Rosalind Elise

The car inhales crisp air as the doors open on either side, filling the emptying seats like they were lungs, foam expanding out into its manufactured form. I step out onto the curb and close the door. I fill my cupped hands with warm breath and perk up the collar of my overcoat, and as Eddie comes around from the other side of the sedan, he’s doing the same.

–You’re parked illegally you know.

I tell him of course I know, but he’s just as guilty as I am.  He's written manuals on double parking.

–These meet and greets never take more than a few minutes, and you know it. We’ll be back in five.

Just off the edge of the sidewalk two quick steps lead to a black metal door below the arch of the entryway. A list of tenants is mounted on the left, a name and a small black button labeled down one through twenty three. At the very bottom a label reads Office, and I press the button nearest it, leaning forward to talk into the microphone.

–Mr. Leschwitz? You called about a problem with a resident?

On the street a car passes by, plowing chilled air out of the road and over the sidewalk. A buzzing streetlamp flickers briefly and begins to hum, barely audible over the puffs of steam Eddie is making into his hands beside me.

–He’s probably gone back to sleep. Nice warm bed. Indoors, not freezing his ass off…  

He’s always complaining about the cold. You’d think he was born on a beach.

I hit the door twice with the heel of my hand, then again hold the button and call the landlord.

–One more ok? Then we get back in your poorly parked car and head out.

I give a brief look over to him but he is breathing into his hands again, watching the steam escape between his knuckles.

Across the entryway two deadlocks slide out of the door jamb and the latch in the handle clicks over before the door opens inward. A short man in a grey pullover and similarly colored horseshoe of hair begins to unlock the gate as he greets us.

–Oh zess, come in. In.  Iz freezings out 'ere, you know?

He points us through the second door and locks the gate behind us.  Plaid slippers drag their cheap plastic soles along the tile entry of the building as the landlord shuffles to the second door. Inside the building, Eddie and I are at the base of stairs that wind up around an open industrial elevator shaft whose walls are thin strips of steel, gapped by inches between themselves, and rising up to the top floors, like pinstripes.  Or jail bars.

The door closes roughly and Mr. Leschwitz slides the deadbolts back home.  In this and the surrounding blocks, these types of precautions aren't uncommon.  The number of locks easily outnumbers the residents, and if the homes were set on their sides at ground floor instead of stacked upward, they might find competition from the number of barred windows.  There were certainly rougher streets in the city, but nowhere else, Pineoaks Nursery Home withstanding, were there so many easy targets. 

–Come on now, give us the benefit of the doubt.  I'll be here to look over things, and Jones here isn't too bad of a shot neither.

Eddie is rocking on his feet a little and continues blowing into his hands, and the chatter isn't much more than a placeholder for the heat his body is lacking.

–Ohs I'm sure. Yes very.  I'm not so worried about the outside, I am maybe just trying keep you inside for my own bodyguarding? 

The old man laughs to himself in a short exhale and continues to shuffle, dragging his slippers toward the door titled Office on the left. Using a key he had buried in his palm the door is unlocked and the landlord slides through the crack of the portal before it is opened even halfway, closing it behind him.  The door offers the familiar sound of locks sliding into place, leaving Eddie and I in the stub of the lobby. 

–He does remember why we're here, right?

–I hope so.

–Yeah.  Either way, five minutes. I give him five minutes before I head back through those doors and into the heater of the car, and I'm leaving 'em swinging.

–That's fine.  I'll stay back and lock them for you.  You have the keys to the car, right?

–No.

–Good, sit tight then.

Outside, a muffled car horn announces itself, and the sound of heavy feet slap the pavement and fade away down the block. Someone is yelling. With the entry door as a buffer I feel like I’m eavesdropping on the street and wearing earplugs.

Eddie steps nearer to the elevator, holding the bars and cocking his head sideways to look up the open shaft. He drops his hands and rubs them together to rid the cold of the metal bars from his skin, then tilts his head to the other side to look up further past the bars.

–This thing looks like it was made in hell.

He says it gives him the creeps, reminds him of an episode of The Twilight Zone, and “probly” works as well as it looks.

The office locks slide open and the landlord slips out once the door is cracked, then closes it behind him. His feet shuffle to turn him to face the door and his hands flip through sets of keys on the thin metal hoop he retrieved from the room. One at a time his hand grabs the top key, inspects it, then slides it down the hoop to the bottom. He looks at the teeth of each one, occasionally feeling the groves with his thumb, then cycles it down.

As he continues with his keys, the tumblers turn from the other side of the door, locking it. Mr. Leschwitz looks up from his keys to the sign Office, then shuffles around to look at me with a dentured grin.

–You have to loves the womans sometimes, zess? I am always the forgetting but never she.

The old man steps between Eddie and I, and looks to each of us as he talks.

–You are married and maybe small babies too?

–No sir, I can’t say that I’m so lucky.

Eddie seems not to have heard him, and continues looking into and up the elevator shaft.

–So eh, Mr. Leschwitz. How far up is the room?

–Ohs iz not so very highs. Did you want to be taking the lift?

–No, I’m just––

–Good! It iz very brokens!

The man giggles to himself and pinches the gray pullover at the collar and slides it further onto his shoulders. His slippers drag along the floor to the base of the stairs and take a brittle step up. With his hand on the inner handrail he begins up the stairwell, turning carefully when the steps plateau and continue right, up and around the elevator shaft.

Eddie and I trail behind by a flight of stairs, he on the right bouncing his fingertips over the vertical bars like they were slats on a fence. I walked on the left, under leaf-petal lighting fixtures that flashed sporadically and hummed electric. I drag a hand along the wood handrail on my side, letting my fingers dip into the grooves cut by children, dug with the edge of coins. Dust sits heavily in the air, drying my tongue with each breath.

The stairs groan as we make our way around the elevator shaft until the landlord stops at level four. He begins his shuffle to the left of the two doors, number 09, again cycling keys down the curve of the hoop.

–Iz probably nothing you must know I bet. But we have no animals in building. She is many times buying food for cats though, I see, and I ask her why and so she says she must take care of her babies

As he continues to check the key ring I ask if she has children under her care.

–Ohs no. No chilren.

–Ok, then. So she have cats in there?

–No no. We do nots allow the animals.

–Sir. I’m not sure that I understand the problem. There is a problem, correct?

–Zess, very much problem. Ah, here it is.

The landlord finds the key and inserts it into the lock. He steps away, allowing it to hold the weight of the heavy ring of keys, then drags his slippers across the floor towards me.

–Mr. Jones. I am trusting you with bringing back my keys to me?

–I’ll make sure we get ‘em back to you Mr. Leschwitz, no worries.

The old man turns his shoulders to look over to Eddie, who smiles, before turning back to me.

–I think I am preferring you.

–Not a problem sir. I will return them before we leave.

Satisfied, the old man nods his head and returns to the lip of the stairs, then steps slowly down with his hand on the banister. Eddie and I both watch him descend briefly, before walking to the door.

–What’s wrong with me? I can hold onto some keys.

–And I believe you. Care to open the door?

Eddie walks to the door and turns the key, asking if I can smell something. He moves down to the second lock.

–I don’t smell anything.

–It’s like old tuna or something.

He turns the second and third locks then removes the key, bounces the ringed bundle in his palm, then pockets it.

–Her name is Rosalind Elise, Eddie. Don’t startle her.

Eddie grabs the dented brass handle of the door and turns it, pulling the door outward on old hinges. With it, the old-meat smell of cat food floods out of the apartment.

–Oh that’s rank Jones. That’s rancid!

I cover my nose and enter the doorway, squeezing past the stench into the entry, then through a short hall into the living room. Eddie follows, leaving the door open.

In the center of the room a high-back reclining chair sits facing a TV as it broadcasts endless black and white rain to the tune of a mechanical waterfall. The flicker of the television provides the only light of the room, creating tall unsettling shadows. Near the birth out of the hall the cone of a floor lamp catches the flash of white light, and reaching beneath the shade I pull a small beaded chain to turn on the lamp, drowning the apartment in yellow light.

The source of the scent was everywhere. Open cans were pouring up and out of a line of trash cans against a wall, sitting in large white garbage bags that were tied up and could go to the dumpster at any time, but instead sat recluse in the corners of the apartment. Cans of Friskies sat on a cherry-wood armoire between empty picture frames, some very ornate and decorated with macaroni and colored pink hearts, but the child who made it was not in the frame, only the white cardboard backing that had yellowed over the years.

–Holy… And she doesn’t have any cats?

–That’s what he said.

–Oh man. I’m going to be sick.

Eddie presses his hand heavily over his nose and mouth, then steps further into the room, behind the chair, nearer to the armoire.

The recliner is a sea-foam green and matches the rug beneath it, and I kneel at its rear. The felt of the chair had been scratched thin and frayed, and in some places cut in ragged vertical lines straight through. Curled strands of the felt, some fluffily balled and others in thin sinews, were in piles on the rug near the base. I run a hand through the small mounds of thread, picking some up and rubbing it in my palm as I look around the floor of the apartment. I can see small curled bundles all over, but blending in easily because they come from the same material on which they rest, little piles of scratched away fabric.

In my hand, a piece of the green bundle is hard and I fish it out of my open palm. With my free hand I pick out a small quarter moon fragment of fingernail from the thread. I drop the nail and tuft of felt and drag my hand lightly along the floor, and can feel more small bits of fingernail in the rug and carpet.

–Man, none of these picture frames have pictures in them. They’re all empty.

–That’s interesting. There are fingernails all over the floor, and it looks as though she had a habit of scratching at the furniture.

–And that is gross.

Eddie moves out of the room and into the hall, likely towards a kitchen and the bedroom. He’s still holding his hand over his face.

I stand and walk over to the TV, kneeling down to turn the dial to off. The static is sucked to the center of the screen, replacing it with blackness.
Turning to stand I nearly fall ball back on my heels. In the sea-foam chair a woman is sunk deep into the cushions of the couch, her skin sagging heavily on her cheeks. Her blouse is old and floral, her pants are stained in yellows and browns with occasional bits of the original white showing through. Folded over across her legs her hands set daintily, though the fingers are thin and pock marked with sunspots. Deep in the pillow of the recliner, her head is tilted backwards. Her mouth is closed and still curving slightly upward, and though the skin beneath her eyes has drooped into thin layered crescents, her eyes appear closed with some satisfaction.

–Her bedroom has these old posters up all over the place! From, I don’t know, old! She was an actress from one of those “War of the Worlds” radio stations!

I tell him to quit yelling in the apartment; it’s the middle of the night, people are sleeping. He leaves the bedroom and I hear him close the door behind him. A light turns on at the end of the hall and the sound of him rustling through cabinets is nearly as loud as his shouting was.
Turning back to Rosalind, she looks as though she is sleeping, though her skin is pallid. I carefully lift one of her hands to examine her nails. Small bits of light green thread are curled and tucked beneath them, and her fingers smell strongly of old meat.

Near the left side of the recliner is a small side table, old magazines on a small rack at the base and a handwritten note on top, a pen set diagonally across it. I leave the pen on the table as I pick up the note. Eddie enters as I start to read.

–Man she has––Whoa. There’s a dead woman in that chair.

–Very observant Eddie, say hello to Rosalind Elise.

I lower the note and stand to encourage Eddie to enter and have a closer look.

–Die sleeping?

–Looks that way. What were you saying?

–Oh. She had more cans, all over the place. Cabinets, drawers, the bathroom, the fridge… Stacks of them, and no regular food. Some milk but that’s about it. Looks like she was eating the stuff.

–Anything else?

–Yeah, she had four sets of clothes in the bedroom.

–You mean, only four outfits?

Eddie leaves down the hall and enters the bedroom. He comes back out holding two hangers, one a long brown trench coat and the other a young children’s dress.

–I mean four sets. Some for a guy, some for a little girl, and two sets for women. If nobody else lives here, who’s are they? What’ve you got there?

I hold the letter up and tell him where I found it. He asks me what it says, so I read it to him.

–I’m sorry Harry, Sue, Melly. I’ve done so little in the past twenty years that before I go I want to see New York again. I want to see the city that breathed so much life into me. Love, Roz.

There is a postscript at the bottom but I can’t read it out. The ink is bled from either water or tears, but it has something to do with her cats, the rest is illegible.

–Sure she lived alone, Jones?

–I think so, I’m just not sure she knew.

–What do you mean?

I tap my temple lightly a couple times and set the letter back down on the side table, then tilt my head in the direction of the door and start walking that way. Eddie follows.

He asks me if she had any cats, and I tell him probably not, then ask him to turn the lamp off as he leaves. Back on the stairwell I hold the door open for Eddie, then close it behind him.

–Don’t worry about locking it for now; we’ll have our people up here soon.

Walking down the stairs as they wound down the elevator shaft, I let my hands drag along the banister. I imagine Rosalind doing the same, asleep in her green recliner, dreaming of the trip to New York. Her fingertips slip into the smooth grooves made by the coins of children, feeling the grain of the wood in patches nearest the wall where it was poorly sanded and finished. In her mind, were her cats and family asleep safely in the apartment as she left on her journey?

We reach the bottom of the stairs and Eddie heads towards the door.

–Where you off to in such a hurry?

–The car. Heater is calling my name.

–Well ignore it a second, go give Mr. Leschwitz back his keys.

Eddie digs into his pocket and pulls out the ring.

–Damn. Ok, well at least get the car warmed up for me.

–Will do.

I exit through both sets of doors and step out onto the street. The chill is being carried by the wind now, blowing bits of paper and plastic trash against the cars lining the sidewalk. From my pocket I pull out my jangle of keys, and get into the car. The cab has cooled since I had parked it, but was still far warmer than the street. Looking down the block I see a distant stoplight flashing red over the adjacent buildings and imagine the flashing lights of a runway. The lines of blinking red lights follow the airstrip, and point towards the city of New York, where Rosalind Elise had been a talented radio actress, where she had planned to return.

I start the car and turn it around in the direction of the station. Eddie will be down in a minute, and we will drive back to do some paperwork. I’ll call the coroner, and we will add his report to the pile before we file it away. Until then, I sit and hope that Rosalind Elise, Roz, found her way to New York after all.