No New Shoes

May 29, 2009

Shortly after moving into my previous apartment, management of the building was turned over to a notoriously shady management company. I never had any dealings with them, really, because to call them with a concern was a waste of time. They never fixed anything or addressed any problems. The washing machines in the basement sat cockeyed in puddles of water, dented and broken. The hallways were covered in bush-league graffiti scrawled by coked-up kids lost in art-ghetto fantasies. Mold was starting to grow where the sprinkler system had soaked the plasterboard in the hallway. The front door glass was always smashed, and the lock was always broken. The dumpsters were always overflowing with trash — often surprisingly useful items that you could never scavenge because it was all likely infested with bedbugs. How Deborah and I managed to stay bedbug-free in that building is a mystery. Now that we've moved out, I picture the last bastion finally falling to infestation.

It's no joke that we left the apartment in better shape than we found it because I was the very first tenant in that unit, and it was unfinished when I moved in. The bathtub was filled with construction debris, there were no plates on any of the light switches, the bathroom tiles were left unfinished, and so on. The apartments were often "dude pits" rented to groups of four or five guys who might only live there for a year and leave the place as trashed as when they moved in. We were such an anomaly that the day we moved out, the superintendent sent Deborah a text message saying, Thank you so much for leaving the place so clean!

Despite being the building’s star tenant, always paying my rent on time, taking care of the place, and never causing any trouble, it was still a big question mark as to whether I'd get my security deposit back. We'd heard horror stories from other tenants who moved out before us. "Forget it," someone said. "You can kiss that money goodbye."

In fact, the management office actually sent us a confusing bill for a mind-boggling four thousand dollars. Deborah called and called and called and finally got someone on the phone. "Oh yeah, never mind about that bill," said the girl. "But you are breaking your lease, and so you won't be getting your security deposit back."

Deborah handed me the phone. "We don't have a lease," I said.

"Yes, you do."

"Well then, can you please send me a copy of it, because I never signed anything. I signed a one-year lease when I first moved in, but that was over five years ago. Once it expired, I never signed another."

"Let me call you back."

The girl called back later that same day and said she couldn't find the lease, so yes, we could have our security deposit back.

Deborah, who has been underemployed since the recession hit and has more free time than I do, offered to make it her job to follow up.

She called consistently, got the run around from everyone she spoke to, and was told, again, that we were breaking our lease. But she was persistent, and after a few weeks and a dozen phone calls, she finally got someone to agree to give her a check, "Okay, okay. Meet me at the office tomorrow at noon, and I'll give you a check."

That was yesterday. She took the subway to Greenpoint and found the office: A run-down tenement-style room in an old hotel that looked like something out of a Sydney Lumet movie from the 1970s. Dingy half-painted walls patched with grey spackle, yellowed papers scotch taped to the walls, crooked rolling office chairs with blackened arm rests. Behind a window of bulletproof glass sat a receptionist. "Can I help you?"

"Yes, Hilly told me to meet him here at noon to pick up a check for my security deposit."

"Today?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure he said today?”

"Yes. I spoke to him yesterday and he said to come here today at noon."

"Hilley is Jewish. Today is a Jewish holiday. He won't be in again until next week. You'll have to come back then."

It was too much.

"I don't give a fuck if he's Jewish," said Deborah. "He told me to be here at noon. I'm here, it’s noon, and I want my check."

"But there's no one here to sign it."

"Then find someone because I'm not leaving until I get it."

"Wait a minute," she said.

The girl went into the back office and spoke to a Hasidic man who had somehow managed to be in the office despite the holiday, which, to my understanding, didn't begin until sundown. She could see the girl nodding towards Deborah as they spoke.

Another office girl came over to Deborah and whispered, "If you want your money, you'll have to scream and yell and swear your head off. But don't leave, or you'll never get it. Don't tell anyone I said this to you." And then she walked away.

No problem, thought Deborah. Telling Deborah to scream and yell and swear her head off was like telling her to breathe.

Once again, as the story always goes, Deborah got the check. It was made out to me, of course, because I was the one who had written the security deposit check to begin with, and was the only one who had ever signed a lease. Deborah met me for lunch and gave me the check. I deposited it, crossed my fingers that it would clear, and when I got home, I wrote a check of my own, payable to Deborah, for the full amount.

"Here," I said. "You earned this."

"Thanks!"

"Tell me I'm not going to come home to a pile of new shoes tomorrow, okay?"

"Hrmmmmkay."

"Or handbags."

"Awwww, man."