My neighbors are a New York City real estate anomaly. It does keep me up at night. Well, that and the 18 wheelers making their noisy ascent onto the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and the totally indiscernible conversation blaring from the White Castle Drive Thru across the street and the occasional rock-a-billy band that plays at the bar on the first floor of the building. I am not consoled by the fact that our neighbors deal with the same amount of noise and racket, because they deal with it from the comfort of a large, spacious duplex.

One morning I am shaken out of my jealous stupor by angry shouting. A riotous mob has gathered in front of my apartment. They are shaking their fists at the constant stream of 18 wheelers that barrel by. They are holding signs with skull and cross bones drawn on them in thick marker. I quickly get dressed and run down to join them. I want to be part of this revolution. The revolutionaries in front of my building however, are a rag-tag mix of mild mannered student environmentalists and firebrand elderly men and women who shake their canes and rattle their walkers in disgust at the trucks. It doesn’t matter. I am with them. However, as a shake my fist at the trucks I realize I am not so much protesting the air and noise pollution caused by the trucks but rather the strange series of events that have brought me to this point in my life.

Since Alex and I arrived back in the city from our little sojourn in Spain our apartment search has been one continuous punishment after another. I should have very good sublet karma. When I actually had an apartment (and a nice one) I sublet it several times and I never charged more than was required to pay the rent. I even allowed a sublettor to stay a little longer, because she was in a jam, while I slept on the couch. When I was ready to move out of my apartment I even relinquished it to a sublettor, because, well, she was nice. Now, however, nothing adds up. There is no justice, no logic, no karma. So, I elbow the octogenarian next to me and say “look at that smoke coming from this one” and she raises her cane, I raise my fist and together we shout obscenities at the hapless truck driver.

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