She'll Take It Read Free

Yankees cap, and six long, twisting beeswax candles. I feel a little bit sick. I didn’t really need another bar of soap. I’m a horrible person. That’s it. I’m done shoplifting. Besides giving myself an ulcer, I just don’t have the closet space. New York apartments are infamously small.
    It’s a two bedroom that sits right above a sushi restaurant on Thirtieth between Lexington and Third. I used to love sushi. Raw fish no longer touches my lips. The smell of it clings to everything, including my clothes, but the worst part is that it’s an open house for cockroaches and mice. They come to us in droves. I shower constantly now and stuff cotton in my ears at night after hearing a story about a woman who had a cockroach crawl into her ear while she slept. It had to be surgically removed. I’ve missed my alarm going off a few times due to the cotton, but it’s worth it to have a bug-free canal.
    We don’t have a doorman, but we do have Jimmy, a homeless man who sleeps in the hallway. If he’s in a good mood he’ll open the door for you and flash you a toothless grin. However, if he’s had a bad day he’ll try and trip you, so you always have to watch your feet in relation to his. He hails from Georgia, but he’s lived in New York for the past fifty years. “I’m from Georgia,” he said the first day I moved in. I was trying to drag a futon mattress up the stairs, stopping every few seconds to swear and readjust my grip on the monstrous thing. I would like to see the basement of the person who invented the futon. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it rigged up with chains, whips, and other sadomasochistic machinations. He either completely ignored the fact that people have to actually move these beasts around or enjoy the thought of the pain it causes.
    To add to my frustrations, every friend who had promised to help me move had suddenly been hit with the Moving Virus, and so there I was cursing the Saint of Moves From Hell every time my wet tennis shoes slipped on the stairs. The skies had been crackling with rain and lightning all day. “You want some help with that?” Jimmy asked, taking it over before I even answered. I weakly waved my hand in protest, but he was already tossing it over his shoulders and heading up the stairs. “I used to be a professional mover,” he called over his shoulder as I crumpled with relief on the stairs. It had taken me four hours to load the truck from my fifth-floor walk-up in Chelsea. The truck was due back in an hour or I would owe another seventy-five dollars. Jimmy was a lifesaver.
    He carried the rest of my things in all by himself. I watched the muscles in his brown skin flex as he effortlessly heaved my futon, kitchen table, rugs, and television up over his head and ascend three sets of stairs without breaking a sweat. Later I learned it was a cocktail of speed and cocaine that allowed him to do this, but at the time I bought the “professional mover” bit. Over the next few months he would also profess to have been a professional chef, professional swimmer, and professional Boy Scout leader. I give him food and money almost every day, and he uses his spare change to buy Jack Daniels.
    Lately, he’s taken to announcing me. He stands outside the building, and the minute he spots me heading down the sidewalk, he opens the door to our building, bows grandly, and screams “Melanie ZZZZZZZZZZZZeitgar” at the top of his lungs. I don’t know why he buzzes the Z like that, and I’m ashamed to admit it, but he’s embarrassing the hell out of me. I’ve considered letting him use my shower lately because of his stench, but I think Charlie is the one who should give Jimmy his own apartment complete with a shower. Charlie is our landlord, and Jimmy is the unofficial super. Charlie lives in the apartment building across the street, and it’s ten times nicer than ours. They