January 3, 2008

“Here you are, miss.”

“This is the place? Is this 119th Street? Oooh, this is the place. It’s beautiful,” Dior Emerson said as she peered out of the cab window. “It’s just like the pictures.”

“The pictures?” The cabdriver turned in his seat and looked at her.

“Yes,” Dior said excitedly, wiggling her shoulders as she spoke. “I just got a new job here in the city, so I had to find a place fast, so I contacted a broker and they sent me pictures and I picked this house. I’ve always heard of brownstones, but I’d never seen one before. I can’t believe—”

“Yeah, well, this is the place,” the driver said, obviously no longer interested in Dior’s story. “That’ll be twenty-two fifty.”

“Oh! Okay.” Dior pulled some bills from her Gucci bag and handed the cabbie three ten-dollar bills. “Keep the change,” she said grandly.

The driver looked at the money, then back at Dior and stuffed the bills into his pocket.

“So, you just got a new job, huh?” he said, suddenly interested as he flipped a switch to unlock the car doors. “What are you going to be doing?”

“A copywriter for an advertising agency,” Dior said excitedly. “Senior copywriter, to be exact. And guess what? They found me through a headhunter. That’s really a big deal because that means they were looking for someone like me. And it pays so much more than my old job in Montreal.”

She joined the driver outside as he took her bags from the trunk. “This is like my dream job, in my dream city. I always wanted to visit New York, and especially Harlem, and now I’m living here! I’m telling you, I was destined to live in New York. I mean, you can’t walk down the streets in Toronto and just bump into celebrities like you do in New York. Or go into restaurants and run into Robert De Niro or Woody Allen or Spike Lee or Beyoncé.”

“Well, you’re probably not going to run into them in Harlem too much, maybe Spike Lee. Most of the others hang out downtown.” The driver looked at her hopefully.

“And shopping! I can’t wait to go shopping in the Big Apple,” Dior gushed. “I want to get all of the latest fashions.”

“The best shopping is downtown, too, miss. You want me to take you downtown now?”

Dior shook her head as she looked at her luggage. “No, I should go ahead into my apartment and start getting unpacked.”

The driver shrugged, then got in his car, leaving the luggage on the sidewalk.

Goodness, Dior thought. He could have at least carried it to the building. She sighed and grabbed the handle of one bag and threw the strap of another over her shoulder and lugged them over to the brownstone. January in New York, it seemed, was as cold as in Montreal. Even though her thigh-length mink was warm, she wanted to get inside as soon as possible.

“You must be Dior Emerson.”

Dior looked up and saw a middle-aged woman with a blue wool coat, a blue felt hat pulled low over her graying dreads, and a cigarette dangling out of her mouth.

“I sure am. And you must be my new landlady! Mrs. Graham, right?” Dior stuck out her hand to shake the woman’s hand.

“I am, but you can call me Margie. I’ve been looking out the window for the last hour waiting for you to arrive. This house I’m renting out, I call it Margie’s Diamond Palace.” She pointed to the building they were standing in front of. “And that one”—she pointed to the brownstone two buildings down—“I live in.”

“They’re both very nice,” Dior said politely.

“Yeah.” Margie looked at her very strangely. “Very nice. What kind of accent is that?”

“French.”

“I thought you were from Canada.”

“I am, but we speak French in Montreal. All of my family also speaks English, though. I’ve been speaking it since childhood.”

“Is that right? Not that it’s any of my business. None of my business at all. Well, come on, I’ll give you a quick walk through the palace and then give you your keys. I wanna get to bingo before it gets too crowded.”

The woman dropped her cigarette on the sidewalk and stamped it out with her foot. “Let me help you with your bags. Youse a little bitty thing, aren’t you? What are you, a size three?” She picked up the smallest of the bags and walked down three steps to a private entrance.

“Size zero,” Dior said as she picked up two of the bags and followed her new landlady.

“I don’t even understand a size zero. Doesn’t compute. How can someone be a size zero? Makes it sounds like they don’t even exist, if you ask me.” The woman pulled out a large ring of keys and fiddled around until she found the proper one and inserted it into the steel-gated door. “Still, it looks good on you. You so petite. I hope you don’t have one of them eating disorders they be talking about on Oprah. Not that it’s none of my business if you do. None of my business at all.”

“How you ladies doing?”

Dior looked up to see a tall scruffy-looking brown-skinned man wearing an army jacket smiling down at them. Even from twenty feet away Dior could see the plaque on his yellow and brown teeth. “This your new tenant, Miss Margie?”

“Yes, she is, and don’t you be harassing her, Jerome.”

“I was just trying to be nice,” the man said in a hurt voice as he shuffled his feet.

“Carry your ass down the street and be nice to someone else,” Margie barked as she pushed open the door and shooed Dior inside.

“Not one of your favorite people, I gather?” Dior said as they entered the building.

Margie grunted. “Most of the people on this block are nice. But that damn Jerome is a pain in the ass. Whatever—you don’t be nice to him, because if you do he’ll be in your face all the time and trying to get into your panties, too. Damn shame. That man’s pushing thirty years old and still living off his mother. Trifling is what I call him.”

“Oh my God, this place is just beautiful,” Dior gasped as they entered the apartment. “It looks even better than the pictures the broker sent me!”

“It should look good. I spent a bunch of money on the renovations. They just finished sanding down the floor, so make sure the moving men don’t scratch them up when they move your furniture in.”

“The floors are gorgeous. I’ve never lived in a place with hardwood floors before. And look how high the ceilings are. It makes it look like a ballroom. Oh my God, does that fireplace work?” She rushed over and ran her hand over the wooden mantelpiece. “I can just see myself drinking champagne in front of a roaring fire! Oh, I’m going to love it here!”

Margie chuckled. “Look at you getting all excited. Yeah, the fireplace works. Come on, let me show you the rest of the place.”

“And oh my God, look at the shutters! The windows actually have shutters!” Dior ran over to the window and started flipping the shutters open and shut. “It’s just like in the movies.”

“Uh-huh, just like in the movies. Listen, are you mixed with something? You look like you might have some Chinese in you with them small slanted eyes and that long black hair.