must do it in the dark. I’ve never seen him in the dining room. I hear him down in his apartment. But nobody knows his phone number or his e-mail. I go down and I ring his bell, I knock on his door, and he don’t answer. I send him a letter, and he don’t write back. So I call you people, and you don’t do bupkis. And it’s not just me and Edith. Everybody on his floor has to breathe that stink. It’s like poison gas or nuclear radiation. It’s a good thing nobody here’s having children anymore. They’d be born with one arm or no nose or a tongue that don’t reach the front teeth or with their bowels up in their chests and they’ll do everything out their ears and talk with their belly buttons and think outta brains located in what they sit down on. Close your eyes and see it. You try it. You try talking to him.”
John Smith and Nestor looked at each other… nonplussed. Then John Smith managed a smile and said, “I don’t even know his name.”
“His name is Nicolai,” said Lil. “His last name starts with K but after that it’s all v’s and k’s and y’s and z’s. A collision at an intersection they sound like they had.”
John Smith and Nestor looked at each other. They didn’t need to say it out loud. “Nicolai? Not Igor?”
“Do me a favor,” John Smith said. “Take us there, to his apartment, so we’ll know exactly which one.”
“Hahhh—a guide you don’t need!” piped up Edith. “You got maybe a nose?”
“Edith’s right,” said Lil. “But I’ll take you there anyway. Too long already we been waiting for somebody from the Environment.”
So all four, including clink clatter clatter clink Edith with her walker, got on the elevator, and Lil led them to “Nicolai’s” door on the second level’s catwalk. Beside the door was a two-foot-high metal statue of a tall man extending his right arm, palm-down, in a salute.
John Smith leaned toward Nestor and said, “That’s Chairman Mao, except that Chairman Mao was more like five-two. Right there he’s six-five. Igor is… weird.”
::::::How does he know these things?::::::
The smell—it was strong, all right… but not unpleasant, if you asked Nestor. It was turpentine. He had always liked the smell of turpentine… but maybe if you had to live next door on this catwalk and smell somebody else’s turpentine fumes day and night, you might get fume-whipped pretty fast.
John Smith walked past six or seven doors on the catwalk this way… and six or seven that way… and returned to “Nicolai’s” apartment.
“Yeah, it’s pretty strong everywhere,” said John Smith. He looked at Lil. “We have to get inside there and find out exactly what the source is before we can do anything. How can we get in? Any ideas?”
“The manager’s got a key to every apartment.”
“Where’s the manager?”
“Hahhhh!” said Edith. “The manager’s never here!”
“Where is he?” said John Smith.
“Hahhhh! Who knows? So Phyllis fills in and covers for him. She says she likes it. Phyllis Easy to Please is what I call her.”
“Who’s Phyllis?”
“She’s a tenant,” said Lil.
“A tenant fills in for the manager?”
Lil said, “A manager here’s like a super—a superintendent—in New York. A janitor with a title is what the manager is.”
Nestor spoke up for the first time. “You’re from New York?”
Edith, not Lil, answered the question. “Hahhh! Everybody here is from New York, or Long Island—the whole town moved down here. Who do you think lives in these places, people from Florida, maybe?”
“So does Phyllis have the key?”
“If anybody’s got the key,” said Lil, “Phyllis got the key. Want me to call her?” She took out her cell phone.
“By all means!” said John Smith.
“Nicolai—she don’t think he’s fifty-five in the first place. Phyllis don’t,” said Edith. “It ends up, he’s got to go to the office sometimes. Phyllis knows what he looks like. He’s got a big mustache goes out like this, but I haven’t seen him in a long time. You got to be fifty-five and no pets and no children to buy a condo.”
Lil had already turned her back for privacy. The one thing Nestor heard her say clearly was “You sitting down? You ready for this?… The Environment’s here.”
Lil turned toward them, closing her cell phone. She said to John, “She’s coming up! She can’t believe the Environment’s here, either.”
In no time a tall, bony old woman—Phyllis—arrived. She looked at John Smith and Nestor with a long face. Lil introduced her