Gets along well with others & doesn’t smoke.
Lana was around my age and attended Columbia. She was subletting her room in Morningside Heights.
This was it! I had found my new home. No more days after work spent calling and researching and visiting apartments.
Lana opened the door. She had bags under her eyes. She let me in and closed the door. I was immediately in a narrow hallway. It was a straight shot to the kitchen. Music was bumping through the walls, but I couldn’t pin the source. There were three doors on the left and one to the right. The living room had a gray futon and navy blue suitcase, halfway zipped, on the floor. A couple of plastic bags were on the coffee table.
“Extra roommate?” I said.
“In there?” Lana said, pointing to the room. “No. AirBnB. She won’t be staying long.”
New York: where everybody had a hustle.
She showed me her room, the middle one on the left side of the apartment. The room was a margin smaller than the dorm room I had been living in, but was furnished with an extra-long twin bed, a desk, and two dressers. The huge difference was instead of having one or two windows, there was a balcony. I was already romanticizing it, sitting on the ground, as the sun slips behind the horizon, writing in my notebook a draft of “the next great American novel.” All I was missing was my cat cuddled up beside me and a mug filled with echinacea tea.
As Lana and I left the room, she asked me to reiterate when I’ll decide to move in.
“Mid-August,” I said.
“That works out great. I’ll be moving out around that time,” she said.
“From your email, you said you’d be gone for two years. Where are you going?”
“Egypt. I’m studying abroad for the grad program I’m in.”
“That’s awesome!”
She shrugged it off like it was no big deal. I wished I could have studied abroad, but my time as a student would come to a close by October. At least, I hoped so. I really wanted whoever got your thesis, after I’ve completed your fifth revision of it, to like it and let me finally graduate.
“What about your roommates?” I said.
“They’re international students like me.” I nodded. “They’re nice.”
“Would you say it’s pretty quiet? Loud?”
“It’s…not too bad.” But? “We get along well and have friends come over. Respect each other’s spaces. We have parties sometimes, but not during mid and endterm exams.”
I began to calculate in my head. Midterms and final exams were twice a semester and lasted for a week each…Four weeks of no parties? Out of an academic school year? College students liked to socialize and party, I knew this, and everyone was allowed to let off steam, but there was a limit. Some students abided it and others broke it. What if I was coming home from a long day at work and needed some quiet? What if I was tired and wanted to go to sleep? What if —
It didn’t matter what I wanted.
Buy some earplugs and hang on tight. They were gonna party like it was 1999.
I shyly smiled and nodded. I could make this place work…if I tried hard enough…but I knew better. Loud and I didn’t mix. This place wasn’t going to work, and I really wanted this apartment to work.
Before I left, Lana showed me the remaining rooms of the apartment. The bathroom was fine, but I was caught off-guard by what I saw in the kitchen. On top of the fridge was a — Was it? I had to do a double take. Yup, not a vase. That was definitely a hookah, a bright blue one with little trinkets hanging off of it. I almost wanted to laugh because of all the places to put something like that, they put it in the kitchen. Spoons, forks, cups, and a hookah. No one wanted to put it in their room, so it was in the kitchen? The communal hookah.
I talked a little more to Lana before I told her that I had to go. I had been up all day and want to relax. The apartment viewing was a waste of time. I didn’t tell her those exact words, but that was how I felt internally. My mood was deflated. I had have to start apartment searching all over again.
Defeated, I headed to the door and realized the door was unlocked. I raised an eyebrow. Someone could’ve barged in with no issue and taken everything. Or worse. Lana probably just forgot, I tried convincing yourself.
After Lana closed the door, I waited a second by the door and leaned forward. I counted to five…I never heard the lock click into place.
Next.
Part 3: https://jadetheeditor.medium.com/revolving-door-part-3-c8f5f1eb66d2