Queens

“I guess the Lord must be in New York City.”

Harry Nilsson

I moved into a run-down apartment in Queens almost a year ago. The toilet leaked. After the tenant below me came upstairs to complain about her bathroom being dripped on, I put a towel around the base. There’s been one there ever since.

A month ago, Philip Philips moved across the hall from me. Stupid name, I know. He knows too. He doesn’t care, though. I told him it was like being a boy named Sue, and when he gave me a confused look, I explained that it was an old Johny Cash song about a father naming his son Sue so that the boy would have to grow up tough. Why is that, he asked. Because it’s a girl name, and the father wouldn’t be there to raise the boy. After that, when someone made fun of his name, he told them it was like being boy named Sue, and they would invariably laugh.

Philips was of the famous Philips electronics family, but he didn’t like being under the shadow of his father, so he moved to Queens to be out on his own. I told him it was like when Emilio Estevez changed his last name, because he didn’t want to be under the shadow of his father and brother, Martin and Charlie Sheen. Philip didn’t know that either. He said he didn’t watch television. I told him that was ridiculous. His father made TVs. He said he read books instead.

Philip had no electronics in his apartment, save an alarm clock. He got a job working at the subway terminal a block from our building. Most days, when I got off the train after work, he was sitting in the glass cage, watching to make sure kids didn’t jump the turnstile. Sometimes, after I walked out of the terminal, I would run back with my hood over my head and pretend to make a break for the train. Just before he caught up to me, I would turn around and laugh. That actually only worked twice, because I didn’t have money to own more than two hooded sweatshirts.