EIGHTEEN

Victor

Victor returned to find his apartment as he had left it. Blinds not closed because he did not have blinds. Clothing inside out, mugs in the sink filled with water—a feeble tribute to future cleanliness, a gesture against chaos. The coffee table was crowded with beer bottles and cigarette butts. Maid’s day off.

He dropped his bag on the floor and went to take a piss, holding down the flusher for the extra twenty seconds his toilet required. He threw out a warped magazine from some uneventful week in March. He needed artificial ventilation. He climbed over his bed and pressed the button on his air-conditioning unit. Nothing. His father always said that these contraptions were smart enough to break the moment their warranties expired but never smart enough just to keep working. Annoyed, Victor went to open the second narrow window in his bedroom but it was wide open already.

Had he left it like that? He had a rule with the elements. That rule being: they were out there and he was in here. He tried to close the window but the frame was bent.

He wanted to be curious about the cause but the reality of what was happening—what had already happened and thus could not be altered—was setting in.

Victor turned around to confirm his computer, Xbox, speakers, printer, cable box, and television were missing. He crossed over to his desk and TV stand, as if to make sure these items were not covered in invisibility cloaks.

In their haste, the thieves must have knocked out the cord to the air conditioner. Sensing this would be his last bit of control for a while, Victor was unhurried in his movements as he plugged the unit back in. The low rumbling of a fan belt commenced and he stood in front it, listening, not getting cool. He wondered if his neighbors had been hit as well. Victor would be perversely comforted to know that other people were violated. Being burglarized in isolation felt a little too reminiscent of being laid off in isolation.

He needed to shower. He flung back the shower curtain to confirm he still had a bar of soap. Check. The knob squeaked as he twisted it on. Should he even go to the cops? It would take hours and they would ask him timeline questions he couldn’t possibly answer. He had been gone for two days. He couldn’t identify anyone or anything except the odor of rotting dairy coming from his refrigerator. Still, there were things to be grateful for. It was daylight when he returned home, which meant he had time to psychologically reclaim his space before nightfall. Had he had more possessions to his name, he might have felt a more extreme sense of violation. But most of the things he owned weren’t even his—old furniture from when his parents renovated their den, stuff from thrift shops, Nathaniel’s Norton Anthology of English Literature, which Victor used to decimate roaches.

He got out of the shower and padded to his kitchen. The enthusiastic press release regarding his dismissal from mostofit was wrinkled and splattered with sauce. He opened his silverware drawer. All knives accounted for. He checked the cabinets. Baking soda, cereal, Tostitos . . . and a half bottle of Jameson. At least they left him that much. And at least Victor’s unemployment checks had started rolling in, so he could replace the TV. His mind perked up at the idea of getting a bigger one. But it collapsed when he went to turn his computer on.

No computer to be turned.

He grabbed the cereal and sat on his sofa. A mass “best wkend EVER xo” text from Caroline was waiting, unopened on his phone. He shook the box of cereal, trying to make nut clusters appear.

There was a knock at the door. Victor nearly hit the ceiling.

“Vic-tour! Victour, you home?”

It was Matejo, his downstairs Dominican neighbor, who never failed to pass Victor without informing him that he had heard loud music or footsteps, always tacking on “but I don’t mind.” “Live and let live!” was an expression Matejo had come up with. “To each his own!” Another idiom from scratch. It was the most manipulative form of noise complaint Victor had ever witnessed— Matejo was stockpiling neighborly goodwill for the weeks his entire extended family visited.

Victor yanked a shirt off a wire hanger in his closet and held the damp towel around his waist.

He opened the door. “Hey, how’s it going?”

The chain lock had been gone when Victor moved in, its base still sloppily screwed to the wall like a mezuzah.

“Is everyone okay in here?”

“It’s just me, Matejo. Yeah, I’m fine.”

Matejo’s pupils bounced in shaky circles, exploring the world over Victor’s shoulder.

“Just seeing . . .” Matejo let his voice shrink.

“They got you, too, huh?”

“Victour, it’s a disaster.” Matejo scratched his neck. “My safe got taken.”

“You have a safe?”

“Had. I had one of those personal home safes. They say you can’t just lift it but these guys lifted it. I had a warranty but guess where it is?”

“In the safe.”

“My wife thinks it’s an inside job. She says she knows it’s my sister’s kid. I don’t know how he’s gonna play at opening it. I guess you could get a chain and a truck and open it like that.”

“I guess.”

“But where’s he gonna get a truck? Kid doesn’t have a license. Not that he did this. But my wife says he’s at that age, you know?”

“The thieving age?”

“Little punk knows I would murder him in front of my sister.”

“I think if it were an inside job, he would have broken in through the front door. Keyed the lock open or something.”

“Exactly!” Matejo beamed.

Matejo had lived in the building the longest and thus was the de facto super, overly educated on what days of the week the garbage men hauled away cardboard boxes. The building was his spiritual responsibility.

“If it was him, he’s gonna replace everything he took. But it wasn’t him.”

“You keep saying that.” Victor couldn’t help himself.

“Because it wasn’t.” Matejo pressed his thumb into the defunct lock.

“Who else got hit?”

“The new people up top. Christina in the basement was home, I guess. She said she didn’t hear anything. Basically everyone on this side of the building. All through the windows.”

“Did you talk to the cops?”

This was easy for Victor to propose when he himself had already decided it was too much of a time-suck to go to the cops. A time-suck from what? From sleeping late and consuming white foods and brown liquids? Whatever. Depression took time, devotion. You had to feed it, keep it away from direct sunlight, let it take over the bed at night like a dog.

“I don’t talk to police,” Matejo said, as if declaring a nut allergy.

“Well, my shit is missing. So that sucks. And it’s hot and my window won’t close now, so that also sucks.”

“The super’s coming to repair my window. I can tell him you’re back and have him take a look at yours, too.”

“Thanks.”

A moment passed between them, each man balancing between accusation and defense. Matejo had knocked on Victor’s door within an hour of his coming home. He had already talked to everyone else in the building. That kid belonged in a juvenile detention facility. Him and his friends. Juvenile delinquents always had friends, someone to hold open the window.

“Hey, anyone ever tell you that you look like a busted Adrien Brody?”

“Some would argue that Adrien Brody is already busted.”

“Yeah, but think about how much pussy that guy gets.”

“I’ll give it some thought.”

“My stove is on,” Matejo said abruptly and turned down the hall.

Victor shut the door and twisted the deadbolt. He kicked his bag over to the couch, took off his shirt, and opened the bottle of Jameson. He was sweating from his belly button, undoing the good of a shower. The pants he wore on the plane were slumped on the floor of his closet. He remembered the delicate sketch of the necklace, of the life not his. It felt like weeks, not hours ago. He should get that thing out of there. In the heightened energy of a just-burglarized apartment, he felt anxious about its safety.

A wave of sadness, stronger than usual, came over him. It crested, and Victor saw that he owned nothing.

True, he had owned nothing before the robbery—nothing that warranted the level of protection Johanna had shown her jewelry. There was no history in his life, in his family (the trail went cold after his grandparents came over from Russia). But where were his totems and heirlooms? He was not materialistic. That would require materials. But perhaps an old pen or a shaving brush or something? Something passed down. He was a Jew, not a Buddhist. What pieces of this world were his?

He had a ratty quilt from his grandmother, but it wasn’t even hand-stitched. It was just an old quilt his grandmother had given him because she was getting a new quilt. The tag read “Ralph Lauren Home Collection.” You could tell it was made specifically for the outlet from which she had purchased it. But money was never the point. This was the silent principle of wealth that Victor had not understood or cared to understand for most of his life. Only having met Johanna was he forced to face the importance of object history. He could have a hundred computers and two hundred televisions stolen and it didn’t matter because he could just go to the store and replace them. Not him, not with his account balance, but somebody could. Accessibility made those things worthless. Whereas part of the necklace’s worth was that it was impossible to get.

Victor gulped down as much of the Jameson as he could and hissed. He studied the bottle. It was a strange size, not quite minibar size but not behind-the-bar size either. In a rectangle on the label were the words “Not for Resale.” Left over from the holidays, a promotional gift from Nancy the Temp, who had been given the bottle by people in the advertising department, people who liked her enough to give her things.

Victor emptied it into his face.