The Space of a Life
by Mickey Fisher
“This place has an old soul.”
Arlo thought back that moment from time to time, Jonesy giving him a tour of the pre-war on Lakeshore, a couple of blocks from the water. Three stories, U-shaped, with a courtyard in the middle. It was time to hand over the ring of keys, but just as Arlo reached out Jonesy snatched it back and said the thing about the building having a soul, then, “Do you believe that sort of thing?”
Arlo said, “You mean like it has character?”
“I mean like a person. Over the years, decades, half-a-century. People from all walks of life moving in and out. Maybe it picks up some… I don’t know…”
Arlo figured Jonesy was having a hard time letting go. Three decades as a super here, how could it not be a living thing to him?
Arlo said, “I’ll take good care of it. I promise.”
Truthfully, he didn’t believe in that sort of thing. By the time he hit thirty he’d pared down his belief system to a few simple maxims. “Be honest. Be on time. Be patient with other people and yourself.” They were sturdy and straightforward and he fell in love with a sturdy and straightforward woman named Margie who lived her life much the same way.
They had settled into a simple routine in the building on Lakeshore. He spent the day making his rounds while she did data entry in the home office. When he got back to the apartment in the evening one of them picked out three takeout menus from a basket by the door and the other chose a restaurant from one of the three. They ate dinner while watching the news and spent the rest of the night curled up together reading true crime novels. Were they happy? He guessed so. They were content. They were a good team. Maybe that was enough.
When it got right down to it, that’s exactly what it was. Enough.
Then, one day while he was making his rounds, he noticed a brand new key, shining like silver, stuck in the middle of the dingy, discolored set he’d inherited from Jonesy. Marked B17. He didn’t put it there and nobody else had access to the ring except for Margie, and anyway, it was strange. He hadn’t been there for long but he’d been there long enough to know there was no unit marked B17.
He got off the elevator on the third floor in the center of the U and made his way to the end of the hall. Sure enough, there it was. B17. How could he not have noticed that before? He knocked a couple of times, said, “Super,” loud enough for a body inside to hear but nobody answered. So, he slipped the shiny new key in the lock and turned it. He opened the door half-an-inch and called out again, giving fair warning, but still no answer from the other side.
He was surprised to find it was just a single room, decorated like something from forty years ago. Kid’s bed with NFL sheets. Pittsburgh Steelers. One of those plastic toy boxes shaped like a football. He remembered he used to have one of those, he got it for Christmas when he was seven. The sheets too, come to —
This was it.
Exactly his childhood bedroom in the house on South 7th.
But, that couldn’t be right.
He stood there for a moment, wondering if maybe he was having some kind of episode. How did this ha-holy shit —
There.
On the wall next to the bed.
His name was spelled out in colored square stickers he had peeled off of his Rubik’s Cube.
Arlo felt sure he was having some kind of psychotic break, even though he didn’t really know what that meant. He’d only ever read about it in the novels he and Margie traded back and forth at night. He made a break for the door, pulled it tight behind him, and slipped the shiny silver key inside but before he could lock it back up curiosity got the better of him.
When he opened it again, the room had been transformed. There was a waterbed in the corner and the stereo he bought with his own money from working at the Freez-It all summer before his junior year. Posters for Dokken and Nightmare on Elm Street on the wall. There was a TV hooked up to a VCR on the dresser, running a worn-out tape of Headbanger’s Ball. “Rock You Like A Hurricane. Every so often the image would glitch and snap back into place.
Arlo was mostly just fascinated now. Every detail was correct, down to the jean jacket with the patches hanging off the doorknob. If you’d asked him to describe his high school bedroom he wouldn’t have remembered half of this stuff, and yet, seeing it, he knew it was all exactly as it had been.
He had to try again.
Next was his college dorm room and another flood of memories. The impromptu parties, the endless instant Ramen, the girl from the soccer team in his bed who asked him what he was thinking about and what he was thinking was, “I can’t believe this is actually happening.”
Next was the summer cabin at the camp in Maine where he snuck joints with the other counselors and stayed up late listening to Dave Matthews. He tried and failed to learn harmonica. One of the best summers of his life.
Then, his first apartment with Margie. They were so proud of being real adults with a place in the city and everything. It was a rat trap in a literal sense but they made it home. Opportunities came and went, dreams were deferred, and they made the concessions that adulthood requires.
Then, the living room of their apartment in this very building, an exact replica of the same room two floors down on the other side of the L, with the basket of takeout menus and the hook by the door. He tried it again and it was the same living room. And again, same thing.
He figured this must be as far as it goes and he had to admit, he was a little disappointed. Then, he noticed the pictures on the mantle.
And that Margie wasn’t in them.
She’d been replaced by some other woman. It was a wedding photo. She and Arlo looked to be in their late fifties, if he had to guess.
And, there.
On the side table.
A framed photo of Margie, next to an “In Memorium” card.
He felt the floor give way beneath him and put a hand out to steady himself on the wall. His heart was pounding and his chest seized up. The edges of his peripheral vision were going dark. This wasn’t a psychotic break. It was a panic attack. Those, he did know about.
He ran out the door and slammed it closed behind him. He contemplated opening it again but then he thought ahead. What might be next? A hospital? A nursing home? A living room with an “In Memorium” card from his own funeral?
Would he want to know?
In a daze, he rode the elevator down to the ground floor and when the door opened he almost forgot to get out before it closed again. He shuffled toward his apartment, past the mailboxes, and there she was. Amelia or Amalia. C-11, retrieving her mail.
The woman from the wedding photo, looking twenty years younger.
He caught himself staring at her and managed to look away just before she turned back in his direction. She gave him a perfunctory wave and the bare minimum of a smile, which out of distraction he did not return.
When he got back to his apartment, he hesitated before unlocking his own door. Would today be the day? Tomorrow? Were these things destined to happen, or did he have some control over them? When he finally worked up the nerve to go inside he hung up the ring of keys up on instinct.
The silver key had disappeared.
Margie called from the bedroom-turned-office, said, “It’s your turn to pick.”
He looked down at the three menus she’d laid out for him. Thai. Italian. The diner down the block. He stared at them for a long moment, thinking. Finally, he said, “Should we go out?”
After a couple of seconds she appeared in the hallway. “Go where?”
“I don’t know. Some place we’ve never been.”
The left corner of her lip curled up. The smile that he interpreted as, “What’s your angle, Mr.?” But her voice said, “Let me change.”
And she disappeared down the hall again.
While he was waiting Arlo suddenly became aware of the clunk of the cast iron radiator and the gurgling of the pipes in the walls. He thought back to Jonesey as he put his hand to the plaster and felt the heartbeat of the building and the lifeblood running through.
