C.”
Alex goes up to 19C, and it is full of workmen talking and joking in Spanish as they drag furniture to the front of the four-room apartment. There is beige wall-to-wall carpeting throughout, and the carpeting is torn, stained, and—there is no other way to describe this— chewed, as if the Johnsons had been keeping wild animals here. Likewise, the walls are scored with deep gouges, and here and there holes have been punched in the plaster. The furniture the workers are disposing of is in a state of complete wreckage. Armchairs are without arms; wicker-bottomed dining chairs are without wicker; small sleeping pillows have been placed on the sofa as substitutes for missing cushions, and these pillows are covered in their own feathers. But all this mayhem is nothing compared to the foulness of this place. What is that smell? Rotted meat? Human waste? Cooking gas? Fear, of the most extreme, quaking, cowering kind? Or is it a combination of all these things, a hideous bouillabaisse of everything repulsive, hell’s soup du jour?
The workmen have by now gotten used to the horrible odor, and their protective masks dangle on their cloth ties. They glance at Alex as they work, perhaps thinking he has some official connection to the building. With his hand covering his nose and mouth, Alex wanders from room to room, hoping to find something that will give him an insight into what has become of the Johnsons. He goes into the small utilitarian New York kitchen; shards of broken plates and glasses crunch beneath the leather soles of his Crockett and Jones oxfords. With some trepidation, he opens the refrigerator and, like a monstrous wave from an unsettled sea, the stench crashes down upon him, sending him reeling. His instinct is to slam the door shut, but he forces himself to peer into the refrigerator and what he sees is even more disturbing and disgusting than the smell: Ziploc bags containing rodents—mice, rats, squirrels, and a few plump, butterscotch-colored hamsters—are piled one on top of the other, all of them, despite the plastic wrap and refrigeration, in various states of decay.
Alex throws the door shut and staggers back, almost losing his footing on the shifting surface of all that broken glass. Three of the workmen have begun taking the furniture out, while the fourth is on his knees and starting in on the task of tearing up the remains of the carpeting. He glances at Alex but quickly looks away when Alex returns his gaze.
Alex walks into what had once been the Johnsons’ bedroom. Stalactite-shaped stains render the bare mattress grotesque. A bedside lamp is on the floor, its long neck snapped in two. An oddly dainty and unmolested little bedside table stands next to the abandoned bed, some fake French Provincial probably picked up at Pottery Barn. Alex opens the table’s single drawer. The blade of a straight razor greets him with a sinister wink of reflected light. Alex pulls the drawer all the way out. Besides the razor it holds a tube of Caswell-Massey shaving cream, and handcuffs.
Behind the bed, curtains cover a large window. Alex parts the curtains and sees the window has been completely covered in plywood. A little yellow Post-it is pressed to the wood, but the breeze of the moved curtain dislodges it, and it floats to the floor. Alex retrieves it, reads: Help us .
He hears voices—the workmen are coming back for more furniture. The one who stayed behind is saying something to them—Alex can understand just a smattering of it, but he surmises that his presence in the apartment is finally being questioned. He takes a quick look around. Is there anything here that can possibly tell him anything he needs to know? The Johnsons are gone. That is the overriding, salient fact of the matter. They descended into some horrible, disgusting squalor—and they fled.
On his way out of the apartment, Alex walks through the reeking kitchen again. He opens the refrigerator, takes one of the Ziploc bags, puts
Alex goes up to 19C, and it is full of workmen talking and joking in Spanish as they drag furniture to the front of the four-room apartment. There is beige wall-to-wall carpeting throughout, and the carpeting is torn, stained, and—there is no other way to describe this— chewed, as if the Johnsons had been keeping wild animals here. Likewise, the walls are scored with deep gouges, and here and there holes have been punched in the plaster. The furniture the workers are disposing of is in a state of complete wreckage. Armchairs are without arms; wicker-bottomed dining chairs are without wicker; small sleeping pillows have been placed on the sofa as substitutes for missing cushions, and these pillows are covered in their own feathers. But all this mayhem is nothing compared to the foulness of this place. What is that smell? Rotted meat? Human waste? Cooking gas? Fear, of the most extreme, quaking, cowering kind? Or is it a combination of all these things, a hideous bouillabaisse of everything repulsive, hell’s soup du jour?
The workmen have by now gotten used to the horrible odor, and their protective masks dangle on their cloth ties. They glance at Alex as they work, perhaps thinking he has some official connection to the building. With his hand covering his nose and mouth, Alex wanders from room to room, hoping to find something that will give him an insight into what has become of the Johnsons. He goes into the small utilitarian New York kitchen; shards of broken plates and glasses crunch beneath the leather soles of his Crockett and Jones oxfords. With some trepidation, he opens the refrigerator and, like a monstrous wave from an unsettled sea, the stench crashes down upon him, sending him reeling. His instinct is to slam the door shut, but he forces himself to peer into the refrigerator and what he sees is even more disturbing and disgusting than the smell: Ziploc bags containing rodents—mice, rats, squirrels, and a few plump, butterscotch-colored hamsters—are piled one on top of the other, all of them, despite the plastic wrap and refrigeration, in various states of decay.
Alex throws the door shut and staggers back, almost losing his footing on the shifting surface of all that broken glass. Three of the workmen have begun taking the furniture out, while the fourth is on his knees and starting in on the task of tearing up the remains of the carpeting. He glances at Alex but quickly looks away when Alex returns his gaze.
Alex walks into what had once been the Johnsons’ bedroom. Stalactite-shaped stains render the bare mattress grotesque. A bedside lamp is on the floor, its long neck snapped in two. An oddly dainty and unmolested little bedside table stands next to the abandoned bed, some fake French Provincial probably picked up at Pottery Barn. Alex opens the table’s single drawer. The blade of a straight razor greets him with a sinister wink of reflected light. Alex pulls the drawer all the way out. Besides the razor it holds a tube of Caswell-Massey shaving cream, and handcuffs.
Behind the bed, curtains cover a large window. Alex parts the curtains and sees the window has been completely covered in plywood. A little yellow Post-it is pressed to the wood, but the breeze of the moved curtain dislodges it, and it floats to the floor. Alex retrieves it, reads: Help us .
He hears voices—the workmen are coming back for more furniture. The one who stayed behind is saying something to them—Alex can understand just a smattering of it, but he surmises that his presence in the apartment is finally being questioned. He takes a quick look around. Is there anything here that can possibly tell him anything he needs to know? The Johnsons are gone. That is the overriding, salient fact of the matter. They descended into some horrible, disgusting squalor—and they fled.
On his way out of the apartment, Alex walks through the reeking kitchen again. He opens the refrigerator, takes one of the Ziploc bags, puts
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