Spooning (43 page)

Fourth of July Flank Steak

Steak Marinade

Cut the lemons in half and squeeze their juice into large Ziploc bag. Add the rest of the marinade ingredients into the bag. Put the meat inside the bag, close, and refrigerate for up to 3 hours to allow sauce to penetrate the meat. Grill steak as desired. Serve with roasted potatoes, garden salad, and red wine. Simply delicious
!

July 1

Ludlow Management Inc., NYC

Re: Lease Renewal Application

Dear Tenant(s)
:

Greetings! It's that time of the year. We are pleased to
inform you that your lease is up for renewal. We would greatly appreciate it if you could inform our offices as to whether or not you intend to stay for another year. You have exactly 30 days from the date of this letter to give us your response. The current value of the rental will increase by $200 for the next year
.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call us. Thank you for being such wonderful tenants and we look forward to hearing from you
.

Cheers,
Ludlow Management Inc
.

Wonderful tenants? Cheers
? Were they talking to us? When I first saw the certified letter taped to the front door of our apartment, I immediately thought that the rats were at it again. Think hairy, think twitchy eyes, think skinny legs, think bulging guts, think bulging
beer
guts. Our rats were not the vermin who controlled the inner workings of NYC apartment buildings. No, our rats were the sleazy old men who were firmly entrenched in the higher echelons of our management company. You've heard horror stories about landlords in the city and 99 percent of the time the stories are true no matter how ludicrous they sound. From no hot water to no heat, from broken windows to broken pipes, or any combination of the above, our humble city's apartment walls could whisper some pretty horrific tales through their cracks.

Rather than an invitation to renew the lease, I had assumed we were getting an eviction notice.

We were consistently a week or so late with the rent check each month (never could find that book of stamps when you needed them), so it wouldn't have been a shock if good ole Ludlow Management had finally decided to come after us. At
the beginning of the month, one could typically find at least one apartment with an eviction letter taped to its door. The notices were the only clear form of communication we, the tenants, could ever expect from Ludlow.

B
attling the landlords was pretty much the only thing that tied the neighbors in our building together. I never saw many of the other tenants, but when I did it wasn't “Hi” or “Good day,” it was, “No hot water? Me either.” “Did your floor get fixed? Mine neither.” “Did Ludlow call you back? Ditto.” However, the rent angels had spread their wings over our particular apartment and had protected us from any sort of harm. Or rather, Tara had worked our Ludlow leasing agent, Stephen, back in August and let's just say she had a way of getting things done.

With the letter in hand, I plunked down on the couch. It was unbelievable that a year had come and gone so quickly. There were so many things that I still hadn't done. I hadn't even been up to the top of the Empire State Building yet. Who wanted to wait two hours or more to stare into pea soup? Plus, I was certain it was not just an urban legend that a penny dropped from the top of the Empire State Building could bore a hole six centimeters deep into the sidewalk. NYC was perilous enough without falling change!

Only a few nights earlier, I'd had a momentary lapse of sanity: I began to think about moving home. That's home, home: like with mom and pops. It was only a fleeting thought, which I'd attributed to all the emotional turmoil of late. True, I had Dan the Man to look forward to, but the encounter with J. P. had only served to highlight all the drama and mistakes of the
past twelve months. At the very least, there was no chance J. P. would follow me to my hometown where there was not a stock market ticker within fifty miles. I would be safe in my childhood bedroom hiding behind my eyelet curtains, and my parents would welcome me back into the fold. After all, my mother did worry about who would push her wheelchair when the day came. She often threatened to haunt me from the grave if I ever put her in a nursing home. And she'd be only too happy to have us all together again, congregated in the kitchen while she served up delicious meals.

Actually, I had become quite fond of my own kitchen, or at least our feeble attempts to better ourselves in the homemaking department. We had all improved quite a bit. Sage could smell food without bitching about the sins of sampling, Tara had perfected sauces other than the ones she'd relied on for bedroom uses beforehand, Macie had become quite the baker as long as icing was involved, Wade had stepped up her already decent skills to using double boilers and basters, and even I had mastered about three basic recipes. Syd, well, she was a bit of a lost cause, but she still persevered in the salad department.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of keys opening the front door.

“Is anyone home?” Macie yelled.

“Yep, I'm in the living room.”

She plopped down onto the couch next to me. She smelled like City Summer. City Summer—a cross between body odor and faint cheap perfume. They say the New York winters are tough, but I think the summers are far worse. The minute you walk outside, it's like you shouldn't have bothered to shower. Straight hair goes curly. Sweat beads appear on your skin. Your deodorant fails. Mascara melts. Face powder evaporates. And
that's just what happens to women! The summers are even more torturous for men. You'd see throngs of guys, their suit jackets slung over their shoulders, a giant sweat stain in the middle of their backs. As for the cheap perfume smell, it was due to the amount of time people spent trying to escape the heat by flocking to the air-conditioned shopping meccas of the city. No matter how diligent one was, there was no avoiding the perfume sprayers canvassing the aisles of Saks, Bloomies, Bendels, and Barneys. Even the employees at the Gap got aggressive during the summer. So, if you took the heat-induced BO and covered it with a fine misting of perfume-of-the-moment—voilà —you had New York City's own eau de perfume, City Summer.

“Macie, you need a shower!” I said, pinching my nose.

“Is it that bad?” she asked. I nodded. She stuck her nose in her armpits and quickly jerked away, realizing that I wasn't lying.

“You know what?” she said. “The city sucks right now. There's no way to escape the heat. You have to go to work, which means you have to go outside, which means you have to go on the subway where there is little to no ventilation, and then you have to go up and down flights upon flights of stairs. All the movement creates even more heat, which then turns into even more sweat. You're doomed the minute you walk out of your apartment!”

“Come on, it's not that bad here,” I said with some enthusiasm in my voice. That's all I needed, for Macie to be feeling bitter about the city during our renewal discussions. When Macie was in a cynical mood, she could make some pretty rash decisions. I jumped up and headed straight for the AC. Why hadn't I thought of this earlier? I switched it on to high and a
steady stream of cool air burst forth like an arctic breeze. Macie ran over and stood with her arms out and legs spread out in front of it. A smile immediately radiated from her face. She was calming down and cooling down at the same time. I wanted to be sure her temperature was just right before I sprang the news on her.

“I just had drinks with this guy John after work,” she said. “He was probably totally disgusted the whole time.” She paused, letting the cool air blow over her. “Come to think of it, he never really got that close to me while we were sitting at the bar. Nuts! Blew that one, I guess. How can you be expected to date anyone during the summer?” She turned around and went to take a shower.

“He probably wasn't worth it anyway,” I said as I followed her toward the bathroom. I still hadn't mentioned the lease renewal letter. Suddenly I decided that I'd wait till Syd and Tara came home too and tell everyone at once.

While Macie was in the shower, my mind began to race about what we and more importantly, I, wanted to do. Getting the letter prompted me to really think about the apartment arrangement for the first time. Was I happy in New York? Did I want to stay another year? The big question was would the other girls renew? Although living with Syd, Tara, and Macie had been quite an amazing adventure in and of itself, we had definitely encountered a couple of bumps along the way. Living with a bunch of cash-strapped women, and being one myself, wasn't easy. And trying to get four equally poor individuals to write a check, or should I say checks, for bills each month had been an extremely arduous task. From the beginning, I'd been given the unfortunate roommate role of bill collector. While I considered myself pretty responsible, the whole
bill thing had been overwhelming. After two late charges on the Con Ed bill and a few fights over a couple of unaccountedfor Pay-Per-Views, I'd given up on being Ms. Tough Guy. I'd realized that in order for us to get along both fiscally and mentally, we would simply have to accept late charges and angry creditor letters.

So, to stay or not to stay? Sure we all wished for a bigger place, a backyard with a garden, a yellow Labrador to go running in the park with, a fireplace, and a cute boy by our sides at all times, but the likelihood of having all of those things at once was pretty slim. If the four of us had already survived NYC in an eight-hundred-square-foot, fifth-floor walk-up for almost 365 days … what was another year? Come to think of it, not one of the girls had ever mentioned moving. We even had a running list on our fridge of all the city secrets we had gleaned over the past eleven months—bread crumbs that would have made our transition from college grads to big-city gals that much easier had we found them in September:

Buy weekly unlimited Metro cards.

When the streetlight stops blinking its warning, DON
'
T
WALK, you have exactly four seconds to make it to the other side, so don't break into a panicked sprint in those expensive heels.

Ask for the newest color/style of Louis Vuitton bags when shopping on Canal Street, and you will be brought into the inner depths of knockoff heaven.

Don't waste time looking for Seinfeld's famous apartment from his show. Its exterior is actually an apartment in Los Angeles's Koreatown. But Jerry's real home is on the Upper West Side.

When you get the political urge, go petition for a tax-free
shopping day. One of the blissful crowning achievements of former mayor Rudy Giuliani, now ensconced only in our memories of days gone by.

There is a waterfall in Central Park. Go find it!

A
couple of hours later, the rest of the girls were home. I decided to wait until everyone had finished eating dinner and nestled in for a little Must-See-TV before I sprang the news on them.

“So we got a letter from Ludlow today,” I said gently during one of the commercials.

“It better not be a late payment thingamajig. I went out with Stephen a few weeks ago to clear up last month's late fee,” Tara said.

“Oh no, it wasn't a late payment letter.”

“Shit, did we get an eviction notice?” Syd asked. “There's no way they can do that. My dad's friend is a lawyer and—”

“No, it's not an eviction letter,” I interrupted. “It's a renewal notice. Ludlow wants to know if we are going to renew the lease for next year.” I looked around trying to read their expressions. Syd's attention was directed back at the TV screen and Macie was engrossed in some really thick novel. Tara was focused on putting foam dividers between her toes to touch up her nails.