The Corridor                                                                                  by Michael Jackman                                                       (Excerpt from the novel.) I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN a procrastinator, and at the very last minute I had to get serious about finding a new place to live---I had told Henry I would be out of his apartment by the end of November, which was two days away. I needed cheap digs in a hurry. I woke up early the next morning and walked six blocks to a donut shop and picked up the local paper to scan the real estate classifieds. My ready money amounted to just over $400. With that in mind, nothing clicked as I slid my finger down the columns of fine print. After an hour of solid research, only one ad had been tentatively circled. The price was right and the listing was no-nonsense: No calls, open house 10 AM - 3 PM, 1 bdm, $200 and 1 mo. Sec. 2___ Caniff, Hmtrmk. Come to rear. With still a few hours before work, I decided to go have a look. I had no choice! oOoOoOo I pulled over and parked on a side street in Hamtramck. As I got out of the car, the mournful horn of a freight train sounded, punctuating the roar of the nearby freeway. I walked up the cracked sidewalk and found the building, a three- story flat crowded in among others. It was sided with ugly shingles designed to look like brick. I cut between the building on a narrow walkway and came out into the yard, a patch of sickly grass that spread five meters square, parceled off by old steel fencing. Beyond it lay an asphalt alley stuck with telephone poles. A dog raced back and forth in the next yeard, barking at me. I looked up at the butt end of the building and saw an enclosed wooden staircase leading to the upper flats. The door to the ground flat lay open inside. Rapping on the door frame, I walked in. Inside the apartment, a fat man stood on a stepladder, painting the dirty walls white. "You come to see the apartment?" he asked through a thick Polish accent. He stepped carefully down to the floor and shook my hand with his thick fingers. His name was Stan, and his breath smelled terrible. He showed me around the place, what little there was. The bedroom was a charmless box with just enough space for the closet to open without hitting a single bed. The dim window faced a brick wall above a narrow walkway. The living room stank of fresh paint, with some tattered drapes covering unwashed windows, which faced another brick wall. I tried a door in the corner of the room, but the knob just kept turning. The door wouldn't budge. "Oh, that door doesn't open," Stan warned, coming over quickly, putting his hand on my shoulder. I backed off and Stan continued, "Oh, there is a very old woman back there. She lives in the front of the flat. She stays inside much of the time." He laughed a bit. He was starting to give me the creeps. I walked back into the kitchen and looked inside the cupboard. Furtive roaches---even a few albinos---scurried away from the light. I peeked in the bathroom and saw a dingy tub, a standup sink with two spigots, for hot and cold water. The pot looked grungy. The apartment was chilly in the autumn morning, so I asked Stan about the heat. "The gas is not on right now. It will be on in about a week." My eyes widened. "It will be on very soon. The weather is not so cold right now. Just wear an extra sweater." He grinned a few chins wrinkling over his scarf. "Of course, you'll have to have Edison turn on the electricity." 'This place is a nightmare!' I thought. Still, I had to get out of Henry's hotel room, so I handed Stan the first and last months' rent. He wrote out a receipt on the back of an envelope, folding the keys inside. I drove downtown and requested juice at the utility office. They told me to expect to be on the grid within 24 hours. I drove to the record shop to go to work. oOoOoOo For those who do not know what Hamtramck is, some explanation is necessary. It's an industrial city right off the Chrysler Freeway. In fact, it's bounded by the City of Detroit on all sides. After the turn of the century, hundreds of thousands moved to Detroit because of the rapid industrialization, and the city began to extend its boundaries. Between 1900 and 1930, Detroit's population more than quintupled while the city expanded geographically, swallowing up surrounding towns and villages. Hamtramck, however, remained an independent city, incorporated in 1922. The vast numbers of Poles who moved to Hamtramck in the tens and twenties made it the city with the highest percentage of foreign-born residents in the United States. So much for the sociology. To a certain extent, the Hamtramck I moved to was a white ethnic enclave in a city that was more than three-quarters African-American. Hamtramck remained 80 percent Polish-American. Like most industrial towns, it was prosperous when manufacturing was booming, and particularly hard hit during even a mild recession. I've heard tell that Hamtramck has more bars per capita than any other city in the United States. It sure seemed like it. What else would you expect from a working class Polish-American city? On the corner near my lousy apartment, there were three bars. Up the street, though, competition was fierce. At Dr. Dave's Waiting Room, there were 33-cent bottles of beer, dollar tubs of popcorn, 25-cent electronic darts, and usually a good cover band, with no cover charge. The usual zoning laws don't even seem to apply in H-town. Bars sit serenely on the corners of residential neighborhoods, a jarring sight to the outsider. oOoOoOo That day, after work, I was covered in dust and filth. My shirt stank of sweat and my hands were grimy from old boxes of 8-track tapes our buyer had picked up for the record shop. After hours of wiping decades of dust off of shrink wrap, I punched out and started picking up boxes from Henry's places, and stuffing a little cheap furniture into my Chevette my mother had donated. After a full day at work, this was exhausting. It's a humbling experience to realize that your life's possessions can fit inside a 1982 economy car. Rumbling along the Chrysler Freeway, with no way to see through the rearview mirror, with your life packed in and the hatchback open to accommodate your bookshelf with the customary swatch of red flapping on the end, you can feel pretty destitute. Furthermore, I had never lived in the city. Sure, I hadn't grown up in Oakland County or anything, but I realized that I had been pretty sheltered for all twenty years of my life. I pulled off the freeway onto the service drive and stopped at a red light. A car pulled up next to me, an old beater, and the black driver glared at me seriously, looking a bit hostile. I looked away. I glanced back and he was still looking right at me. Why was he looking at me like that? I narrowed my eyes and stared back. We stared at each other during the uncomfortably long red light. This was some macho stuff! I broke character and fell into a puzzled expression, finally just giving up on the whole game. I started smiling and waving at him. He smiled and started waving too. He really seemed delighted, busting out in surprised laughter. The light changed and we drove off slowly. I felt a little bit better about moving into the city. When I had tossed the last of my boxes on the living room floor, I checked the power in the bathroom, but it wasn't on yet. I checked the stove. No gas hissed to life. I couldn't even boil a cup of tea! There I was, shivering, filthy, unable to take a hot bath. I unpacked and the sunlight sank away, leaving me in the gloom of night. I sat on my bed, trying to read by candlelight. After a few hours, the smell of paint overpowered me, giving me an awful headache. I tried opening the windows in the place, but most of them had been painted shut many times over. I did manage to open some windows, including my bedroom window. I bundled up in some blankets by the window, the cold but fresh night air clearing my head. Suddenly, I heard a male voice in the next room. I found a heavy stick and grasped it firmly. There were two voices talking now. They were laughing behind the wall, in the bathroom where I had left the window open. I walked softly into the living room, peering around the doorway at the bathroom door in the kitchen. The voices stopped. I paused a moment and heard some singing. I groaned at my stupidity. I walked into the bathroom, the stick hanging slack by my side, and looked at the radio playing. I had plugged it in earlier to test the juice. I pulled the chain and the light bulb popped on, swinging back and forth, casting dirty shadows. I flipped the kitchen light on and legions of cockroaches flew into the corners. I looked at my dirty hands and decided to take a bath at last. As spur of the moment water heaters go, I'd say the smart money is on Mr. Coffee. The microwave was cumbersome and inefficient, taking ten minutes to slightly warm a bowl of water to lukewarm, a few degrees above room temperature. It made Mr. Coffee seem like a gurgling hot spring, handily filling up a bucket with piping hot water. I stripped down and stood in the tub, sponging myself vigorously, topping it all off with a brief but glad shower of warm water as I poured the bucket of water over me. Even after dressing in my warm clothes, it took almost an hour to shake off the chill. I plugged in my space heater and huddled over it. It was one of those space heaters that would automatically shut off just as you were warming up. It drove me mad. I walked out the back door onto the landing and looked out at the night. The dog next door would bark at the occasional old car rumbling through the alley. While I stood there, I noticed a stack of envelopes sitting in a pile on the battered wooden floor. I picked them up and took them to the kitchen table. They were all addressed to Stan from the utility company. They were gas bills for over two thousand dollars---past due---with a shutoff notice for last week. I grabbed the radio and retreated to my room. Reality sank in. The place was small, cold, stinky, filthy, and with an army of roaches and exposed wiring. Why, that cheap paint Stan had slapped on the walls only made it more miserable. 'Just wear a sweater,' he had said. That guy had smiled at me because he was going to step into his warm car $400 ahead and sleep wrapped in a toasty bed like a pig-in-a-blanket. I fumed on my bed, drinking a beer. "Wassup, dude?" With a jolt I looked at the window and saw a glassy-eyed man with long blonde hair folding his arms over the windowsill, peeking into my room. "Hi," I said. Who was this? "Hey, man. Want a drink?" He held out a bottle of cheap wine. "No thanks, I've got my own." He squinted, then looked right through me. "There was...there was a shooting over on St. Aubin this week. That's where I live, over on St. Aubin." "Uh-huh." "This neighborhood is getting mighty rough." "What are you driving at?" "Uh...nothing, I guess. I'm just waiting for my friends. I got tossed out of the bar." "That's why you're out there?" "Yeah." He looked dull for a moment, then he brightened up. "Hey, man, you got a tape player? I got some bad-ass Van Halen tunes in my pocket." "No, that's alright." "Cool." After looking back at me with a few empty smiles he ambled off down the walkway. The radio stopped the music and a cheerful announcer came on. The weather was expected to be unseasonably cold that night. I huddled in the bed near the space heater as the wind picked up outside.