I’m not used to the creaks in these floors yet. The day we got our keys, our landlord turned on all the lights in the living room and he, Caitlin and I stood along one wall and peered down at the glossy wood floors as if we were hoping to see our reflections in a fountain of youth. “This apartment was one of the few where the floors were worth saving,” Jeff said with such open regard for parquet craftsmanship that I silently vowed never to speak foul of the style again. At least not in this neighborhood.
I knew I was living in the Fairfield County of Brooklyn when I saw, in the gutter, the Monday after Thanksgiving, a squashed, rotting, stuffed tomato. It’s impossible to know just how it landed there, but at least I can be sure that if hooligans are throwing produce out of car windows in this neighborhood, it’s going to be classy produce.
As classy as the gentleman who said, once he had caught and steadied a lady friend who tripped in the gap where tiles were missing in the subway station stairs, “Honey, you didn’t break your heel did you?” That gap was patched up with cement by the time I got off the train after work and climbed up those stairs to the corner of the street that has started to feel like home. It didn’t sneak up on me. I haven’t been looking over my shoulder for the welcoming committee. Just: off the train at the end of the platform, up to the street, down the block and through the gate, which I can finally open with minimal clanking, up the stoop and through the front door. Up the stairs and down the hall, all “home again, home again, ” keys on the hook, notinyourpocketoronthetableorunderyourpurseorbythetv, and across these creaky floors.
Maybe they just haven’t gotten used to me yet.
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