Be Brave Project, Day 21: Weirder and Weirder, The NYC Real Estate Gods Smile (Capriciously?) Upon Me

Yesterday I got up late, for a person whose exciting Saturday night consisted of chocolate chip cookies, a liter of milk, and a Peter Bogdanovich film. Like any rational human being I do usually try to avoid seeing PB films, just as I try to avoid looking at PB himself when he squats malevolently in his seat at MoMA screenings, wearing his peanut-faced scowl and milliner's eye glasses, with his poor re-constructed wife by his side. Rather creeps me out.

But The Last Picture Show is an excellent film, with a very young Jeff Bridges exuding sunny charm all over a somewhat thankless role, and I'd already had the dvd out from the library for two weeks, so I broke out the chocolate chip cookies and got down to it.

However, sugar combined with the black and white (literally and figuratively) view of people trapped, diminishing within the rigidly low expectations of their community: I had a fitful uncomfortable night's slumber. I dreamt Peanut Face was a wooden dummy sitting on my lap, with frighteningly long arms and fingers that crept along the floor. When I awakened, very late, I found I'd received a phone call.

Hadn't heard the phone ring.

The call was from Rebecca, a woman who fitfully attends my Home AA group. I always notice when she is there because a) she looks like Lisa Kudrow from Friends, b) she wears some marvellously simple clothes, which I know cost the earth, and c) she's a writer at one of the influential women's magazines. I like Rebecca because she has a wry, intelligent way of talking, and a few weeks ago she helped Jackie--another ex-drunk, the only person currently under treatment for breast cancer who's doing the Tour de Pink bike marathon this year--get some over-due assistance from her sponsors. Rebecca placed one call, mentioned her magazine's name, and. . .suddenly Jackie's bike is getting customization out the ass. As it were.

Rebecca's message states that she and her husband own a duplex on the UWS, one block from Central Park. They do not live there since having children, as it's too small--yet there are some of the typical impossible NYC rules around the place, and they're not allowed to rent it out. But of course, they have been, and their current tenants have been transferred to LA. So here's the big ol' question: Would I be interested in renting this 2 bedroom duplex apartment, with 1 and 1/2 baths, dishwasher and central a/c? For less than 2 grand a month?

Well, to be perfectly honest, I'd prefer to buy a furnished mews house near the King's Road in London--but lacking that option--HELL YES I'D BE INTERESTED.

Dishwasher + Duplex???!! Dreamy! I could put dishes in the dishwasher, run upstairs, wave my arms around and shriek in high excitement, then compose myself and elegantly descend the stairwell a la Lana Turner in her MGM years. I could do a great deal of that.

You stick around AA long enough in this town, and you get goddamn connected!

The downside of course is that it's not tremendously legal. But there's not legal (happens all the time), and there's not legal (you're a warped freakshow who deserves to be prematurely cremated). In NYC, this rental situation apparently goes under the former category. I've called a few friends--profoundly respectable people, darling--and almost all of them have lived in a similar situation in NYC. Rebecca's out of town, but I could look at the place next week.

The nasty part is that I'm supposed to send in my new lease THIS week.

So today I went to look at the building. And I.M. Pei on a stick, it was freaking ugly. Tiny little windows and that grievous burnt orange sort of brick that you just know saved someone some money. The tenants I saw didn't strike me as very prepossessing: One guy was standing outside of the building, and he handed me a business card in which he proposes to "Hi pressure wash" my entryway. Well, really (she clutches her pearls). But. . .there's a concierge at the door. Mm Yeah. And have I mentioned the words dishwasher + duplex???

So I've got 72 hours to somehow figure this mess out.

P.S. I did some brave stuff today, regarding both work and credit, but will talk about that tomorrow. I am suffering from a marked sense-of-humor malfunction since I got off of the phone with Capital One.