“Guitar, mostly,” he says. He stops looking around the apartment like he’s planning a break-in and looks at me for a moment. “Sorry, most people ask what I play when I tell them I’m a musician.”
“Sorry for my lack of etiquette. It’s been very nice meeting you, but—”
“120,000,” he says.
“What?”
“Dollars,” he answers. “I make a little over $120,000 a year.”
“That’s wonderful. Now, if I can just show you the beautiful c
raftsmanship in the hallway—”
“I could move in tonight. I mean, I don’t know what your schedule is like, but fuck it. Why wait?”
“Listen, Mr.—”
“Paulson,” he says.
“Mr. Paulson,” I rejoin. “I think it would be best if you just left. I’ve decided not to rent the room.”
“Look,” he says, “I know $120,000 isn’t that much in New York City, but it’s more than enough to cover my half of the rent. That is the deal, right? We each pay half, have separate bedrooms, but the rest of the place is shared?”
“That would be the deal,” I tell him, “but you’re not listening.”
“What do you pay here? It’s got to be, what, $3,000 a month?”
“It’s something like that. But I just don’t think it’s the right fit.”
“All right,” he says. “I’m sorry to hear that. If you change your mind, I’m still new enough to the city and would never know if you were fucking me.”
My mouth drops open a little. “Excuse me?”
“Fucking me,” he says. “You know, cheating me on my share of the rent.”
Right now, it’s down to him, cologne guy, and the woman who walked in alone and accused me of wanting to sleep with her boyfriend. Lovely.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I tell him.
“Sounds good,” he says, as if certain the room is his.
“Okay,” I tell him, no longer caring whether he wants to see the open room or not, “I’ll let you know.”
“Sounds great,” he says, and smiles. He turns and heads for the door. “Oh, by the way…”
“Yeah?” I ask, frustration thick in my voice.
“Would you mind just leaving the sports page on the counter? New York newspapers are thicker than what we had back home. I can never find the damn thing.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” I tell him.
He’s out the door a minute later, and I’m on the phone with my friend Mike.
“They can’t be that bad,” he tells me, somewhere around minute 15 of my diatribe.
“You have no idea,” I tell him. “Today was a cakewalk. Yesterday, I had four 20-year-olds come in here, not so much to look at the room as a living space, but a spot for their weekly swingers’ club meetings. Don’t even ask me what that entails, and I’m not saying that because I haven’t been very well-informed. Then, there was the cat lover.”
“Cat lover doesn’t sound so bad,” Mike chuckles.