The first apartment was a stucco building in view of a
cemetery. There was a stone owl on the roof, which Dave explained was meant to
scare away real flesh-and-feather owls and evil spirits.
We were greeted by an older man with a Magic School Bus
T-shirt. Until that moment I had forgotten that Magic School Bus and Miss
Frizzle existed. Do you suppose she’s married now? I should have asked the
landlord, since he seemed to be a diehard Frizzle Fan.
We passed a tiny front yard full of Fisher-Price toys
(probably belonging to the landlord) and followed the landlord into the
building. The first sound I heard was the wail of a crying infant.
“Already?” I sighed.
After three flights of stairs, we reached the Lucite crystal
door handle of our apartment. Inside, the dark hardwood floors were newly installed
and recently waxed. The powdery walls were freshly whitewashed and blinding.
Every surface was fuming. I looked to the windowsill, where a bottle of Orange
Glo, Windex, Lysol, and a box of Raid conspired. I slowly quickly became
unpleasantly intoxicated by household chemicals. The window panes beyond the sill
displayed the somber view of a cemetery.
The landlord began to glide his Swiffer mop around the
parameters of the living area.
“I just discovered Swiffer mops,” he explained. “They’re amazing.”
We opened the bedroom closet, which had been nonsensically
whitewashed from top to bottom. I began to suspect that a heinous crime was
being covered up in this apartment.
“What do you think?” Dave asked.
“I can’t think,” I responded as 1,966,254 of my brain cells fizzled
to a combustible pulp in a single second. Dave informed me that my face was
turning unusually red.
“Do you have any questions?” asked the landlord from the other room, swiffing
his Swiffer.
“Can I paint it?” I asked.
“That depends. I don’t want you painting the walls some
obnoxious color, like black. Just give me a color and I’ll tell you if you can
paint it.”
I suggested yellow as the most inoffensive color I could produce
without a functioning cerebellum, and permission to paint was granted.
“Yellow,” he said thoughtfully. “I actually like yellow.
That’s nice.”
The kitchen was green and yellow, with appliances that were
older than my parents. I glanced at the stove, missing two spiral burners on the
range.
“Does the stove work?” I asked.
He told us it did, and to prove it, he set his Swiffer
against the counter and turned on the gas. I cringed, expecting the volatile apartment
air to ignite. Luckily, it did not.
The landlord showed us the inside of the refrigerator, which
seemed to have yellowed with age like a fine artisan cheese.
Dave and I thanked the landlord and took the forms for the
apartment to the car. We drove around the area, admiring the parks, the ponds, and
the proliferation of Dunkin Donuts establishments. There was a nice indie movie
theater and a university, but otherwise the area was rather barren.
We talked ourselves into the apartment,
which was pretty reasonable for our price range.
Just as we came to a conclusion, Dave’s phone rang and the
landlady of a studio apartment invited us for a viewing.
Perhaps I was still loopy from the first tour, but the
second apartment seemed great even though it was in the basement of somebody’s
house. Perhaps it was the neutral aroma in the air, or the owner’s furniture
filling the rooms, but I actually could imagine this apartment sustaining life.
Little ceramic mushrooms decorated the fully-functional stove.
The couple that lived there had a closet full of board games
and a hallway stacked with DVDs and CDs. Dave and the owner bonded over a board
game. In the end, we were chosen to be the lucky tenants because of Dave’s good
taste in obscure board games.
I imagined someone viewing the first apartment, chatting ecstatically
with the landlord about the superiority of the Swiffer and discussing
educational television. Somewhere out there is the ideal tenant for that
place, too.
