I Smell a ... What?

One thought occurs to me as I awaken in my brother’s apartment... I could never live like this. Not anymore.

Don't get me wrong! I am so grateful for this place, a stone’s throw from the beach, not to hang my hat but to flop my ass down and sleep between shifts. But the proximity to others is no longer something I find comforting or desirable or even, in some cases, tolerable. I like my house. I like that, in the summer when the trees are full, you can’t see the neighbors. Even in the winter no one is too close.

We crawled in here late last night after working a "concert". I'm putting that in quotation marks because if this is music then music is dead. Four acts of relentless rhythm that changed only when it disappeared altogether. So I was tired. The ride down the Westside "Highway" (another long-dead concept) was not as bad as usual. Someone in the chain of command in Mayor DiBlasio's assault on commuters had the wisdom to open the direct access tunnel to the Hugh Carey Tunnel. (Calling it what it is, the "Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel", is also a dead concept for that might tell the driver WHERE IT IS!) Unfortunately, no one thought to advise drivers that the entrance on the left was open, so all of us clinging to the right were screwed. Anyway, it only took an hour to get to the apartment: a significant improvement over a two-hour trip to CT.

The elevator doors opened on his floor and the smell of cooking slammed into my nose like a plague. It's not the enticing smell of Italian food, with its garlicky promise of mouth-watering deliciousness. It's not the sweetness of baking. It's a sour assault on the senses that takes me back to Brownsville and Mrs. May with the ball of raw dough in her fingers and holding my nose to keep from gagging as I ran to the safety of our own apartment down the hall. I used to challenge myself and press my nose to the seat on the stoop where she had been sitting, only to fall into spasms of wretchedness as my stomach lurched and my throat constricted. What is that smell!???! Boiled something. Turnips? I can’t think of a single food that, when cooked well, would taste like this smells.

Slam the door, open the windows, stand in front of one of the deodorizing devices I installed on my last visit. Ah... Febreze!

Enter the little kitchen and... What's that? Smoke? Cigarettes? Coming through the vent! My husband hollers to whoever it is in an apartment above, below, beyond, "Stop smoking you idiot! You're killing me!" I hush him. It is almost 2 a.m.

It is 37 degrees outside and the radiator is spewing heat like a steel mill. I curl up under the quilt, my nostrils reaching for the salty ocean air that is just beyond the building but has trouble penetrating the wall of humanity that separates us. I keep my perfumed wrist near my face to overcome the sour scent that permeates the pillow no matter how many new pillows I buy or how many times I wash the pillowcase. Eventually I get used to it and fall asleep. The bed is very comfortable.