6

THE KRANDELL ARMS HOTEL

The Krandell Arms Hotel was on the city’s endangered species list. As a result, no matter how many millions of dollars the landlord could make—by converting the 104 “box” rooms, 16 communal bathrooms and 8 communal kitchens into 24 coop apartments—Mayor Koch wouldn’t let him. The Krandell Arms was a single-room-occupancy hotel, an SRO, and since it was located on 94th Street between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue, it had earned the protection of the mayor by being in an SRO safety zone. The ban on SRO conversions in safety zones was temporary, but nonetheless a godsend, seeing as the only alternative for Manhattan’s poor was to move into the street or into an abandoned building—which was, incidentally, exactly how several thousands of people were living in Manhattan.

In any event, it was a very confusing neighborhood that had sprung up around the Krandell Arms over the years. While the residents of the hotel paid between sixty and ninety dollars a week for a room, if they went outside, turned right and walked sixty feet, they would be standing in front of a building whose last one-bedroom apartment had been sold for two hundred thousand dollars. Or they could turn left and walk two blocks east to Broadway and look at the high-rise “luxury housing” that was being thrown up. Everywhere on Broadway, down was coming the granite, the genuine brick, the beautifully sculpted detail of the old buildings, and up, up, up—way up into the air—were going cinder blocks, brick veneer sheeting and brown metal windows in soul-sick repetition. Taken together, these skyscrapers of prefab horror were introducing a new community to the Upper West Side: HIGH-RISE LEVITTOWN.

Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s, The Gap, Pathmark—this was the scenic landscape of Broadway at 96th Street. And the high-rise Levittownians were paying upward of a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars for the pleasure of viewing it.

But then it had been years since the residents of the Krandell Arms had fully understood the ways of civilization.

Rosanne arrived at the door of the Krandell Arms Hotel with two bags of groceries in her arms. As usual on a nice day, there were people hanging out in front, pulling on pint bottles of Thunderbird, smoking cigarettes and reefer, milling around, waiting for something to happen. And, as usual, nothing was happening, and some nameless creep was standing in Rosanne’s way, his hand outstretched, mumbling, “Canyousparesomechangenicelady?”

“Shove off,” Rosanne said. When he failed to move (he was barely cognizant), Rosanne used her groceries as a shield to push her way past him.

“Bless ya,” the creep said.

The inner doors of the hotel were wide open, and Buzzy and Creature were hanging out in the hallway. They were high, Rosanne spotted right away, and so she knew to use Attitude B on them. (Attitude A was reserved for those times when they were straight—when Rosanne would treat them like the friends of her husband’s that they were.) “Hey, sistah,” Buzzy said, touching his leather hat. He was too wrecked to successfully execute the bow he wished to offer and staggered against the wall. He slapped the arm of his companion, who was already parked against the wall. “Man, Creatcha, did ya ever see such a fine piece of ass?”

“Mess with me and I’ll kick your ass to New Jersey,” Rosanne said, craning her neck to see through the glass partition of the front desk.

“Who-whooo!” the boys hooted, falling against each other.

“Where the hell is Ernesto?” Rosanne demanded.

“Man, I’d love to get my ass kicked by you, babe,” Buzzy said.

A little black boy, about six, came skidding around the corner. He shot past the three, making for the front door, and he almost made it before Rosanne yelled, “James! Stop right there!”

The boy stopped in his tracks. With his shoulders hunched, he slowly raised his hands over his head and turned around. “Got me,” he said. Buzzy and Creature thought this was great and started slapping their legs and “Who-whooo” -ing again.

“Come here,” Rosanne demanded.

James dropped his head and shuffled back in her direction. Rosanne sighed and kneeled to put the bags of groceries down. Still kneeling, she reached for James and pulled him close. James let his hand be held and, after a moment, looked up at Rosanne. “Why aren’t you at school?” Rosanne asked, her voice decidedly more gentle.

James looked past Rosanne to the wall. “I’m sick. I got a fever.”

Rosanne felt the little boy’s forehead. “Well, you don’t anymore.” She started tucking his shirt into his jeans. “Is your mother home?” James shook his head. Buzzy and Creature started pitching pennies. Rosanne licked her thumb and wiped at the unidentifiable food stain on the corner of James’s mouth. “Who’s staying with you?”

“Nobody,” James said, looking at the wall again.

“Where’s your mommy?”

“Work.”

Rosanne stroked the top of James’s head once, sighed and gathered her bags. “Why don’t you come upstairs with me and I’ll fix you a nice sandwich. Would you like that?”

“Okay,” James said.

Rosanne led James down the corridor to the elevator. The elevator took forever to come. But at least it came, which was more than yesterday. They got off on the seventh floor, where the smell of garlic assaulted them. The seventh-floor hall ran square, and the noise from the rooms echoed along the bare walls and linoleum floors-around and around and around-until they blended together into one garbled torrent of sound.

Most of the doors on the hallway were open, and residents could be seen sitting around inside. Rosanne and James passed the kitchen where someone’s unattended endeavor was spilling liquid all over the stove top. Rosanne shifted her groceries and turned the burner off.

The DiSantos door was open too, which meant that Frank was home. Rosanne pushed it open with her foot and went inside. Frank was lying on the bed, watching TV. Beside him, on the floor, were two crushed Old English cans. “I brought a guest,” Rosanne said, dropping the bags on the table. “You know James, Frank.”

Frank, eyes still on the TV, said, “Hi, kid.”

James ran over and hung on Rosanne’s leg. “Here,” Rosanne said, prying him loose, “you sit here.” She pulled out a chair from the table. “I thought you were workin’ today,” she said, moving back to close the door.

“They didn’t have nothin’ for me today. Tomorrow, they said.” His eyes didn’t leave the screen.

Rosanne went over and kissed him on the forehead. “What are you watchin’?”

“Some shit,” he said.

Rosanne moved back to the table and started unloading groceries. To James, “How about a nice ham sandwich?” He nodded vigorously. To Frank, as she made the sandwich for James, “I thought we’d have a steak tonight.”

“I’m going out.”

“You have to eat—”

“I’m eatin’ out.”

“Okay,” Rosanne said, cutting James’s sandwich into fours on a plate and pushing it in front of him. When James reached for it, Rosanne caught him by the wrist. She nodded toward the sink. “Wash your hands first, okay?” While James made a halfhearted attempt at fulfilling this request, Rosanne poured him a glass of milk. Under Rosanne’s direction, Frank had built an intricate system of shelves on one wall, the bottom part of which was made up of locked cabinets. It was in these cabinets that the refrigerator, the microwave and other illegal appliances were kept concealed.

When James was well into his sandwich, Rosanne moved toward the door. “Frank, keep an eye on James, will you? I’ll be back in a minute.” At this, Frank tore his eyes away from the set to glance at the kid. “Yeah, okay,” he said.

Rosanne walked down the corridor and around the corner to Ceily’s room. Although the door was closed, Rosanne could hear darn well what was going on behind it.

“Oh, baby, oh, baby, oh, baby,” Ceily was saying. (Ceily said that her act for her clients was patterned after Sophia Loren’s portrayal of grief in some movie she once saw—”Oh, not my baby, not my baby, please, not my baby.”)

“I’ve got James at my place!” Rosanne shouted through the door. Back in the DiSantoses’ room, James was now sitting on the floor, watching TV with Frank. “I saw Sissy on the comer this morning,” Rosanne said to her husband, carefully stepping over James to get to the closet. “Did you see her?” Rosanne reached up to the shelf of the closet and brought down a plastic action-doll of the Hulk. “Frank?”

“Yeah, I saw her. She looks like shit.”

“James,” Rosanne said. The little boy looked up. “This belongs to Jason, but you can play with it while you’re here.” His eyes widened and Rosanne smiled. She handed it to him. “I thought she was in Veritas Villa,” Rosanne said, moving back to the table.

No response. Rosanne opened a bottle of Slice and poured herself a glass.

Of course it was pointless to pursue the topic of Sissy. Sissy, when on the up-and-up, was Frank’s most generous source of drugs.

Rosanne sat down at the table and for a few minutes watched James play with the Hulk. Then she looked at her husband. Frank was still a good looking man—if he dressed, if he shaved, if he showered, if he was straight.

Rosanne Minero had been fifteen years old when her family was invited to a welcome-home party for their next door neighbors’ son. Any excuse for getting out of the house in those days was good enough for Rosanne, and she went to the party, holding her latest baby brother in her arms and leading four more of her younger siblings.

The second Rosanne saw Frank DiSantos, she was in love. He was just home from Vietnam, still in uniform, and was wearing several medals. He was handsome and he was proud, and he flashed a smile in Rosanne’s direction and nodded, as if to tip her off that he found her attractive. And she was—though no one, at first meeting, would have thought she was any younger than, say, twenty-three or so. A young life spent cleaning and cooking and changing diapers and mothering had already robbed Rosanne of the gifts of childhood. (“Lean and mean,” Frank would say.)

Later, when the throng of DiSantos relatives had touched and kissed Frank enough, when the toasts of the best Detroit homemade wine had tapered off, Frank had taken Rosanne aside to tell her of his plans. Of the car dealership he would open with two of his buddies from the war. Of the car he himself would own (a Porsche), of the house he would buy, of his (after living a little) intention of marrying and raising children, at least one of whom would grow up to be the President of the United States. And then he told her, in a hoarse whisper of blatant sexuality (which he offered in such a way as not to sully the ears of the four-month-old in Rosanne’s arms), of his need, right now, right this moment, for a “good” woman to welcome him home from the war.

Fifteen-year-old Rosanne Minero and twenty-three-year-old Frank DiSantos were married three months later. They moved to New York, into a nice apartment in the Bronx, and they were extremely happy—until the night Rosanne discovered that her husband had brought another friend home from the war with him. The friend’s name was Heroin. When his addiction seemed to be as harmless as Frank said it was, when Frank opened his car dealership with his buddies, when Frank continued to be the sweetest, nicest guy in the world, Rosanne learned to accommodate it.

Two years later, in 1977, Frank sold his interest in the dealership to support the DiSantoses’—and the DiSantoses’ friend. In 1978, Frank went into the VA Hospital in Manhattan and entered their methadone treatment. In 1979, he kicked methadone and got a job as a mechanic in a West Side garage in Manhattan. He did very well, and Rosanne, who had been employed as a housekeeper in the Windercolt mansion on Gracie Square, also had money coming in. In 1980 the DiSantoses lucked into a lovely Manhattan apartment in the West 70S. Shortly thereafter, appearing as a miracle to Frank, Rosanne announced she was pregnant. (It was no miracle to Rosanne—she had simply stopped using the birth control pills she had been taking during the “bad” years.)

Jason was born on April 19, 1981. On May 1, 1981, Frank was fired from the garage for stealing and Rosanne knew in her heart that he was on drugs again. He lost a series of jobs thereafter and, in 1983, Frank was admitted to the VA again for heroin. Rosanne, with Jason in her arms, four months’ back rent to pay, no income and a pride that kept her from going to her family, applied for, and received, residence in the Krandell Arms Hotel.

It was temporary, Rosanne assured Frank when he got out of the VA, and they would move as soon as he was back on his feet. Why she had assured him of this—when she herself was sick and horrified at the environment to which she had brought her child—she never quite understood.

Frank never did get back on his feet. Instead of his old drive and energy and dreams, he seemed to grow more depressed and listless by the day. So Rosanne did the only thing she could think of. She found a young mother on West End Avenue who would look after Jason for a few hours a day, five days a week, leaving Rosanne free to clean apartments on Riverside Drive. (She wanted a view of the river.) It not only brought in the cash the DiSantoses were desperate for, but it also allowed Rosanne to stay near Jason and near to Frank, who, at this point, needed someone close by when he “got in trouble.” It also gave Rosanne a few hours’ respite from a life that felt like it was choking her to death.

“We didn’t hire Rosanne,” Cassy Cochran would laugh. “She hired us.” And it was true. Rosanne conducted a “trial day” in eighteen households before she selected the four original clients she wished to work for: the Cochrans—on the strength of Mrs. C and Henry (Mr. C always made such a mess); the Wyatts—Rosanne liked all of them, particularly Althea, and when she spotted an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting book on Mr. W’s dresser she figured it might come in handy to know somebody on the other side of the fence; Amanda Miller—a shoe-in from the start since, (a) she was so nice, and (b) Rosanne could paint the house with mud for all Amanda would notice; and the Stewarts—well, like Mrs. W had forewarned her, the Bitch was impossible, but Howie was so wonderful that Rosanne had accepted the job on the condition that she would never have to deal directly with her. And then later good ol’ Mrs. G had been added—that had been Amanda’s doing and, besides, Rosanne had loved how Mrs. G kept calling her “dear.”

Financially speaking, Rosanne knew she was very lucky. Not once—not once in three years—had a single client failed to leave her the full cash amount for her day’s work. Everywhere else Rosanne had worked, the client was forever “forgetting” about her, leaving partial payments, or, worse yet, writing checks that took days to clear (if they cleared at all). And then Mrs. C had her thing about coming across clothes that “had Rosanne written all over them”; Mr. W had his about needing to “get something for a boy once in a while”; Amanda had hers about needing to feel that “someone, somewhere, could turn to me if they needed help” (which Rosanne had once, when Frank had been arrested); Howie had his about “when it’s harder work than usual, you should get paid more than usual”; and Mrs. G—man, that Mrs. G—had her thing about wanting Rosanne to have some of her personal possessions—a pin, a plate, a fine piece of linen—offers that Rosanne never accepted, but scored very high with her all the same.

But it was the generosity of her clients’ hearts that most affected Rosanne. One time—and Rosanne would never forget it—during one of Mr. C’s infamous parties, Rosanne had walked in on him while he was giving it to one of the video kittens in the guest room. She had shut the door and was standing there, in shock, when Mrs. C came down the hall. Mrs. C wanted to know what was going on and Rosanne wouldn’t tell her, but neither would she let her past. And then all of a sudden Mrs. C had dragged her down the hall by the hand, stopped her in the doorway, held her by the shoulders, and said, “Rosanne, I love you. Do you understand? I love you for trying to protect me. As far as I’m concerned, you have just joined the family.”

And there was the time the Wyatts took her to Samantha’s Christmas pageant. (“Anyone who baby-sits for her deserves to see her act like an angel once,” Sam explained.) And the time Amanda took her and Jason to the Museum of Natural History. And the first time Howie had given her a book to read, encouraging her, pushing her, to “get into the habit.” And the time Mrs. G gave her a copy of The Amy Vanderbilt Book of Etiquette so that Rosanne would “know exactly what to do at all the wonderful places I’m sure life will take you one day.”

Yeah, right. Wonderful places.

One night, in the summer of 1984, Rosanne asked Frank and Creature to keep an eye on Jason while she took a shower. When she emerged from the west bathroom, toweling her hair, she saw some hulking crazy dragging Jason down the hall by his three-year-old hand—heading for the open window at the end of the Boor. Rosanne silently tore down the hall, grabbed her child in her arms, and when the crazy turned on her—bantering about the Devil—he kicked him as hard as she could in the crotch and started screaming.

Frank and Creature came running (having been busy doing something other than watching Jason) and, without asking questions, beat the hell out of the crazy. Rosanne ran back to her room, clutching Jason against her chest, rocking him and sobbing hysterically for hours.

The next day Rosanne had Jason placed in a foster home. Temporarily. Just until the DiSantoses got on their feet again.

Rosanne visited with her son as often as she could. He had not been back to the Krandell Arms, not even for a visit. And Rosanne vowed he never would. Not ever again.

“Who’re you going out with tonight?” Rosanne asked her husband.

“Zigs, Carson.”

“Where?”

“Uptown. Shoot some pool.” Silence. Then Frank sat up, the first time all evening. “I need some money.”

“I gave you twenty this morning—James, don’t touch the wire.” When James didn’t pay any heed, Rosanne leaped up and went over to him.

“Sweetie,” she said, pulling his hand back, “you should never, never touch wires. They’ll hurt you and make you cry.” She picked James up from under his arms and swung him and the Hulk up onto the bed.

Frank was slipping on a shirt over the undershirt he had been featuring. “Come on, I need some more.”

Rosanne sighed, moving back toward the table. “How much more?”

“Another twenty,” Frank said, following her.

Rosanne spun around, hands on hips. “So what if I don’t have another twenty?”

“We’ll just find out,” he said, lunging for her pocketbook. Rosanne was quicker though, and reached it first, whirling around and bringing it up against her chest. “Don’t fuck with me, Rosanne,” Frank warned her.

“If you want to blow money on pool, blow yours,” she said.

She didn’t stand a chance. Five feet versus six. Frank pinned her against the shelves with one hand and yanked the pocketbook from her with the other. Rosanne reached for it and he roughly pushed her back against the shelves, making everything on them rattle.

Rosanne rubbed her shoulder, glaring at him. “Son of a bitch,” she said, taking a step forward. “Go ahead, take it. Take it all.” She yanked the pocketbook back from him, tore it open, took her wallet out, and threw it at him. She missed and the wallet went sailing clear across the room. James dove under the pillows. Frank laughed and went after the wallet.

“There’s fifty bucks in there!” Rosanne screamed. “Every cent we have, you fool. But take it! Go ahead! What do you care?”

He was taking it. He stuffed the bills in his jeans pocket, slung his black leather jacket over his shoulder, popped on one of his hats, and waltzed out the door. “’Bye, baby,” he said.

“Don’t you come back here tonight!” Rosanne yelled after him. She ran over to the door and shouted. “I’m sick of you lying around here like a bum! You can go to hell for all I care!” She slammed the door and it bounced back open. So she kicked it.

Ceily waved a hand in the doorway and made sounds of admiration. Rosanne backed away slightly. “So the girl’s got a temper after all,” Ceily said. “’Bout time.” James’s head flew up from the pillows at the sound of her voice. In a moment he was at her side, hanging on her hand. “Hi, sugar,” Ceily cooed. “Hey,” she said, looking back up, “Rosanne, thanks.”

Rosanne shrugged it off. “I don’t mind. Listen, I gave him a sandwich.”

Ceily retied the satin robe she was wearing. “Thanks.” She pulled her son out into the hall and then swung her head back into the doorway. “You okay?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” Rosanne said. “Business as usual.”

Ceily laughed, a long, bitter affair. “Yeah, don’t I know it.”

By midnight, Rosanne’s familiar terror had set in.

Frank with fifty dollars—

He’d—

He’s—

He might be—

What if—

And she went out to search in the neon of Broadway.