day he knew for certain that he had the apartment was the day the Americans liberated Baghdad. One thing had nothing to do with the other, but everyone was talking about it, the bombing, the dust storms, so he had to think it was significant that both events happened on the same day. For a moment the twinge in his heart told him fortune had smiled on him at the cost of other people's misfortune, but when his office buddy, Marvin, told him he was suffering from mild delusions of grandeur, he tried to stop thinking about it.

The apartment in Queens was twice the size of his place in Manhattan. It was a long rectangle of a room on the ground floor of an old warehouse, with high ceilings and narrow windows that opened in with a long pole on the east side wall. The opposite wall, where the wide metal door was, featured the exposed brick and mortar the building was made of. This was a wall without skin. But he soon understood this had been a special touch the owner had intended, an art dealer, to make it look like the new converted lofts all the rich young people were buying up in Tribeca.

The brick face didn't bother him, though, and at first, neither did the hour and-a-half-long commute into the City. He was still in the City, technically, the borough of Queens is part of the City of New York, but his co-workers at Betty Long Fashions referred to the distance he had to travel each morning as the journey back into the City.

"But you guys don't have half the space I have out in Queens," he shouted over the talk-radio static, ever present in the background.

"Oh, stop bragging. You're killing us over here!"

"And he's only paying eleven hundred for it. Can you imagine? That's unheard of!"

"Shh!"

"What?"

"The Iraqis are shooting at the soldiers."

The women on the floor weren't an envious bunch, not like the harpies upstairs in personnel. On the fourth floor he had a gentle life, the only guy besides Marvin, passing his days among stacks of order forms from the major department stores and lulled by the warm rumble of the sewing machines above. Once in a while, there was a squeaky departure of a dress rack making a billow-and-fop, billow-and-fop noise as the young kid pushed the rack through to the glass doors, then out to the elevator, all the way down to Seventh Avenue.

These were the quality control batches; the rest of the dress shipments went sailing down on a rope, straight down from the 5th and 6th floor sewing rooms, out the window to the trucks waiting on the street. It was still an odd sight on the sidewalk, dresses flying six stories down flapping plastic wings, if you happened to be walking by.

And at the end of the day, as he made his way under the scaffolding on west 37th and rounded the corner to 7th Avenue, he'd take one last look behind him and above, to see if he could catch one last look of dresses flying down.

He'd always walked to the subway the same way, down 7th to Herald Square, to catch the Number One downtown. But now he had to walk up to 42nd to catch the train to Queens, and he didn't care how long it took. He was still excited going over the bridge, the novelty of it not yet worn off, going home to his second place ever, since he'd been out on his own, and the first without roommates.

It was all his. He wasn't done unpacking a week later, but every day he'd made a little headway. On the left as he walked in there were the kitchen and bathroom, where he dumped all the boxes with dishes, pots, and towels. He pushed the bookcases along the far wall, the bed, perpendicular under the windows to catch the morning light, right under a built-in shelf where he could line up all the books he had been reading lately, CDs, and a small ivy. His plants were going to flourish in the new place! He might have to get more.

Along the opposite wall, the brick wall, he had placed the desk, the sofa, a low table with two cactus pots, and the old coat stand from his mother's house, right by the door. In the middle, like an island, stood the rest of the boxes containing everything else.

From his bed, since there was only one way to look if he sat facing forward, he could see the wall with the brick and mortar, the entire expanse of brick all the way up to the twelve-foot ceiling. He didn't want to look at it anymore. He could put some plants there, in the corner--he only had the three still, or maybe the coat stand. It was all nice old wood, with a mirror, a shelf to place keys and letters, and an umbrella holder to the right. The coat stand was its own piece of furniture, six feet tall. He could begin by dragging that to the end.

He left his chicken tacos and the can of Dr Pepper on the kitchen counter and decided to move the coat stand right away.

It was heavy, but he could drag and sort of walk it over, tilting it this way and that, until he had it where he wanted it, and then he noticed a crack, from floor to ceiling. Close to where the brick facing met the north wall.