Jack's New Apartment

By Zenobia Rose Love

The apartment was new. To him. Jack had been living there for about two weeks. Jack was very pleased with his "new" place. It was a spacious, fairly inexpensive, one-bedroom apartment, complete with a nice view, hardwood floors, and a non-working fireplace. All in all, Jack was enjoying his new home.

Of course, the place was only new to him. Jack's new address was 145 Humble Street. Humble Street was one of the many streets in a small, non-descript American Town. Humble Street was on the north side of town, and it got its name from the way it looked in the old days. Humble. In the beginning the north side of town had been lightly populated. This was partly because there wasn't really anyone around to move there, but mostly because of Madame Stan. Madame Stan lived in a big house along with a handful of beautiful women. Of course no respectable man or woman would have been caught dead near Madame Stan's. To add insult to sin, Madame Stan's served alcohol, even on Sundays. So all of the God-fearing citizens of this particular town at that particular moment lived on the south side. In fact, anyone who lived above Percy Street was considered a lost soul. The God-fearing citizens of the south looked up at them and shook their heads with disapproval.

But in the late 1880's something happened. Madame Stan died. Her young son, Fredric-known-as-Freddy, inherited the white, two-story house with green shutters. The first thing he did was close the bar. In its stead, he opened up a general store. And the north side of town began to blossom.

But Humble Street really started to grow when the railroad came through town. New houses started popping up all over the place, and suddenly the town wasn't small anymore. By the 1930s they started building apartment houses. This was how 145 Humble Street came into existence. The small building began its ascent from the rubble of Humble Street as soon as the snow was gone. The year was 1945. By the winter of that year, funding for the project had been cut. The building was never able to reach its full potential of ten stories, and by 1946 it cowered amongst the grand buildings of Humble Street at a mere three stories.

The summer of 1946 was the summer of the heat wave, and that was the summer two young "sisters" from out of town moved into Jack's new apartment. They didn't look alike at all, and they never married. One was short and round with dark features. The other was tall and scrawny with light features. The sisters soon established themselves as frivolous and insane. Rumors were spread all over, and talk was abundant, but nothing was ever proved. Together the sisters lived; together they died.

When they first moved to town, the sisters made a habit of taking a walk through their neighborhood every night. The pair would emerge from their building every evening at dusk, when the sky was the color of the blue stripes in the American flag that waved outside the Humble Street post office. They would always leave their house at the same color of night, and turn right, and then the streetlights would come on. The shorter sister would look up at the taller siste, and they would smile and walk together hand in hand.

Next door to the oldest house on the street was Mr. Stanley's Corner Store. Here, each sister would buy a pack of unfiltered cigarettes, a pint of scotch, and have a chat with Mr. Stanley. Their daily shopping done, the sisters would return home, arm in arm. There, they would sit in matching armchairs placed in front of the fireplace (which actually worked back then), and listen to their favorite radio programs. The two sisters loved to talk late into the night, and they usually fell asleep with scotches in one hand and cigarettes in the other. In 1963 a small fire broke out. Though it was scary, it died without inflicting much harm, except for the scorch marks that still remained on the ceiling. Both sisters died in Jack's new apartment within three months of one another. The year was 1967.

That same year, two young hippies moved in. Hippies had been popping up all over town, and the people who used to gossip about the sisters started ranting about the hippies. The hippies liked to gather at Stan's Place (formally Mr. Stanley's Corner Store). Stan's Place played loud rock and roll music all day. The hippies must have been attracted to the music, because they would gather and stay there for hours, smoking and talking loudly. These particular hippies were not very special, except that for five years of their young lives, they occupied Jack's new apartment. The girl had long shiny hair, and she brought the record player. The boy had long, un-shiny hair, and he brought the records. They carved ST + JM on the windowsill in Jack's living room, the closet in Jack's bedroom, and on the bedroom floor. They moved out in 1971.

When Mr. Sam moved in after the hippies, it took him two days to air out the apartment properly. Grouchy and very hard to please, Mr. Sam hardly ever left his humble abode, because he knew nothing outside of 145 Humble Street could satisfy him. So for fifteen years, Mr. Sam rarely left his apartment. However, Mr. Sam did have one visitor: a Swedish nurse who didn't speak English. This worked out well for everybody. Mr. Sam was an old man when he moved into Jack's new apartment. He was a very, very old man when he moved out in 1986. He did not die in Jack's new apartment. He died on the way to the hospital. He left a piss stain on the floor by the toilet in Jack's new bathroom.