The Ghost in Apartment 2R Read online

  The crew finishes the take, and the stuck-up PA (which stands for production assistant—you learn these things after the twentieth time one of them acts like a self-important jerk) waves me through. I wander by. The name of the production is written on the backs of the chairs and taped up on the actors’ trailers. It’s called Only the Dead Know Brooklyn.

  There’s a big burly type with a belt full of tools adjusting a clamp on a tripod holding some sort of lighting. These guys are always the friendliest.

  “So what’s this one about?” I ask him.

  He looks down at me and laughs. “I dunno, kid. Some sort of horror film. I think the place is haunted or something.”

  Another one of those. “Sounds pretty corny to me,” I say.

  He tightens a bolt on the tripod with one last twist. “Hey, as long as the check clears. I don’t write ’em, I don’t see ’em, I don’t even care if it’s a flop or wins an Oscar. I just put the stuff up and take it down when they tell me.”

  Only he doesn’t say “stuff.” This is Brooklyn, and people aren’t always so careful about cursing in front of kids.

  I get home and walk up the steps of our stoop to our apartment. Our building is one of the older ones on the block, and it’s a lot wider than some of the others. That just means we have to share it with three other renters.

  Downstairs is a doctor’s office. Dr. Chun is an ophthalmologist, which is handy since all of us wear glasses. She lives in the other apartment on our floor with her husband and baby girl, Gloriana. Their apartment is 2F, since they’re in the front. Ours is 2R, because…that’s obvious, right?

  One flight up from us, in the front, is Marjorie, a lady in her thirties who writes for a travel magazine. She’s never home. We water her plants all the time. And in the back is an old man named Richie.

  Richie’s been living here forever. My dad remembers him as an old man when he was a kid. Richie wears an old-fashioned hat with a little snap brim and dresses very nicely, but seems to only go to the corner newspaper store and hang out with some other old guys. My dad swears he’s a bookie or a numbers runner. I’m not exactly sure what a numbers runner does, so I looked it up online once and it has to do with people in the neighborhood betting on certain numbers with him, and if the number “comes up,” he pays them off. Of course it’s totally illegal, but nobody seems to care because it’s only old people in our neighborhood who do it.

  Richie is real quiet. He’s also real old. Like how old, I have no idea. Maybe in his eighties? He never says hello. Just nods when he sees me and goes back to his newspaper.

  I get to the front door and since I have my own key, I let myself in.

  Having my own key is a big deal, and just started with this school year. I have a bad habit of losing things, so my folks never felt it was a good idea to give me a key. Besides, with dad working at home, it wasn’t really an issue. I’d just ring the bell like a thousand times and that would be that. I guess I’m old enough now to be trusted or something, but it’s a cool feeling to let yourself in and out of the building.

  As soon as I walk into our apartment, I am assaulted with the smell of new paint. I hear running water and the radio blaring music from the bathroom and put two and two together. I head to the back of the apartment and see that Dad hired Gabriel to paint Jake’s room while I was at school.

  It’s now a pale green (I learn later from my mom that the color is called “mint”), and with the Gorillaz and Pulp Fiction posters removed from the walls, and the new bed and everything, I barely recognize it.

  “Hey, Danilo!” Gabriel calls out. That’s his nickname for me. I like it. “Your dad’s on a call. Very important. You want to help me? The paint should be dry by now.”

  I shrug off my backpack and enter Jake’s room. As I pass through the doorway I feel that chill again, but it’s probably just because I know I’m not getting my wish and someone else is going to be sleeping in my room.

  We take up the newspaper from the floor and then get to work peeling off the blue painter’s tape from all the things Gabriel covered in the room, like the doorknobs and baseboards. I’m finishing up as Gabriel starts to pull the drop cloths off all the new furniture he and my dad assembled over the weekend.

  My dad comes in and helps us push everything into position. He helps Gabriel hang the big framed print, and we put some books in the newly painted bookcase. Mom has actually gone to the trouble to pick out what she thinks are books that people would like to look at during their stay, like the big photo book of Brooklyn she gave my dad a few years ago.

  We step back and look at the results.

  “Not bad,” my dad says. “I’d stay here.”

  “I wish I could,” I say, not looking at anyone in particular.

  My dad reaches over and rubs my shoulders. “So do I, Danny boy.”

  “So we all good for now, Mr. Martin?” asks Gabriel.

  Dad nods and reaches into his pocket. “It’s great. I couldn’t have done it without you. What’s the damage?”

  That’s my dad’s way of asking “How much do I owe you?”

  Bored, I launch myself onto the bed.

  The whole thing collapses under me.

  My dad and Gabriel have just finished reassembling the bed, both of them insisting that they tightened the screws perfectly the first time.

  “It’s like someone went around and loosened them right after we finished!” Gabriel says, laughing. “Danilo, you playing tricks?”

  I know he’s joking, but just to be sure, they check each other’s work. This time I sit gingerly on the bed. It holds.

  There is the sound of a key in the lock, and Mom’s voice calls out, “Hello? Is anyone here?”

  It’s Mom’s “I have someone with me, so nobody say anything stupid” voice, and we hear her talking to someone as she heads toward Jake’s room. “Since the room is in the back, it kind of affords our guests privacy.”

  “Totally, you have to mention that,” a young woman’s voice answers.

  Mom arrives at the room. She’s dressed more casually than her usual office clothes, so I’m guessing she’s taken time off to meet with this person.

  The girl she’s with is maybe twenty or maybe older (I’m bad at guessing girls’ ages) and has dyed hair and a pierced nose. She’s wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket and has a messenger-style bag slung over one shoulder. She looks really familiar. Maybe she works at the fancy chain coffee and pastry shop that’s a block from our house. Or maybe she’s a nanny.

  Gabriel’s face brightens when he sees her. “Hey! I know you! You’re the nice one! The one who doesn’t leave the bags in our garbage.”

  The girl laughs and bows. “That’s me!”

  Mom quickly says, “This is Katia. She’s been helping me write the description of the bedroom.”

  Gabriel looks confused. “But I thought—”

  “I also walk dogs,” Katia says.

  So that’s how I know her! I see Katia every morning on the way to school with like ten dogs on leashes. It reminds me of that picture book I loved as a kid, Go, Dog. Go! Big dogs. Little dogs. Fluffy dogs. Short-haired dogs. You’d think it would be hard for the little ones to keep up with the big ones, but somehow they manage.

  “I wish they were all like you,” Gabriel mutters. “Those ones who leave the bags…”

  Katia shoots him a sympathetic look. We all know what he’s referring to.

  In New York you have to pick up the poop after your dog finishes. And then you have to figure out where to throw it away.

  There are always some thoughtless people who think it’s cool to throw it in our trash cans, which is gross for Gabriel because, well, do I have to spell it out? It’s just gross.

  Gabriel checks his cell phone. He does stuff for like ten buildings in the neighborhood and is a really good handyman,
so usually someone is trying to find him.

  He puts his phone in his pocket and turns to my parents. “Okay, I gotta go. You don’t need me for anything else, right?”

  “No, it looks fantastic!” my mom exclaims as Gabriel leaves. She turns to Katia with a worried look on her face. “Right?”

  As I look around, I realize that the room now looks exactly like those sample rooms I love at the Ikea store. But somehow here in our house it doesn’t look as great. It’s kind of bland and soulless. Generic. No personality. If it was a person, it would be boring.

  But Katia is nodding. “It’s perfect. Great job, Maureen.”

  Katia opens the flap on her messenger bag and takes out a humongous, expensive-looking camera.

  “So you’re not just a dog walker,” I say, stating the obvious.

  “Katia got a degree in photography from Eastman,” my mother says.

  I know I need to say something. “Wow.” I have no idea what Eastman is, but I assume it’s impressive.

  “Yeah, I’ve been in a few gallery shows,” Katia says to me as if I’m someone she needs to impress. “But that’s my art. This is to make a living.”

  She paces around the room.

  “So you really think someone would want to stay here?” I ask, hoping she’ll say something like “Well, it’s only one room, and they have to share a bathroom….”

  Instead she says, “Are you kidding? With all this natural light and a garden view? You’re going to be booked up in no time.”

  My mom is glowing.

  Katia picks a spot and motions for me to get out of the way. She squats down and clicks off a few shots. She moves around the room, shooting more and more.

  My mom leans into me and whispers, “She’s already shot the outside of the house and the block. Katia says that’s going to be a big selling point, all the charm.”

  Katia pushes past us to get a few shots of the bathroom and then comes back into the room. She checks the screen on the back of the camera. Her face scrunches up. She’s pressing buttons. She mutters something under her breath.

  “Is there something wrong?” my mom asks.

  “Yeah. I can’t seem to find the images of the bedroom. This is crazy. I mean, I’ve been checking all along. But they’ve disappeared.”

  The hair on my arms stands up. Just the bedroom? That is weird.

  “Oh, dear,” my mom says. “Do you think it’s the camera?”

  Katia looks annoyed. “I just had this serviced. If it is, I’m going to kill them.”

  She checks the screen again, scrolling through images. “I don’t get it. The ones from outside are all there. And so are the ones of the bathroom and the kitchen. Just the ones of the bedroom are missing.”

  “But didn’t you take a whole bunch of shots in the bathroom after the bedroom?” I ask. “It’s like the bedroom ones were specifically erased.”

  No one else seems to find this eerie, just peculiar.

  Katia flips a latch at the bottom of the camera and removes the memory card. “It could be the memory card, but I’ve never had this happen before. I’ll try another one.”

  She puts one in, squats down again, and clicks off a few frames. She checks the shots. “Now they’re there. This is so random.”

  She shoots a couple more and looks again. “Yeah, now I got ’em. Let me just check the focus.”

  She presses a button. “Huh,” she says, and laughs. “That’s so crazy.”

  “Don’t tell me they’re gone again,” my mother sighs.

  I peer over Katia’s shoulder as she zooms in on an image and get another deep chill. “No…,” she says. “I guess it’s your reflection behind me, Maureen. I wouldn’t have even seen it if I hadn’t zoomed in.”

  But the reflection doesn’t look like my mom at all.

  “Don’t worry,” Katia is saying, “I can remove it in Photoshop, no problem. We’re good.”

  “What is it?” my mom asks.

  “It’s…well…”

  I look once more and answer for Katia. “It looks like there’s a face in the window. Staring in.”

  It’s Friday afternoon, and the first week of school is over, and I’m hanging out with Gus and Nat. We’re sitting on the promenade overlooking the East River. It’s one of the best views of the lower Manhattan skyline in the city. It’s also got a playground where little kids from all over the neighborhood lose their minds running around and screaming like banshees. This is where the three of us first met all those years ago when our moms would take us here.

  “I’ve already decided that Mr. Sanderson hates me,” I say.

  Mr. Sanderson is my geometry teacher. He’s been at the school like forever, and of course he had Jake when Jake was in sixth grade.

  “Which one is Sanderson, again?” Gus asks. He has Mrs. Tolskaya. She’s Russian and really nice, from what everyone says.

  “He’s the one who kind of stopped paying attention to clothes after the nineties, right?” Nat says.

  I crack open a pistachio. “Whenever they stopped wearing those sweaters with patterns so loud they hurt your eyes. Somebody forgot to tell him.”

  “He also has those huge glasses like my dad has in his wedding pictures,” Nat tells Gus. “But now my dad would not be caught dead in them, while I guess Sanderson is waiting for them to come back into fashion.”

  “So he’s a jerk?” Gus asks, getting right to the point. “You figured that out already?”

  “You tell me,” I say. “I think it was jerky of him to make a big deal about Jake in front of the entire class, and to say, ‘If you’re half the student your brother was…,’ like I have to live up to Jake’s reputation or something. He calls on me all the time, and if I get anything wrong, or ask him to explain something again, he sighs and looks all disappointed.”

  Nat shakes her head. “I think you’re being a little oversensitive, Danny.”

  A kid from our class wanders over. He’s a head taller than me and wearing a stained T-shirt with some old rock band’s logo on it. He’s also wearing enough body spray to fumigate a basketball court.

  “You’re in my homeroom, right?” he asks Nat, ignoring Gus and me.

  “We all are,” Nat says evenly.

  “So, I was, like, curious….” He smirks, which goes perfectly with his Eau de Madison Square Garden cologne. “You’re an Arab, right?”

  Gus and I both tense up. This sort of question sucks.

  Nat answers with a practiced casualness. “Actually, I’m an American. Of Arab descent, though.”

  “Oh, that’s cool. But, like, how come you’re not wearing one of those headscarf things?”

  Nat doesn’t even blink. I’ve heard her have this conversation probably a dozen times, even with one or two rude teachers.

  “First of all, not all Arabs are Muslim. I’m Christian.”

  The smelly kid guffaws. “No way! Christian Arabs? That’s a real thing?”

  “Second of all, even if I was, not all Muslim girls wear headscarves. Just so you know.”

  It takes a while for this to sink in. He looks perplexed.

  Gus is about to step between the kid and Nat but she stops him. “Any other questions?”

  There’s a moment, and the kid shrugs. “Nah. Just curious, you know?”

  “You’ve got your answer,” Gus says, with a “don’t push it” edge to his voice.

  “All right! Calm down, killer.” The Cologne Kid laughs and walks away. “Take it easy. Just askin’ a few questions. You people are so sensitive.”

  Gus looks after him, his fists balled.

  I look at Nat. “I’m sorry you get that stuff.”

  Nat clearly wants to change the subject. “Anyhow, Danny, I think you’re being overly sensitive about this whole Jake thing.”

  I wan
t to say, “You know, if I had a nice big room to myself to study in, maybe my grades would be as good as Jake’s,” but of course, I don’t. They’ve heard me complain about it too much already.

  We make plans to meet tomorrow at Brooklyn Bridge Park, and Nat heads home. Gus heads to his father’s shop. He helps out on Fridays, making deliveries if they’re close or just hanging out and “learning the business,” as his father says.

  I get home to find my mother in front of her laptop, reading something out loud to my dad.

  My dad looks up from his editing. “They both sound great. I don’t know.” He’s barely listening to her. He motions me over. “Look at the comments this mom gave me on her son’s bar mitzvah video. ‘Not funny enough. Can you film more of his friends saying things about him? I gave you the video of Eli in The Music Man where he was so brilliant. Why didn’t you use the whole song?’

  “If I do what she asks, the video’s going to be twenty minutes at least and nobody is going to watch it,” he tells me. “But she’s the client, so I have to do it.”

  Mom looks irritated. “Would you listen to me? Which do you think is better? ‘Steeped in Charm: Room in the Heart of Historic Brooklyn Heights’ or ‘Room in Hottest Brooklyn Neighborhood, Steps Away from the Subway’?”

  She turns to me. “Which do you like?”

  I remember when Jake used to come home and Mom and Dad would ask how school was. Guess that was then. This is now.

  “I like the second one,” I say. “But we’re not really steps from the subway. It’s like five blocks away.”

  My dad doesn’t look up from his monitor but says, “Well, technically you’re not lying. It is steps. Just a whole lot of them.”

  That makes my mom laugh. “Okay, okay. I need to get to the description.”

  She reads it like a thousand times and finally calls her brother in Los Angeles to read it to him.

  “So, Artie, would you stay here? I mean, if you read it online? What? Oh, that’s good! Thanks, love you!” Mom turns to us, nodding. “He’s so smart. He said, ‘Put in a sentence about how the hosts know the area and can recommend the best pizza and other Brooklyn delights.’ Also, he sent me a link to a map showing where famous writers have lived near here, which we can print out and leave on the bed.”