::: SKIDROW PENTHOUSE :::

I thought of Margaret in Amsterdam, a stout middle-aged African-American woman who made hideous flowered muumuus and exported them to the States. I’d found her ad on a bulletin board at the library.

Since I’d arrived in Holland I’d had several homes, all of them temporary, but best of all, free. I stayed with my friend Xiang and her boss until Xiang fired me from my job selling make-up in the Magna Plaza. My new friend Candy, a fellow waitress from Katy Blue, had just moved with her sister into a closet-sized unheated attic room with barely enough space for them, let alone me. And my current living situation with my cousin had to end as his roommate was coming back from vacation. As the next wave hadn’t appeared, my Dutch couch surfing days were momentarily over.

So there I sat on the overstuffed couch in Margaret’s home, pretending to admire the neon tent-sized dresses draped over her sewing table.

“They’re very....colorful,” I said with a tight smile.

“You like them?” Margaret asked, straightening and fondling the bulky fabric. She wore a stiff mustard dress that drifted along her rolls of fat to float just above her ankles, and a brown cardigan.

“Yes...you said there’s only one bedroom?” I asked, looking around the tiny living room. The wall-to-wall carpeting was dusty pink, and the colonial-style furniture was covered in lace doilies, including the television set. Ornately embroidered cushions lined the couch, and on the wall above it was a big ominous black wooden cross. Her sewing machine was tucked away in a tiny alcove at the back of the room. French doors with heavy lace curtains separated the living room from the hallway.

“Yes, but I sleep here. The bedroom’s yours. I lock this room during the day, I’ve been stolen from before,” she said.

“Of course,” I mumbled, getting up and peering into the unlit bedroom. A high full-sized bed covered in a frilly bedspread filled almost the entire space with a narrow dresser squeezed in the corner.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a photographer.” I gave her my dream answer. Without qualifiers. I didn’t think she’d take too kindly to the fact that I’d just gotten laid off from Katy Blue and was currently unemployed.

“How long are you staying in Amsterdam?” Margaret asked. She stood uncomfortably close behind me, nervously fidgeting with her hands. Her cloud of rose perfume surrounded me.

“For as long as I can, I love it here.” I glanced at her dingy colorless kitchen. The apartment was ugly and dark and stank of mothballs, and Margaret and I certainly weren’t going to be friends, but it was cheap and available immediately.

“So what do you think?” she asked curtly. “Do you want it?”

“Yes.”

“When are you moving in?”

“Tonight, if that’s okay. Around seven?”

“Fine, I’ll give you the keys then.”

We shook hands and I went back to my cousin’s place to pack. My cousin and I returned slightly after seven. Margaret buzzed us in the building and we hauled my backpack and duffel bag up three flights of stairs. I knocked on her door. The eyehole piece flickered but the door remained closed. I knocked louder. “Margaret? It’s Shirley.”

The door opened as far as the chain would allow, and Margaret’s fleshy face peered through the crack. “Who’s that?” she asked, her dark brown eyes glaring sideways at my cousin.

‘That’s Howin, my cousin, he’s helping me move.” I looked back and made a sorry-I-don’t-know-what-the-fuck’s-going-on-either face at Howin.

“He can’t come in,” she said firmly. My cousin was your typical slacker teenager, with long hair in a messy ponytail and a smattering of facial hair and pimples. He was going through a mild Rastafarian phase and was attired in a loose off-white caftan-like shirt, khakis and sandals. He reeked of patchouli and pot but he was hardly menacing.

“He’s not staying, he’s just helping me move,” I said.

“No visitors.”

“But he’s just...”

“I said no visitors.”

Howin had put down my bag and was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. “I’m sorry Howin. But thanks a lot for everything. I’ll call you later.”

Howin left, Margaret opened the door, and I dragged my monstrous ever-expanding backpack over the threshold. She stood in the kitchen with her arms crossed, her lips pressed in a thin hard line. I pulled in my bags and closed the door. I was angry and holding back tears and couldn’t even look at her face. I wanted to leave, but where would I go? I hesitated briefly before moving my bags into the bedroom.

“No visitors,” she repeated, standing in the bedroom doorway. “Even when I’m not home. I’ve been robbed before.”

“Okay. I heard you the first time.” I closed the door and had a good muffled scream, face down on the bed. Then I took a deep sigh and sat up. I’d just stay until I found somewhere else to live. It wouldn’t be forever. I slowly started unpacking my bags. I heard light knocking.

“Do you have the rent?” Margaret asked through the closed door.

“Just a minute.” I emptied my purse of my meager savings and opened the door. Margaret sat on the couch watching Dynasty on the TV. I handed her the folded bills and waited while she painstakingly counted them, with a finger lick between each bill. “Can I make a quick phone call?” I asked.

“No phone calls,” she said, stuffing the money into the pocket of her cardigan and focusing on the TV screen.

“At all? But I’ll pay for my part of the phone bill.”

“No. The last girl left me with a big bill. And she never paid it.”

“Then I can only get calls?”

“No. I don’t want strangers calling here.”

“I see.” I was beginning to see bright fiery red. And dense black smoke. I went back in my room and closed the door. I had to get out of there. I put on my coat, grabbed my purse and marched back into the living room. “Can I have the keys please?”

“They’re in the kitchen.” She glanced over at me. “Where are you going?”

“I’m meeting a friend.”

“Be back by eleven. I don’t want to be woken up in the middle of the night.” I thought about arguing, then decided against it. I grabbed the keys off the counter and left.

* * *

The next morning I awoke to sounds of Margaret in the kitchen. The shower was behind a door that led into the bedroom but the toilet was across the hall. I decided to wait to use the toilet until she left. I didn’t want to have to cross paths with her unless absolutely necessary. I put on a T-shirt and boxers, climbed back into bed and waited. But she didn’t seem to be going anywhere, and I had piercing pains in my belly, so I finally crept out of my room.

“Shirley?” she called out when my door opened.

“Yes?” I stopped in mid crouch.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yes,” I said before running into the bathroom and slamming the door. I yanked down my boxers almost falling on the padded pink toilet seat. I sat down with relief and closed my eyes. When I opened them I saw small lined note cards hand-printed in black ink, taped on the walls. I began reading, first with curiousity, then with a sick feeling in my gut. Proverbs 1:24, "Because I have called, and ye refused, I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I will also laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you." Hundreds of hellfire and brimstone quotes from the Bible papered all three walls and the door, from floor to ceiling. I shut my eyes. Just one month, I told myself.

Later, showered and dressed, I sat on the bed looking at my map of Amsterdam, deciding which restaurants to hit up next for a job.

“Shirley?” Margaret said, knocking on my door.

“Yes?”

“Do you want some breakfast?”

“No thanks.”

“I’m going to the store, do you need anything?”

“No thanks.”

“Okay, then I’ll see you in a little while.”

She was nice to me that week, and I began to relax. I could understand her paranoia after being ripped off and robbed. Only she didn’t seem to have any friends, the phone which she locked up in the living room when she wasn’t home, never rang. And she seemed to crave my company, talking outside my door until I had to open it.

By the end of the week, I still hadn’t found a job but I’d had a few promising maybe-next-month’s, so I was hopeful. Candy, who’d also gotten laid off, had found an ad on a lamppost for a Dutch version of the Clit Club. They were looking for go-go dancers. We had to audition for them on Friday night. I didn’t know how to tell Margaret that I’d be breaking her curfew, so I said nothing and returned to her place a little after midnight.

I turned the key in the lock but the door refused to open. I tried forcing it, then knocked loudly. I could see the eyepiece flashing. I called out, “It’s Shirley, open the door please!” After a few minutes she opened the door, leaving the chain on.

“It’s after midnight,” she said through the crack.

“I know. I’m sorry. I had to work.”

“I thought you said you were a photographer.”

“I am. I just need to make some extra money right now, so I’m working at a club. Will you let me in? Please?”

“You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie. Look, just open the door, I’ll get my bags and move out right now.”

She closed the door and re-opened it standing in the doorway, blocking my path. She wore a long bathrobe patterned in roses. “You woke me up.”

“I’m sorry,” I said waiting for her to move. But she stood her ground. “Excuse me.” I pushed past her and went into my room and began shoving clothes and toiletries into my bags.

She stood in the open door, arms crossed over her chest. “What are you doing?”

“I told you, I’m moving out.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.”

“I told you you had to be in by eleven.”

I didn’t answer. I just kept packing. And Margaret stood there, staring. Finally I zipped up the duffel bag, pulled the drawstring on my backpack and dragged both of them over to the front door.

“The keys are on the bed,” I said, opening the deadbolt.

She reached out and locked it again. “You can’t go.”

“Yes I can!” I undid the lock and pulled open the door.

She slammed it. “Where will you go?”

“None of your business,” I said, opening it again and tossing my duffel bag into the hall. I didn’t know where I was going. I stepped in the hall, pulling at my backpack. She grabbed the other end and pulled it back in. “Let go!” I yelled. We struggled until I managed to get the bulk of it into the hall.

“It’s after midnight. You don’t have anywhere to go,” she said, and then pulled my bag back into the apartment. “You have to stay.”

Sharon Kwik