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On a hot and humid day in August 1999, Smith dropped off his bags in his sister's Queens, New York, apartment, having just arrived from the West Coast, and was on his way out for something to eat when he came upon the janitor mopping the hallway. In an undershirt, the straps of which hardly constrained his hairy shoulders, the man was backing up, swiveling from side to side, steering the stringy mop. In order to reach the lobby, Smith had to squeeze past the shoulders and the mop and in the process deposited his shoeprints on the washed and gleaming floor.
"Sorry about that," he offered uselessly.
The janitor waved and smiled to show that no offense was taken. He looked at Smith as if the two were old friends though Smith had never before laid eyes on the man. From behind a pair of thick glasses and beneath a corona of black, unruly hair, the janitor gazed without blinking and with an eagerness that Smith found unsettling. The welcome was too warm, Smith thought, too familiar. The eyes were luminous and intelligent, but the jaw and cheeks were knobby and unshaved-a caveman's face, crude but sensitive, and Smith's first acquaintance in his new and interim home.
Also observing him on moving day was the janitor's wife. Her first-floor apartment overlooked the entrance to the building, and Smith saw her seated in the window, leaning out across the sill gazing over a garden where a rosebush was in bloom. She was watching the street, eyeing the passersby. A low brick wall and scrawny hedges enclosed the garden, and, in the ensuing days, Smith would notice neighbors push between the hedges, step to the wall and chat with the janitor's wife. Now, as Smith walked by, wanting to be friendly, he nodded toward the figure in the window, but she stayed rock still; not even her eyes shifted in recognition. Later, he would see her up close, see that she was squat and square, that the long black dress she always wore covered her like a drop cloth, that a tufted mole sat on her jaw like a cactus, that lines of gray knotted her hair and a vague mustache shadowed her lip. Of course, at that first sighting, he had not known that this woman was the janitor's wife, a particular fact he surmised upon returning from the grocery with a dozen eggs and a container of orange juice and finding the happy-eyed janitor himself sitting in the window, smoking a cigarette and smiling at the street.
By the morning of his second day, Smith perceived a pattern: While the other windows of the janitor's apartment were hidden behind venetian blinds, a living body was almost permanently present in that one window overlooking the garden. Nor was the figure simply taking air; it was observing, guarding the entrance, noting who came and who went. In the evening, it was often the janitor, silhouetted darkly against the bluish flicker of a television that was constantly on. In the daytime, it was usually the wife, motionless like a pallid mushroom blending with its circumstances. Occasionally, the teenage son took his turn: a burly boy with a bored, bulldog grimace. A smoker, like his father, he kept a cigarette pack snug in the breast pocket of his tight T-shirt. There were always eyes on duty, Smith realized, always an ugly gargoyle smoking or sunning itself, defending hearth and home.
Burglary was a problem everywhere, and Smith appreciated the added security provided by a family of omniocular gargoyles while neighboring buildings stood unattended. On the other hand, his comings and goings would be witnessed. He planned on taking walks and expected, not infrequently, to step outside, be surprised by the weather and march back in for a change of clothes; or, having visited the grocery and already gone upstairs, to remember a forgotten container of milk and return outside to complete the shopping. And he wondered: Was the gargoyles' purpose to protect the building against intruders or to monitor the tenants, note their habits, their schedules, their visitors? He felt keenly the loss of privacy, and striking him as especially awkward was the obligation, as he came and went, of having to acknowledge in some way the sentinel in the window.
As a response he formulated a policy. Passing through the gargoyles' domain covered four distinct routes: exiting from the building and turning right, to the south; exiting and turning left; approaching and entering from the north; and from the south. Only the second route, he decided, exiting and heading north, passing right by the window, face-to-face as it were, warranted a salutation: a nod, a smile, a wave of the hand. On day two, as he left the building and turned left, he did wave to the son, but the boy reacted disdainfully, sneering and flicking his cigarette ash at Smith's feeble endeavor at communication.
He reconsidered: Perhaps his privacy was not under siege; perhaps the gargoyles shied from his gaze just as he flinched inwardly from theirs.
On moving day, after unpacking his clothes and toiletries and storing, in the hall closet, his suitcases, new suit, and the portfolio containing the sketches of his designs, he had called his sister in Boston, where she was staying until September 1. He was subletting her apartment, and when she returned in two weeks, he would move out and find his own place.
Her phone rang, and the answering machine picked up with a recording of her exuberant voice: "Hi! I'm not home now, but I'd love to talk to you, so leave your name and number, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. See ya!" The beep followed, and Smith left his message, stating simply that he had arrived, that all had gone well, that he would try reaching her again soon if he did not hear from her first.
The one-bedroom apartment was suitable for his needs. It had a foyer and a narrow hall with the kitchen to the right and the living room, bathroom and bedroom farther back to the left. The living room had wood floors, a comfortable sofa, a floor lamp, a writing desk, and a television. The mattress in the bedroom was firm, but the room was hot and had no air conditioner. On the writing desk were two ballpoint pens, a yellow pad and six books standing up between bookends: two telephone books, a cookbook, a dictionary, a biography of the actress Gloria Stevens and a city guide, inside of which he found a fold-up street map and a map of the subway system. The apartment faced east toward a flattened skyline of residential rooftops, and from the window in his kitchen he could overlook the approach to the building, the rose garden and the roosting gargoyles, though the angle was too sharp to reveal more than a set of forearms or fingers grasping a cigarette.
He had arrived on a Saturday, and the next Thursday he would have a job interview for a position in the Industrial Design Division of the Berenson Corporation, a consumer product manufacturer. In his wallet he carried the company's business card, which had the address of its offices in the Conrad Building in midtown Manhattan. As an applicant, Smith had much to his credit: He was in good health, with a fresh master's degree in industrial design from a prestigious West Coast university. He was personable and confident but not carelessly optimistic about his chances. The possibility of failing did not alarm him. He was determined but not driven. He intended to set up contacts at other companies and businesses, and, in the end, if nothing worthwhile came through, he would go back to the West Coast and establish a life there.
Professionally, while looking forward to producing designs of his own creation, he was also comfortable improving existing products. Yet he possessed a unique and personal thumb, and the prospect of impressing it on the landscape of everyday design inspired him to think creatively. He viewed product development as a series of gradual modifications, many imperceptible to the untrained eye. These modest adjustments influenced everything around them, rippling outward like unseen waves of change. He preferred working on household items and believed with them he would find a niche for himself. He had assembled a portfolio of works-in-progress, which he expected to review before his interview. His most complete sketch was for a polyethylene garbage can lid, which would neither stick nor tear when yanked; a latch pried the top up as the handle was lifted, and the latch itself was detachable and could be washed separately. Another promising idea was for a dustpan that revolved on an axis, not unlike a revolving door.
As a designer, he fit comfortably within the well-known schools. He favored clarity, balance, even tones and basic shapes. He appreciated, for example, the chest of drawers in his sister's bedroom, with its straight edges and lack of trim; the austerity stressed its practicality and presented an unambiguous starting point. He relied on familiar analytical strategies: Separate an object's function from its form, its color from the material, its overall aesthetic impression from its purpose and place in the landscape of utility; then rebalance the elements, creating something new.
When commencing a design, he positioned the project beneath a mental template of geometric figures. Initially he had conceived his revolving dustpan through an image of succeeding right triangles, but as the model turned, the triangular pans failed to mesh, so he broadened the angles and tried more obtuse forms, which produced, after much revision, a hopeful diagram. He believed that even the most unruly of contraptions could be placed in context and thereby become beautiful, functional and cost-efficient. Design disclosed the here and now by constraining the sensory blur-by shaping it and using it-compelling him to connect to his world; no other technology promised to be as effective or as long-lasting.
Aside from street noises and traffic sounds, an occasional dog barking, footfalls from neighbors overhead and intermittent drilling and hammering from the apartment next door, his apartment, 4B, was quiet though oppressively warm. It was located on a long hallway, in a building with seventy-one apartments, and, although he was staying only a short time, he hoped to get to know his neighbors. While chance meetings did occur, the building mostly reverberated with missed encounters. On almost each trip into the hallway, he heard a door slam or glimpsed an indistinct figure slip across a threshold and vanish behind the resounding bolt of locks. Once, as the elevator was in motion, the cables churning, he listened but detected no other noises. Then the elevator was silent, stopped at some other floor. By the time it reached his, the car was empty. He began to feel like a traveler in a budget motel, whose fellow guests stayed to themselves in separate rooms, snugly wrapped in discrete and uniquely complicated lives. This disconnectedness troubled him at first, but, considering the gargoyles, he soon recognized an advantage to the anonymity, which shielded him from the nosiness of strangers.
He did cross paths with a few of his neighbors. On moving day, returning from the grocery, he came upon an old man in the vestibule fumbling with his keys. Smith opened the door for him, and they headed toward the elevator. The man was at least seventy, wearing a tan suit and polished brown shoes, and had difficulty walking; he had to slide his hand along the wall for support and keep an eye on his feet. Two steps led up from the lobby to the hallway where the mailboxes and elevator were situated. Confronting the challenge presented by these steps, the man paused, caught his breath, braced his hand against the wall, lifted his stiff right leg and planted the foot on the lower step, followed it more quickly with the left foot, then paused again before tackling the higher step. When the elevator arrived, Smith opened the door and waited.
"Don't," the man said. "I have to check the mail."
"No problem." Smith held the door.
"No, no, go ahead. You opened one door for me already. That's enough."
"Two's my limit," Smith joked, continuing to wait.
The man opened the dented brass door of the mailbox, removed a letter, closed and locked the mailbox, and, with his head down, trudged into the elevator and pressed the button for the fifth floor. Smith expected a word of thanks, or at least an appreciative glance, but instead the man turned to face the corner, keeping his back toward Smith, not to screen from Smith's prying eyes the contents of the letter, which he clutched with trembling hands and did not open. The man had turned, it seemed, simply to show Smith his back.
At first, Smith was angered by the undeserved snub. Then he speculated: The man might have had a problem with the light; he might have begun weeping or was afraid of catching germs or of spreading germs; perhaps he stood in the elevator that way even when alone and did not consider the posture impolite; or else he was ashamed of his frailty and wobbliness.
A more auspicious exchange had taken place earlier that day soon after his arrival. As he got off the elevator, lugging his bags and portfolio, panting and perspiring, a family approached from down the hall: a girl in a pink dress; a boy with a tie and pomaded hair; a father, stocky, paunchy, balding, with a bulbous nose; and the mother, who came last, having lingered to lock the apartment door. Taller, thinner and younger than her husband, she had long brown hair, a buoyant smile and green eyes that squinted out of cheerfulness. To Smith, at first glance, the two made an incongruous couple. She appeared to be about thirty years old; he was over forty. They introduced themselves: He was Edgar, she was Carin. Edgar remarked how difficult it was moving to a new home. It had taken her over a year to adjust after she had moved in, Carin added, and then she offered assistance: They lived in apartment 4F; if Smith needed anything, he should feel free to ask; if she could help, she would. Smith was grateful but explained that the only task remaining was to unpack and take a shower. The adults laughed. Edgar and Carin spoke with foreign accents, his thick, hers hardly noticeable. The young boy, maybe eight years old, stood in front of his father while the older man's husky hands gripped his son's shoulders. The boy's clean and curious face looked up at Smith. The shy and impatient girl, older than her brother, went inside the elevator, where her parents and brother joined her. As if seeing the family off on a voyage, Smith waved through the small porthole window in the elevator door and kept waving even as the cables groaned and started lowering the car.
That first evening he stayed in and watched television. It was extremely hot and sticky, and to stay cool he moved as little as possible.
Continues...
Excerpted from THE BOY IN THE BOX by LEE J. NELSON Copyright © 2003 by Lee J. Nelson
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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