“What about a closet?” I ask around the bile rising in my throat.
Cindy pushes aside a faded yellow curtain and there it is: what may be my new closet. It’s roughly one-sixth the size of my current clothing space. I’ll have to get rid of most of what I own if I move in here.
I glance around again, sure I’ve missed something. “What about sleeping?”
I’m certain Cindy’s going to inform me that sleeping standing up is all the rage right now, but instead, she gestures at a set of stairs leading to a nook just above our heads. No wonder the ceiling is so low.
“You’ve got an upstairs bedroom,” Cindy says, without cracking the smile that I feel such a statement clearly deserves.
I climb the stairs, which is really more of a ladder than a staircase. It leads to a tiny nook above the apartment where I can put a mattress. When I’m lying there, I will have about a foot of space between my nose and the ceiling. The coffin metaphor is becoming more and more apt.
“What about a bathroom?” I ask.
“There’s one in the hallway. You’ll share it with four other residents.”
I climb back down the ladder carefully, landing unsteadily on my feet. I don’t want to live here. I really, really don’t want to live here. But my options are horrible. I’m too old to deal with a strange roommate, and even renting out a room in Manhattan is pricy.
I tried Queens. I looked at three apartments there that were at least somewhat larger than this place, but the easiest commute would involve two busses and a subway, totaling three hours of daily commuting time. At least this place is in a good neighborhood—right near Lincoln Center and Central Park.
“You don’t have anything bigger?” I ask hopefully.
Cindy arches an eyebrow. “Ms. Mascolo, this apartment is in the upper limit of your price range.”
“Yes, but—”
“And it will be snatched up by the end of the week. Believe me.”
I run my hand along the top of the mini-fridge. I get a jolt of electricity and yank my hand away.
“Oh, you don’t want to touch that,” Cindy says.
I shut my eyes. This can’t be my life.
“So do you want the place or not?” Cindy glances down at her gold watch. “I’ve got another client in twenty minutes.”
“I…” I look around at the tiny living space. My knees feel like Jell-O. I recognize I’m on the brink of being homeless, but I can’t live here. I’ve been here less than fifteen minutes and I’m about to have a panic attack. “I need to think about it.”
Cindy shrugs. She’s not giving me the hard sell, because she knows someone really will snap up this apartment by the end of the week. But it won’t be me. I’ve still got two weeks left before I have to move out of my current place. I can wait a little longer.
After we leave the apartment building, Cindy rushes off to another appointment. She’s a busy woman, and I need a place to live more than she needs the commission she’ll get from whatever apartment I choose. I watch her hurry down the block, her cell phone pressed to her ear. She laughs at something the person on the other line says to her.
I wonder if she’s laughing about me. About the woman who thinks she’s too good to live in an apartment the size of a walk-in closet. But no, that’s self-obsessed. She’s probably already forgotten me.
I walk down the street, my eyes peeled for signs hung up to advertise apartments. Every wall in the city is a potential billboard where I could discover my next place to live. Maybe there’s a gem out there that nobody else knows about. Two bedrooms, one bath, located on the upper west side—only five hundred dollars a month!