The Landlord
by Susan A. Caldwell
Curtis usually spent his Saturday nights alone in his apartment upstairs, magnetized to his black leather couch, nursing a bottle of Grey Goose and switching the channel between Saturday Night Live and porn or engrossing himself in a game of Madden. But earlier that week, Brent had called him on his cell and informed him of the housewarming party that he and his girlfriend, Samantha were hosting, and he had invited him, Curtis suspected, only to be cordial. Curtis knew he should have been official about it, should have reminded Brent of their security deposit, should have asked him not to allow their guests to get too loud or to spill out onto the stoop and bother their neighbors. But instead, as if he was one of Brent's true associates, and not his landlord almost ten years his senior, he'd told Brent, coolly, that he'd be there.
And there he was, posted up by the Ikea office desk pushed up against the wall to serve as a makeshift bar. He took the last swig of his Red Stripe, placed the empty bottle on the makeshift bar, and slid it away from the edge. He would have liked another, but he had his gut to consider, so he just stood there and hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans. He was wearing a Syracuse baseball cap snug over his fresh haircut, the brim bent and pointing forward, frat-boy style. And white sneakers--none of the other guys were wearing white sneakers. They donned smedium t-shirts and slouching, form-fitting jeans, while the girls looked like Urban Outfitters models. They posed against each other, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer or cocktails from blue plastic cups and eating hors d'ouvres, laughing and talking in that hipster chatter that prickled Curtis's ears.
"What’s up, my good man? Havin' a blast or what?" Brent appeared at the table, clutching a container filled with more vodka-soaked watermelon to replenish the nearly empty large glass bowl in the center of the makeshift bar.
"Yeah…pretty decent party," Curtis replied.
"This watermelon is gonna have everybody smashed by the end of the night," Brent said, using a spatula to guide the watermelon chunks into the bowl. The watermelon looked mystical, potent, a bold and resplendent red like rubies.
“Yeah, I’m stayin’ away from that," Curtis said.
"Yeah, man. Real men don't consume their alcohol in fruit," Brent joked. They had a laugh and Brent walked away, leaving Curtis unengaged again, feeling sorely out of place.
The most bewildering succession of songs played from the i-pod speakers perched on the fireplace mantle; when Curtis had arrived thirty minutes ago, they were playing Biggie's "Unbelievable", and now it was Barry Manilow's "Copacabana." No one danced. Samantha darted from one cluster of guests to another, playing the gracious hostess, barefoot and wearing a dress that hugged all the right places, (even through there wasn’t much to hug). People came back and forth to the makeshift bar, their many faces and bodies and levels of intoxication like a slow whirlwind before Curtis. Every once in a while someone spoke to him, casual pleasantries and small talk. Thirty minutes, he kept telling himself. Thirty minutes for something to happen, or he would retreat back to his dungeon and proceed with his Saturday night ritual, in a very dark mood.
Almost an hour later, he was still there. He'd just bargained with himself for another fifteen minutes when he saw Karynn, his second-floor tenant, coming in arm-in-arm with another girl, and this girl was a stunner: big almond-shaped eyes, cheekbones for days and days and days, and rushing honey- brown skin. Breasts slightly too big for her small frame, and perfectly so. In a plain black tank top, faded jean shorts and flip-flops, her hair not done any special kind of way, and without any makeup on whatsoever, she was easily one of the finest women Curtis had ever seen in his entire thirty-six years of living.
As she and Karynn hustled through the crowd in his direction, she looked around at all the other guests, at the apartment and its furniture and decor, her raised eyebrows and pursed lips registering surprise, amusement, apprehension. Her eyes breezed over Curtis's for a second, then reverted back, causing a slow and heavy surge in Curtis's chest.
"Hey, landlord! I almost didn't see you standin' there," Karynn chirped, approaching the makeshift bar and pulling out a bottle of red wine from a narrow black bag and placing it among the other bottles.
"How could you not? He's like the only brotha in the room," her friend snapped, flashing Curtis a smart, crooked smile, devastating him with the dimple in her right cheek. They had a moment, her eyes intent on his, until he shifted his away. He already felt defeated, yet still dizzy with the hope that maybe this girl would be one that would like him back.
In most aspects of his life, Curtis considered himself very smart, disciplined, and effective. He had never failed a single test from elementary to medical school. He ran a successful podiatry practice with two locations, two employees, and over 500 regular patients. He'd been savvy enough to buy his brownstone during the embryo stage of Bed-Stuy's gentrification, and the rent he earned from the three units had made it an absurdly lucrative investment. But when it came to women, he was utterly lost. He never knew what to say, how to act, how to charm and persue. Not age, nor money or status had improved his chances with women; he was still that same fat, clueless nerd that so hopefully slipped Coolwater-scented love letters inside the locker of the smartest and prettiest girl in the eighth grade, only to be rejected and ridiculed.
Karynn introduced them."J, that's my landlord, Curtis. And Curtis, that's my friend, J."
"You can call me Jamilla," she said to Curtis as they shook hands.
"Nice to meet you, Jamilla," Curtis said.
Jamilla smiled again, sweetly, politely, then focused her attention back to the makeshift bar, taking inventory of all the liquors and mixers and juices, the messed-over platters of hors d'oeuvres and snacks. Her expression turned sour when she saw the watermelon. "What, cause they moved to Bed-Stuy, they gotta have watermelon at they housewarming party? Fuck outta here," she said, her voice forceful and crisp.
"You trippin'. I'm finna hit that," Karynn said, lifting two plastic cups from a stack, giving one to Jamilla.
"White people, man. They never cease to amaze me," Jamilla said.
"Actually, the girl is Asian," Karynn said, helping herself to some of the watermelon.
"Same difference," Jamilla quipped.
Karynn retrieved a glistening chunk of watermelon from her cup, and plucked it daintily into her mouth, and started coughing. "It's mad liquor in this," she managed, her hand cupped over her mouth. "Have you tried it?" she asked Curtis.
"Nah, I'm stayin' away from that," Curtis said. "That watermelon's gonna have everyone smashed by the end of the night."
"Good for you," Jamilla said, pouring herself a cup of Sprite. Curtis didn't know how to take that, so he said nothing. He spotted Reuben, Karynn's boyfriend, making his way through the room. All the eyes in the room fell on Reuben, cautious and curious on his dark, dark skin and lips just as dark, the black stocking cap protruding with the burden of his thick, ruthless dreads. Curtis used to see him with the other rastas that hung out in front of the itel restaurant on Nostrand and Halsey sometimes, before the police started hemming up the corners on a regular basis. The first time Curtis had seen Reuben with Karynn, standing in line with him at the cornerstore, Curtis had assumed it was a happenstance interaction, but then he started seeing them leaving the house together on weekday mornings, and she had even made it a point to introduce the two of them. Reuben greeted Curtis with a quick nod, then saw Jamilla and nodded again, knowing.
Curtis grabbed another Red Stripe from the cooler on the floor, just to buy himself some time, promising himself he wouldn't drink the whole thing. He opened it with the bottle opener on his key chain, and took a long swallow, trying his best not to stare at Jamilla. The party was simmering down, the dozen or so guests dizzily riding their highs or coming down from them. He smelled weed in the air, and he looked around to see Samantha straddling Brent on the couch, Brent's hand disappearing under her dress, the bottoms of her bare feet dirty. She seemed to look right at Curtis as she pulled from a joint, its tip pulsing orange-red in the dim living room.
"Shit is wack," Jamilla said.
"What'd you just say?" Curtis asked, leaning down closer towards her.
"I said this shit is wack."
His mind scrambled for a few moments, doing the calculations, until he asked, "Wanna go outside and sit on the stoop?" Then he braced himself, hoping at least she would be nice.
"It's your world," Jamilla mumbled indifferently.
Outside, the air was silky. Curtis and Jamilla sat on the second step from the top, a few feet apart, their drinks placed precariously by their feet. All around them, stately brownstones went on and on, the windows of their lighted rooms becoming narrow yellow slits in the distance, the jagged silhouette of their rooftops framed upon the starless, dull, blue-black sheet of sky. A few houses down, some people had just finished barbequing, and the smell of water-dashed coals blanketed the air. A sleek black SUV cruised down Anthony Street, playing the summer reggae anthem at a volume unsuitable for after-midnight hours anywhere in the world other than Brooklyn.
The conversation began easily, and passed comfortably between them. Curtis asked Jamilla how she knew Karynn, and she told him they met at Teacher's College. She talked about her job as a project manager for the board of ed, and he talked about his podiatry practice, scoring a few chuckles with stories of some of his zaniest patients. When he asked her where she was from, she told him she was from Houston, born and raised, and had been living in New York for six years, Bed-Stuy for two.
"I remember when I first got here," she recalled. "It was like, right after undergrad, and I was stayin' with my cousin on Madison and Bedford. And I was doin' my laundry one day and this old man that worked at the laundromat started talkin' to me and he asked me where I was from. And, you know, I told 'em I was from Houston...and he gave me this real dubious look, and he was like, 'These New York niggas gon' mess you up.'"
"...I guess the obvious question is: was he right?" Curtis asked.
"I don't really wanna talk about it," Jamilla declared with a huff.
Curtis regretted the question. For the first time in the conversation, a cumbersome silence fell upon them. Finally, Jamilla sighed, and it seemed like everything around them sighed with her: the trees, the houses, the air. "He cheated," she said simply.
Curtis's mouth went dry. He looked over at her to see if she was crying, but she was just sitting there, staring ahead, stoic. "Who is this guy, the stupidest man on the planet?" he asked, the only thing he could think to say.
Jamilla was quiet for a moment, as if considering. "And she was just some bird he met off the internet, can you believe that? On Craigslist or some shit." Laughter and mocking disbelief in her voice, as though she was gossiping to a friend about something that happened to someone else.
He glanced at her, felt his loneliness penetrate her misery. "You're too pretty to be stressing over some guy."
“Pretty ain’t got nothin’ to do with nothin’."
"I suppose you're right," Curtis relented.
They heard the front door open behind them, then voices and footsteps. Curtis looked behind him to see a few guests saying their jovial parting words to Brent and Samantha. "Excuse us," said a girl with lightbulb-bright blonde hair wearing a red sundress and cowboy boots, leading the pack between Curtis and Jamilla down the stairs of the stoop. The pair watched them turn onto the sidewalk in the direction of the train station.
"I wish I could kill him," Jamilla said. "I really wish I could."
Curtis felt that sharp, mercury-like nausea that flooded his stomach right before an amputation. "You don't mean that," he said, his voice thick.
"I 'on't even know what's right from wrong anymore--I 'on't even care. What, I'm s'posed to just sit back and let shit happen to me?"
"You move on; that's all you can do," Curtis said.
Suddenly, Jamilla bounced up from her step and dumped her cup into one of the garbage bins in the small concrete courtyard. She stood there for a while, leaning against the concrete banister, looking restless and forlorn, her arms hugging her chest. "If I could stand the taste of alcohol, I'd be drunk off my ass right now."If it weren't for you, I'd be drunk off my ass right now, Curtis thought.
"You live here, right?" she asked.
Curtis pointed upwards. "Yep. Top floor."
"You mind if I kick it with you tonight?" she asked offhandedly.
"No. No, not at all," Curtis replied quickly.
"It's just that I've been staying with Karynn the past coupl'a weeks and I know she's gonna want her man to spend the night with her," she explained, reaching for the empty Red Stripe bottle next to Curtis's foot. "And I don't blame her." She threw the bottle in the garbage bin and started back up the steps of the stoop.
Neither said anything as they made their way back inside. A few drunk, partied-out guests loitered in the vestibule, and Curtis could have care less how loud they got, or what they damaged. They could have burned his brownstone down to a single smoldering brick, and he wouldn't have cared. All that mattered was that Jamilla was behind him, and she was going up to his apartment with him.
"It's kinda messy," he said, unlocking and opening the door of his apartment, hoping she didn't notice how winded he was from climbing the four flights. "The cleaning lady comes on Sundays and I'm too busy to..."
His apartment was much messier than he remembered, actually. Piles of clothes and scrubs and other miscellaneous objects were scattered on the shining birch floor and on the black leather couch. Papers, mail, books and dirty dishes littered the surface of the coffee table, end table and kitchen bar counter. Otherwise, he hoped she noticed, it was still a respectable apartment, the furniture all new and modern, straight from a Crate and Barrel catalogue. The large, flatscreen TV played Saturday Night Live running its closing credits.
"This looks like a nice l’il project," Jamilla said, rubbing her bare arms from the blasting air conditioning as she entered the room. Negotiating her way through the unkempt living room, she went over to the windows and undid the latch on the white shutters. "It's nice to face the street," she said, peering out.
Curtis headed straight for his special-occasion Scotch on top of the fridge. "You want something to drink?" he asked, pouring himself one dry.
"No, thank you," she answered. She turned back around and walked to the middle of the room, where she stood, still and properly, as if she was about to audition. She took a wistful deep breath, and began to take off her shirt, unveiling a deliciously creamy flat stomach and a burgundy cotton bra, nothing fancy. Curtis's hand froze around his glass of scotch. He watched her steady fingers unzip her jeans, very slowly. She pulled her panties down with her jeans; her bare knees and thighs beckoning as she stepped out of them. She stood up and reached behind her back, unhooked her bra and slipped it off; it dripped from her fingertips onto the black leather couch. She stood in the middle of his messy living room, in full grandeur, the blue light of the TV flickering across her caramel skin.
"Do you like what you see?" she asked, softly, her head titled to the side.
"I do," Curtis replied. He dared himself to come to her and suddenly he was kissing her, fast, his breath hot and loud through his nose, his protruding stomach against her flat one, his left hand on her ass and his right hand gripping her waist. When he got ahead of himself and started to attack her neck, she asked him if he had a condom.
Hot wires shot through Curtis's body; the liquor in his bloodstream and the adrenaline and the lust coursed through him like mad villains on a mission. He led her into the bedroom in a haze of disbelief. While she lay propped up by her elbows, like a gift, he rummaged through the top drawer of his dresser, shuffling through unmatched pairs of socks, boxer shorts and undershirts to find an old box of condoms, which he hadn't pulled from in nearly six months.
Really, there was only so much he could do, because of course, it had been six whole months and his stroke was off, and of course, he was a portly guy, couldn't even ascend the three flights of stairs to his apartment without huffing and puffing a bit. And Jamilla was this beautiful, young thing, spry and generous in her lovemaking. Underneath him she wound her hips tirelessly.
When it was over, Jamilla looked down at him, and placed a warm, moist hand on his cheek and stroked his bottom lip with her thumb. She panted, her nostrils flaring, that dimple again. She kissed him on the cheek and asked him where his bathroom was. He told her, almost breathless.
She held the condom securely onto him as she raised herself from him with a simple, feline grace. The smell in the room turned darker and more pungent. He delighted in the image of her walking out of the room, her skin looking so unreal, glistening with sweat, the darkness in the room smoothing and blurring its contours. Like a dream, a fantasy. He let his eyes fall closed at that last sight, and within seconds, he drifted off into a delicate, luscious sleep.
The sound of his apartment door closing startled him awake. In his disorientation, all that had happened flashed in his memory, and he realized, in a panic, that Jamilla wasn't beside him. He got up and felt around on the floor for his boxer shorts, which he managed to pull around his waist as he rushed out into the living room. "Jamilla?" he called out, knowing she was gone. She was as gone as if she had never been there, as if she had never stood before him in the middle of his messy living room, presenting herself to him. Still, he checked the bathroom and there was only the whirring of the recently flushed toilet, mocking him.
He rushed over to a front window, and looked down at the street below.
Jamilla was crossing Anthony Street in a slow, distracted stroll, hugging herself with her hands gripping her shoulders. She eased herself between two parked cars and opened the wrought iron gate of the Winston's home across the street, and stepped inside. She sat down at the top step, and stared up at Curtis's apartment for a few moments. Then her hands came to her face, and she folded herself into her lap, her crumpled figure flanked by the wrought iron burglar bars on the first-floor windows that enclosed flower boxes of pink and white primroses and gently curved down and out like a woman's pregnant belly. She'd used him--he knew that, but as he remembered the softness of her quivering stomach against his lips, the miracle of being inside her, he knew that she'd rescued him too.