What had been the back courtyard dump of the tenement had now taken a radically different disposition. Ndusen and his family were spread round the overhauled space, planting seeds and bulbs in dozens of plastic pots. The children worked alongside adults to transform the courtyard into a tiny urban farm, replete with fruit and vegetable saplings of a dozen varieties. Stella squatted, patting fertilizer as Ndusen shoveled.
Ndusen spoke softly in Chichewa as they worked, "Neighbors breathe each other's air, but will not even recognize one another's existence. We are all living above or below in this mammoth city. Each building like an organism. How can you ignore someone--hate someone, when you share their same breath?"
"Because you are afraid," said Stella.
A smile pierced Ndusen's melancholic expression.
"But, with every day passing, I feel myself becoming more and more like these people."
Across a sea of planters, Chisulo, kept his head down in his work as a melody grew from the small boy's lips, "Christmassy, Christmassy, Christmassy... Ooo-ou-ou..."
Stella got distracted as Dziko and Alile burst into song along with their little brother.
"Christmassy, Christmassy, Christmassy! Christmassy, Africa! Na Ya, Ma Ma! Na Ya Ma Ma! Ooo-ou-ou--"
Ndusen called out over the planters to his children, "When it is this humid summer, why must you sing of Christmas?"
The children ignored Ndusen, which made Stella smile. Perhaps they had it right. There was never exactly a chill in Malawi, and certainly not anything resembling frozen flakes falling from the sky. Either way, he felt his chest growing larger with each breath as he watched his children sing while working soil. Even if discarded asphalt buckets had to substitute a field of golden maize.
The children brought down the pitch for their finale, "Na Ya, Ma Ma! Na Ya Ma Ma! CHRISTMASSY AFRICA!"
Stella turned back to Ndusen, "Now we must start unwrapping the presents."
Ndusen snorted a laugh as he filled his shovel.
Kondwani’s sulk permeated the evening meal as if they were seated at a memorial service. Ndusen had noticed this trend over the last months, and of course he knew full well the cause, but it was his right as head of the household, like his ancestors had done for thousands of years. Yet on this night, after such a refreshing afternoon, his wife's silent somberness was beginning to overtake his nerves.
"If you have something to say, then out with it woman."
Kondwani's lips parted, but she then shut her jaw and turned her head as if he'd said nothing at all. Perhaps it had come more harshly than he had meant. Well, feasibly all the better for it.
Kondwani diverted herself with the sight of Chisulo gobbling his food.
"Slow down, Chisulo," she barked in Chichewa.
Chisulo's spoon stopped mid-air. He looked to Stella, unsure how to proceed.
"What are you looking at her for?" Kondwani said.
Chisulo shrugged, hand edging back to mouth. Ndusen's ancient cellphone rang and he stood, welcoming the distraction.
Once he reached the dim confines of the bedroom and saw the name on screen, he turned the ringer off. Letting Mr. Axlerod stew an extra ring or two had become a daily ritual.
"Hello?" Ndusen said at last into the phone, as if he did not know who it was.
"It's Axlerod. I need you to turn off the water to 9 and 10. I got Vasilli coming tomorrow. He'll flip the water back when he's done. And time’s up for Irene Holt."
"Ok."
"Oh, and give Morris Hacking in 19 some part-time work."
Please, not that.
"I am not sure that is such a good idea."
"I'm not sure I asked you if it was a good idea."
The line went dead.
Ndusen experienced his highly unreasonable patron like a hemorrhagic fever, and he a patient in the death throws of Axlerod virus, bleeding from every membrane, his nervous system crushed under the viral juggernaut as his body disintegrated. Inhaling through the immense pressure on his ribcage, Ndusen shut the phone, and walked back to his lukewarm dinner.
With a last knock on the door, then a key in the lock, Ndusen poked his head inside number 9, Mioko Kimura’s third floor apartment.
"Hello?" he spoke to the empty living room.
Pushing inside, Ndusen was immediately struck by the charred wood, scarred linoleum and half-finished wallpaper job Mioko had begun herself in earnest, after Axlerod put off paying for repairs, "until the insurance cleared," whatever that might mean. At least with Vasilli coming by tomorrow, perhaps things would begin to move, but Ndusen wasn't quite sure why the plumbing subcontractor was the first order of business, when clearly there were weeks of cosmetic repairs. Yet he had to choose his battles wisely, lest his affliction worsen. Setting his tools by the sink, he squatted to wrench the valve shut.
His next order of business wouldn't be nearly this easy.
Ndusen knocked on apartment 19, hoping for silence in return.
"WHAT?" A quaky voice bellowed from inside.
Ndusen tried to fill his constricted chest.
Morris peered out into the light.
"Mr. Axlerod called me." Ndusen said.
Morris opened the door, his hair a wild bird's nest, his shirt stained.
"OK," Morris said, standing an inch taller. "What do you need my help with?"
Ndusen just stared, he felt the virus coursing through his blood and wondered if it was outwardly apparent from the pallor of his skin that he was dying on the inside.
Ndusen grew even more nauseated as he and Morris dragged a faded love-seat across the living room of number 7. A uniformed City Marshal stood by as they cleared the soiled piles of rubbish.
"This is not how you treat human beings! I'm not an animal," the packrat declared as they angled the love-seat out her front door.
"Hey listen, lady," Morris yelled back, "you've been evicted, so SHUT UP."
Ndusen didn't have the energy to abate Morris's superiority.
The packrat hawked a gob of phlegm, spiting on the floor by Ndusen's sneaker as they carried out her couch. If one could compare the excruciation of tenant evictions, this one had now exceeded the norm.
In the stairwell, Chisulo watches his father and the smelly giant wrestle the cumbersome armoire down the stairs.
Morris turned from the small boy, to Ndusen with a thin smile, "Packing your entire sardine tin into a one-bedroom, just like this tenement was back in the day."
Ignoring him, Ndusen jostled for grip under the dresser.
"Y'all came a long way to live in squalor, huh?"
Ndusen yanked the armoire around the stairwell corner and down towards the foyer. If he just kept his mind on the lifting, he found he could keep the cellular toxicity of Axlerod virus momentarily at bay.
Outside the tenement, Ndusen and Morris lugged piles of magazines into the street.
"Mom told me back when she was a kid, you could smell this neighborhood from miles away." Morris said. "East Side used to have a giant black cloud above the streets from all the burning coal. Fourteen, fifteen living in one flophouse apartment. Folks renting out their beds. Sleeping in shifts. Opium dens, brothels, absinth bars. Come a long way, hasn't it?"
Morris stared at Ndusen, waiting for a response.
"Thank you for this historical recount," he said, hoping to put a close to story time.
"What do you think about America, Ndusen? You like it here, in this country? You like civilized living? Restaurants? Cable TV? Titty bars?"
"Yes," Ndusen said sarcastically, "Today is a wonderful day, with wonderful company. Thank you America. I am in my happy place."
"I think you're just sore, 'cause you miss your thatch-roofed hut. You know, your people, the Africans, you all got a long history here. Back in the day, 1 in 6 New Yorkers were owned by other New Yorkers. The wall that's now Wall Street, slaves built that."
Ndusen longed for the freedoms of his ancestral Massai forefathers, wishing with all of his heart he could run this fool through with the double-edged blade of his hunting spear. Instead he dropped his bundle of gossipy magazines, closing his eyes. The son of a warrior could do nothing but laugh in frustration.
"OK. That's enough for today. Thank you so much for your help."
"But we haven't finished the job yet. You gonna hump the rest yourself?"
Ndusen turned and walked back towards the building. Doubling his load was nothing compared to his day laborer's musings.
Inside his real estate office on Eldridge Street, Moshe Axlerod sat absentmindedly draining a glass of Macallan 18 as he typed projected numbers into a spreadsheet. Moving a hand through the slick thinning strands at the front of his scalp, he wondered if the topical regrowth foam was doing anything at all.
He looked up from his screen. His office had an old world simplicity, none of the flash of its modern counterparts; businesses which racked millions in commissions packaging upscale residences to ultra wealthy Manhattanites. Axlerod's office was a holdover from the days before corporate monopolies swallowed the realty market. Now, auto-withdrawals and building link apps created anonymity screens dividing tenants from property owners. Axlerod never felt quite at home in this old dustbox even though he'd crawled the floors before learning to walk. There were reminders of his father and his stale business practices in every ancient filing cabinet. Axlerod had designs on a slick street level space with endless offerings of newly available rentals digitally projected on the outside glass, enticing the pedestrian masses, with all of the pertinent property info magically suspended before their eyes. But he had other priorities for the time being.
Ndusen knocked on the ancient glass. Axlerod got up, walked past the empty secretary desk, and unlocked the door.
"It is done," Ndusen said. "Irene Holt no longer lives in the building."
Axlerod nodded slowly, "Well alright then. Nice work."
Turning back towards his desk at the back of the office, Axlerod sauntered toward his scotch glass. Lifting his libation, a devious smile on his face.
"To the old packrat. May she hang her discarded treasures from the scaffold of some other sucker's property."
Reaching into his desk drawer as he sat down, Axlerod retrieved a stack of files. He unclipped an old Xerox driver's license belonging to a much less haggard Irene Holt from a copy of her lease. He then ceremoniously dumped the Xerox in the garbage, setting aside the apartment paperwork. He continued to flip through other tenant's files.
Ndusen watched closely as Axlerod separated the tenants into two piles.
"How'd things go with Hacking?"
"Not well."
Axlerod smiled, anticipating the unfavorable review.
"Think that guy's crazy enough to get carted off to the puzzle factory?"
Ndusen looked at his employer in confusion.
"The loony bin."
"Oh, yes."
"Oh yes, as in, someone could have the guy committed?"
"I am not sure I follow."
"You follow just fine when you want to. Three hundred and thirty two miserable dollars that fruitcake pays for an eight hundred square foot hand-me-down. You know how much I could get for that place?"
Ndusen watched as the virus continued to sort his piles. He felt his guts squirming, bile and blood blending in the mix, his solar plexus crumbling inward.
"Stop giving me that look. Back when my father ran these buildings, there were junkies lining the block. You know that? Now we got lawyers, brokers, beautiful women walking the streets. Economic friggin growth. And what's wrong with that? Myself, I'd rather be surrounded by beautiful girls, than stray dogs and miscreants."
Ndusen kept watching as Axlerod returned to his work.
"You're still just standing there with that look."
Something lodged inside Ndusen's midriff, the beginnings of a deadly blockade.
"Is my apartment on your list?"
Axlerod let out a coy snicker.
"That a real question? You work for me, don't you?"
"I do. Yes."
"And how long have you known my family?"
Cyrus Axlerod had been one of the first kind men Ndusen had encountered while driving a friend's taxi on off nights. Back when he had little more knowledge of the city than the darkened grid of Manhattan streets and the apartment in Jamaica Queens he had shared with twenty other African immigrants.
"I've known your father for eight years."
A prize-winning smile spread across Axlerod's face.
"Then don't worry about the list."
Sorting through files for Dorian Teasdale, Morris Hacking, and a miscellany of other tenants, Axlerod stopped at a photo of Mioko. He spread out two sets of files: one for each of her apartments. His lower jaw shifted out of place as he studied them, a relentless finger tapping against the table.
BEHIND THE KEYBOARD
Slick real estate offices are a dime a dozen in New York now. They line nearly every corner of desirable neighborhoods, selling the glass tower dream. I modeled Axelrod‘s office off the last generation, the scrappy rough and tumble set. The family owned mini-real estate dynasties that bought up entire neighborhoods for tens of thousands before the market and inflation went crazy.
On the surface the disneyfication of New York that began when then Mayor Giuliani (who ironically made news this morning for outing Trump on the Stormy Daniels payment) ejected all the homeless and completely sold out to Wall Street is pretty much complete these days… but the seedy underbelly certainly continues.
Yours In The Chain,
Doug Karr
SPECIAL THANKS to my wife @zenmommas for years of support during the writing process, @ericvancewalton for his trailblazing, inspired collaboration and incredible guidance, @andrarchy for his mind blowing insight and friendship, @bakerchristopher for being an inspiration as a human artist and bro, @complexring for his brilliance and enthusiasm, Masie Cochran, Taylor Rankin and @elenamoore for their skillful help in editing the manuscript, and to @opheliafu for the fantastic illustrations she created exclusively for the novel's launch on Steemit and to Elena Megalos for her wonderful character illustrations. I’d also like to thank Eddie Boyce, Jamie Proctor, Katie Mustard, Alan Cumming, Danai Gurira, Stephan Nowecki, Ron Simons, Dave Scott, Alden Karr, Missy Chimovitz, my dad Andy Karr and late mother Wendy, and everyone else who helped lead me to this moment.
I am a Brooklyn based writer, film & commercial director, and crypto-enthusiast, my projects include @HardFork-series an upcoming narrative crypto-noir and my novel Dwelling will soon be premiering exclusively on Steemit, and you can check out more of my work at dougkarr.com, piefacepictures.com, and www.imdb.com/name/nm1512347
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