As Seen On Tv

My sentimentality lasts until the elevator doors open at the lobby level. I’m moving in with a man who might one day accidentally leave our child at a baseball game.

“Key’s not working,” I tell the doorman.

He looks at me suspiciously. Yes, I’m a crazy woman who gets off by riding elevators with luggage. “Can I use your phone?” I ask. Despite its supposed roaming capabilities, my cell phone never works in New York.

Steve says that while most of New York has gone back to normal post 9/11, cell phone service hasn’t been the same.

Sometimes when I see a stranger on the subway, I wonder if anyone she knew or cared about was killed. No one Steve knew was in the towers. He had friends of friends of friends that were killed, but no one whom he knew personally.

He was asleep when the planes hit, heard the commotion outside and watched the burning from his roof. For the next two weeks, he needed to show identification every time he came home from work because his apartment is below Fourteenth Street, where the lockdown was. He told me that for the following two months, he kept a pair of sneakers beside his bed in case he needed to make a run for it.

My father was on a project in Montreal when it happened, which I didn’t know. I called his office, his cell phone, his home number but I couldn’t get through. I knew he worked in midtown, but I still wanted to hear his voice to hear he was okay.

He called me on September fifteenth.

The doorman nods reluctantly and waves me toward a rotary behind his desk. Who still uses rotaries? Thankfully, the other amenities in this building aren’t also from the 1950s.

The message on his cell phone clicks on right away, so I know he’s left it off. He always leaves it off. What exactly is the point in having a cell if it’s never on?

Why can I remember this seemingly innocuous idiosyncrasy and he can’t even remember to give me the right key?

I call the apartment in case Steve decides to call in from whatever nook of the city he’s hiding in.

“Hey, this is Steve and Greg. Leave a message.” Beep.

“Hello, Steven, it’s me. I’m standing in the lobby of your building. You gave me the wrong key. If you’re checking your messages, please come home. I’m going to wait at the Starbucks on the corner.”

When do I get to leave the announcement on the machine? Hi, you’ve reached the happy residence of Steve and Sunny. We’re very much in love and are too busy expressing our love (wink, wink) to come to the phone right now. Please leave your name and number, time you called, and maybe when we’re taking a break from all this exhausting loving (wink, wink) we’ll call you back.

Why hasn’t Steve taken Greg’s name off the machine? I guess he’s still paying the rent, but he’s never there. He’s not moving in with his fiancée until the first of November (that’s when he officially starts splitting her rent) but he’s been practically living there for the past four months. His room at Steve’s is empty except for his double futon. Steve also has a double futon. What is it with bachelors and their double futons? What is it with bachelors maintaining college-esque décor?

Not that I’m an interior designer, but their place looks like an abandoned warehouse. The living room could use a comfy, fluffy, non-cigarette burned couch, a TV stand, a coffee table, lots of throw pillows, some blankets, picture frames, candles, a plant or two and some funky posters. (The current décor consists of: Reservoir Dogs poster, a beer bottle collection, a Dennis Rodman–signed basketball on the television and a few sports magazines on the kitchen table and in the bathroom.) The kitchen could use some cutlery (due to no dishwasher, they prefer plastic disposables). The bedroom could use a queen-sized bed, inviting duvet, a dresser (belongings are supposed to go in piles on the floor?), a night table (alarm clock is often found under bed) and some candles and picture frames. And every wall in the apartment is thirsty for some color.

After years of living in my father’s sterile white-walled, minimalist decorated house, I prefer my living environments to be homey.

Greg deciding to move in with Elana, his fiancée, was the impetus for Steve asking me to move in with him. Steve said he’d lived with enough roommates. He had always figured that when Greg moved out he’d find his own place—he couldn’t afford to keep a two-bedroom on his own. But then it occurred to him that maybe I could move in and split the rent.

I give him the benefit of the doubt that his desire to move in with me is based on wanting our relationship to proceed to the next level and not because he’s cheap or too lazy to move.

I hang up the phone and turn back to the doorman. “Can you tell Steve to come get me next door when he’s back?” I consider leaving my suitcase behind the desk while I go for coffee, but what if he’s a pervert who wants to smell my underwear?

My suitcase bumps down the concrete stairs outside the building. My jacket is in my bag and I contemplate pulling it out, because the crisp wind is blowing straight through the light sweater I’m wearing. It’s only the end of September and it’s already freezing. Why couldn’t Steve have asked me to move in during the summer? What if I turn into an ice sculpture when the snow starts? I think I’m going to miss the ocean even more than I’m going to miss the perma-warmth. I’ve been a swimmer forever. I was the only girl in my bunk at Abina, the Adirondacks summer camp my father shipped me off to every July (he had gone there as a kid—he was from New York originally) who didn’t pretend I had my period every time we had swim instruction. I was also the only one who didn’t cry every time a nail broke. I still loved camp though. I got a job there as a junior lifeguard, and then eventually as a senior lifeguard, and then eventually as assistant head of swimming.

I should have been the head of swimming: I was a better lifeguard than the guy who was above me, but for some reason I hadn’t applied for the top position. The idea of being ultimately responsible for children’s lives was a little too scary for me. I liked knowing there was someone looking over my shoulder. In case I screwed up.

Where am I going to swim here? In the Hudson?

I’ll have to spend half of my first paycheck on winter appropriate clothes. After living with minor variations of one season, hot, I’m going to need a coat, scarf, hat, boots. Tomorrow might have to be a mall day. I hate malls. Today is an I-have-to-drag-my-suitcase-to-a-coffee-shop-because-I’m-lockedout-of-my-apartment day. I pull my suitcase down the last step and get mad about the key-thing all over again.

Do they even have malls here?

“Changed your mind already?”

Steve is standing on the sidewalk in front of the apartment building carrying a bag of groceries, a bottle of wine popping out the top. A lock of light brown hair has fallen over his right eye and into his wide smile, and he’s trying to shrug it away. He has a bit of a bowl cut, the kind that all the boys I went to grade school with had. When Dana met him, she told me he needed to see a stylist. I think it’s sweet. He has a dimple in each cheek. How can I be mad at a face like that?

“Had the locks changed already?” I ask. “I couldn’t get in.”

He pulls me into a hug, squishing my chest into the groceries. Then he starts humming “New York, New York” as he’s done on my voice mail every day since I agreed to move here. He waltzes me back up the stairs toward the entranceway. The top of my head reaches the bottom of his chin.

I laugh and try to get him to stay still. “What are you doing?”

“Celebrating.”

A woman trying to open the front door, which my suitcase happens to be blocking, glares at me. “Can we celebrate inside?” I ask him.

“Hey, Frank,” Steve says to the doorman in passing. After the elevator door closes, he pushes the grocery bag between us and kisses me gently on the lips. Then the kiss becomes harder and his tongue slips in and out of my mouth. I love the way he kisses me. His face is smooth and soft and freshly shaven. A trickle of dried blood is on his neck, from where he must have cut himself. It seems he can never use a razor without leaving a nick.

“Hey look,” he says pointing to the poster on the wall. “Let’s be dog walkers. Or let’s get a dog.”

“I’d love to get a dog, but I have a bad feeling about who’s going to have to remember to do all the feeding and all the walking.”

“No, Sun, I’d be great with a dog, I swear.”

“You can’t even remember to give me the right key. Go,” I say when we’re at seven.

“What’s wrong with the key I gave you?”

“Maybe someone gave me the wrong key?”

He seems to be mulling something over and then laughs. His green eyes turn to little moon slices and his mouth opens. He has great big white teeth. His laugh is loud and deep and waves through his body.

Another Steve-ism is coming, I bet. “Yes?”

“Guess who has a key to the restaurant?” he sings to the tune of “New York, New York.” He pulls me close for another hug.

“You gave me the extra key to the restaurant instead of the key to the apartment?”

He continues his made-up song, unlocks the door and tries to waltz me down the hallway and past Greg’s empty room.

I put on my mock-concerned face. “Does one of your waiters now have the key to our apartment?”

“Is that bad?” He cracks up and then says, “Our apartment, huh? Say that again.”

I’m concerned that I’m not more concerned. I kiss his neck. “Our apartment. Our room. Our fridge. Our phone. Our answering machine. When do I get to change the announcement on the machine? I want to leave the new message, okay?”

He puts the groceries on the kitchen table and tugs me the short distance to his bedroom.

I still can’t get over how small New York apartments are. My place was bigger than his, and his is a two-bedroom. His is also older. The appliances have a gray sheen. Or maybe that’s just dirt.