Mytro: Nayzun

Chapter 1: Little Bit

The old man thumbed his rosary as he watched river of trucks and cars pass his front stoop. He was wearing an old hooded hunter's jacket, faded at the seams, the flannel bare and shiny from years use and reuse, season after season. His face was hidden under a soft plaid hat and he tipped it up to get a better look at the sidewalk in front of his apartment building.

Although it was the middle of April he had a hard time staying warm and he wore layers of wool clothes until well into the summer. It was dark out but the air was soft and pleasant, a sign that the buds would soon burst on the trees lining the side streets and the crocuses, thin and green now as chives, would pop into bloom in a few days. The moon was nearly full and cast a brightness on the scene that washed out the neon signs and headlights for control of the sidewalk.

He had a long face, long nose, bushy eyebrows and no beard. He shaved every morning, a habit he picked up in the navy and never dropped. This morning he had nicked his chin and a small piece of tissue was still stuck there. He rarely looked in the mirror.

The old man was tired. He hoped they would come back soon. He hoped he could leave soon.

He leaned against the iron fence that protected the front door of his building. It was here where the superintendent left the trash that stank all summer, forcing old man to walk the three blocks up to the park where, until last year, he sat with his little dog and watched the city and the clouds. This winter his dog was too lame to climb down the stairs and he was to tired to walk to the park so he stayed here, tending to his silent ministry, enveloped too often in the stink of garbage.

He would carry his dog to the park this summer, he had decided around Christmas that year, and had even found a ripped dog carrier in the trash around the corner. He sewed it up with grey thread and now it sat empty near his bed. Until it got hot, however, he would climb the 40 stairs down to the street and keep watch alone and let his little dog do its business in the massive expanse of the hangar where, overnight, all of the droppings disappeared, cleaned by some invisible hand. He still had plumbing for himself, though, some sort of strange solution that seems to be embedded directly into the lunar-grey floor of his strange apartment. He gave up trying to understand the place years before after the time he took the drain trap off of the sink and dropped a penny down the pipe, hoping it would ping or bounce, indicating a bend in the pipe. It never did.

It was eleven o'clock and the bells of Our Lady Of Angels were ringing over Sunset Park. He finished his rosary, put it away in a deep pocket, and turned to climb up to his apartment. Each of the three floors had a separate smells. The first floor, where an old woman lived, stank of trash and cats. The apartment next to her had no scent, but was, until recently, was filled with a family of Mexicans who used to make the stairwell smell like joyfully-prepared grilled pork. Each week the woman, Mrs. Garcia, gave the old man lunches to eat. He loved the carnitas and tortillas but didn't care for the jalapeños they often put on the plate as a garnish. Even Little Bit wouldn't eat them so he threw them away, wrapping them in newspaper so the Mexican family, the Garcias, wouldn't be insulted if they saw the food being wasted. They had moved out on February 1st and a single man moved in, someone who never said hello to anyone and who never cooked. The old man had learned long ago that if new neighbors didn't make an effort to meet you then they weren't worth speaking to. The old man tried to meet everyone in the building, if only to ensure they understood he was a private person and never invited anyone inside his apartment. He wanted them to know that he had spent years alone in that apartment and he wanted them to sense that he would probably die there.

The old man shivered.

He relished these smells when he could. As he grew older he noticed he couldn't smell much anymore and anything good and warm and tasty was alright with him. The second floor was a treat. Two Chinese families lived there and cooked fish and garlic and used strange sauces that filled the hall with scents like the ones he remembered when his ship took leave in Hong Kong. He lingered there for a moment. They were cooking fish today. It was rich and deep, a smell that you could bite and chew. He took a deep breath and climbed another flight.

His floor was the slowest going. By the time his worn sneakers hit the landing, his little dog, mostly deaf but still able to hear his key in the lock, was up and snuffling at the crack under his door.

His floor smelled like wood polish because young people lived here with a new baby and they cared for their apartment. His apartment smelled like space, or at least what he imagined space smelled like.

His dog, Little Bit, barked.

"Just me, Little Bit," he said. "Just me."

The old man fished his key out of his jacket pocket. He dropped it and it clinked on the floor. He bent, slowly, to pick it up. His legs felt like lead recently and his back no better. He hoped that whatever they had planned for him would come soon.

He opened the door and it squeaked in slowly. In front of him was a fake wall, wallpapered in a floral pattern. There was a small table there where he kept a little mail and an old rotary dial phone that wasn't plugged into anything. There was a power outlet there but it also wasn't connected. The only outlet was near his bed and it was connected to a surge protector he had bought a few years before after an old four-way plug nearly caught fire.

The fake wall was about ten feet square and hid just enough from delivery men and busy bodies to keep him safe. He hadn't had a visitor, even a solicitor, in years. He hadn't invited anyone inside years. Behind the false wall - all around it, really - was the massive hangar. The light from the hallway barely touched the first dozen feet of the gigantic room. Far off in the distance faint blue lights hung from the ceiling. The sound of a train, echoing like a memory, burrowed through the quiet distance. Little Bit the dog shivered as the old man lifted her up to his chest.

That's right. It smelled like space. Or at least what he thought space would smell like. Cold, like iron ore, like the hold of a ship that carried him across the ocean years before, like dust.

Little Bit came up to him, snuffling. He lifted her into his arms and hugged her.

"You're a cold little girl, right? A little coldie Yorkie."

She calmed at his touch.

He slept on a small bed and he had a separate room - a shack, really - that held his bathroom. There were three pipes coming out of the wall that were still connected to the mains. Hot and cold ran fine but the waste pipe was backing up and he couldn't bring the super in to fix it. He had to be careful what he flushed. He had a little food that he kept on a metal table he stripped and repainted years before. He didn't need a refrigerator because, for some reason, things could stay fresh in the steady 70 degrees of the massive hangar. He pulled off his jacket and hung it on a wooden coat rack that had belonged his his grandfather. He sat down on his single chair in front of a wooden table that he bought with his wife a month after their wedding day. A pale blue light far above him winked on and then turned to a brighter white, bringing the pocked surface of the table - an age of scratches, circles, and scuffs coming into sharp focus. The light was helpful. He could sit and read at the table or listen to a battery powered radio.

He had a wooden bed that he made up tight as a drum every morning, "ship shape" as they used to say in the navy. Now it looked inviting. But he wasn't sleepy.

He had some library books that a boy delivered to him. He picked one up - Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a book about mysteries and strange castles. He chucked it back down onto the table.

The dog fell asleep in his lap and he transferred her to the bed. She grumbled in her dreams, her legs kicking slightly as he lay her down on the bedspread. He checked the time. It was late. Almost midnight. He took off his shoes, lay down in bed, and dreamt of a time when he shared this apartment - back then only two rooms with plenty of light and parquet floors - with his wife and young child. He woke in tears once in the night and then tumbled back into sleep. The little dog gruffled and huffed in its sleep, its small paws running nowhere against the covers.

He hoped that whatever they had planned for him would come soon.