Stranger in the Night
New York Observed
Stranger in the Night
By MAURA KELLY
Published: January 23, 2009
The New York Times
I was brushing my teeth around 11 o’clock the other Sunday night when someone rang my doorbell.
The digitized chime approximates the booming gong that might sound in an old horror movie at the moment the innocent girl dashes into the haunted mansion in the middle of a terrible storm after her car runs out of gas.
Which is to say the sound can be pretty spooky under the best of circumstances, and hearing it so late at night sent a chill down my spine.
I wasn’t expecting anyone. The U.P.S. man would never come at that time, and it was far too inappropriate an hour for any of the religious proselytizers who sometimes stop by my building urging me to find God.
I crept to my bedroom window, which overlooks the street, being careful to leave the light off as I peeked through the curtain. In the darkness, I saw a strange man in a white baseball hat looking up at me. I shrank back in terror, wondering whether he had seen me. A moment later, I seemed to have gotten my answer: The bell rang again.
If the person was someone who knew me, wouldn’t he have called out something like “Hey, Maura, it’s me! I need to talk!” But really, who would be looking for me at 11 p.m.? Many wonderful people populate my neighborhood in deep Brooklyn, but they are largely family types, and none are in the habit of coming by for a chat, especially not unannounced late at night.
The mysterious visitor also could not have been my incredibly sweet landlord, who would have tried my cellphone if he needed to reach me. He lives just below me, in a brownstone where I enjoy the best apartment by far I’ve ever had in New York, a floor-through with two skylights and four huge windows, trees visible from every one of them. Even better, at $1,075 a month, it is the cheapest one-bedroom I’ve rented in the five boroughs.
I had taken the place under duress. The lease on my old apartment was up, and I had no other options. My main concern was the area. I’d never even lived in Brooklyn before — only Manhattan and, very briefly, the other “safe” borough, Queens. Could I really live in a neighborhood full of liquor stores and dollar shops?
The streets seemed peaceful enough when I walked around to check out the environs. I saw people with friendly faces sitting on the stoops, window boxes filled with flowers, cheerful-looking children riding bikes through the local park. But would I feel O.K. walking home from the subway at night?
I voiced my concerns to my landlord, who promised that if I really didn’t like the area, he’d be lenient about letting me out of my yearlong lease, adding that he was sure I’d feel perfectly safe.
And I had. Maybe a little too safe, because as I grew more comfortable in the neighborhood, I did all sorts of irresponsible things. I strolled home way past midnight on weekends. I wore low-cut tops and short skirts. Sometimes I even ran from the shower to my bedroom with no clothes on. Granted, the curtains were usually closed, but not always.
It was no wonder a rapist was after me!
Telling myself I was probably overreacting, I called my landlord, who promptly went outside to see if the suspect was still around. No dice. I asked him if there was a note on my door, or any sign that Jack-the-Ringer had decent intentions. There was nothing.
My landlord told me someone probably just had the wrong address. But if that had been the case, wouldn’t the person have called up to me and said something like, “Hey, is this the right place?”
I telephoned the local police, hoping, really, that they’d tell me I was being ridiculous. No such luck. “Fifty percent chance it was nothing,” said the officer on the other end of the line. “Fifty percent chance it was a psycho looking for trouble. You know what the neighborhood is like.”
“Yes!” I replied. “And I’ve never felt a bit unsafe in a year living here!”
“Come on down to the precinct any time if you want to see the stats on assaults, murders, rapes,” he said. “All that fun stuff.”
It was true that just months earlier someone had been randomly shot only a few blocks from my apartment, and at least two people in the area had been murdered. Man, was I an idiot!
A few hours later, having removed both my air-conditioners and locked all my windows, I fell asleep — or didn’t — clutching a pen knife and thinking that the rapist must have had his eye on me for a while. Why else would he have rung my apartment and not my landlord’s? Clearly, I was going to have to move, I told myself grimly.
* * *
I WOKE up the next morning in desperate need of a little human contact and strong coffee. As I began packing up my things for a trip to the great little coffee shop around the corner so I could search the real estate ads over an espresso, I discovered that my wallet was missing.
A light bulb went on in my head. I ran down to mailbox, and there it was — my black leather billfold, which had apparently fallen out of my bag and been run over by a car. My credit card had broken into two pieces, along with my library ID, but everything was there, down to the $27 in cash that I had left when I’d last opened my wallet at the corner market.
I was so thrilled that I told a few of my neighbors, including a couple of older men who work at the laundromat down the street. “That was Jesus, returning it to you,” one of them said.
His buddy gave him a funny look, then winked at me and smiled, flashing a gold tooth. “Nah, not Jesus,” he said. “But someone very close to him.”
For all my heathen ways, I couldn’t disagree.
Maura Kelly’s personal essays have appeared in The New York Observer, The Washington Post and Salon, among other publications.
Stranger in the Night
By MAURA KELLY
Published: January 23, 2009
The New York Times
I was brushing my teeth around 11 o’clock the other Sunday night when someone rang my doorbell.
The digitized chime approximates the booming gong that might sound in an old horror movie at the moment the innocent girl dashes into the haunted mansion in the middle of a terrible storm after her car runs out of gas.
Which is to say the sound can be pretty spooky under the best of circumstances, and hearing it so late at night sent a chill down my spine.
I wasn’t expecting anyone. The U.P.S. man would never come at that time, and it was far too inappropriate an hour for any of the religious proselytizers who sometimes stop by my building urging me to find God.
I crept to my bedroom window, which overlooks the street, being careful to leave the light off as I peeked through the curtain. In the darkness, I saw a strange man in a white baseball hat looking up at me. I shrank back in terror, wondering whether he had seen me. A moment later, I seemed to have gotten my answer: The bell rang again.
If the person was someone who knew me, wouldn’t he have called out something like “Hey, Maura, it’s me! I need to talk!” But really, who would be looking for me at 11 p.m.? Many wonderful people populate my neighborhood in deep Brooklyn, but they are largely family types, and none are in the habit of coming by for a chat, especially not unannounced late at night.
The mysterious visitor also could not have been my incredibly sweet landlord, who would have tried my cellphone if he needed to reach me. He lives just below me, in a brownstone where I enjoy the best apartment by far I’ve ever had in New York, a floor-through with two skylights and four huge windows, trees visible from every one of them. Even better, at $1,075 a month, it is the cheapest one-bedroom I’ve rented in the five boroughs.
I had taken the place under duress. The lease on my old apartment was up, and I had no other options. My main concern was the area. I’d never even lived in Brooklyn before — only Manhattan and, very briefly, the other “safe” borough, Queens. Could I really live in a neighborhood full of liquor stores and dollar shops?
The streets seemed peaceful enough when I walked around to check out the environs. I saw people with friendly faces sitting on the stoops, window boxes filled with flowers, cheerful-looking children riding bikes through the local park. But would I feel O.K. walking home from the subway at night?
I voiced my concerns to my landlord, who promised that if I really didn’t like the area, he’d be lenient about letting me out of my yearlong lease, adding that he was sure I’d feel perfectly safe.
And I had. Maybe a little too safe, because as I grew more comfortable in the neighborhood, I did all sorts of irresponsible things. I strolled home way past midnight on weekends. I wore low-cut tops and short skirts. Sometimes I even ran from the shower to my bedroom with no clothes on. Granted, the curtains were usually closed, but not always.
It was no wonder a rapist was after me!
Telling myself I was probably overreacting, I called my landlord, who promptly went outside to see if the suspect was still around. No dice. I asked him if there was a note on my door, or any sign that Jack-the-Ringer had decent intentions. There was nothing.
My landlord told me someone probably just had the wrong address. But if that had been the case, wouldn’t the person have called up to me and said something like, “Hey, is this the right place?”
I telephoned the local police, hoping, really, that they’d tell me I was being ridiculous. No such luck. “Fifty percent chance it was nothing,” said the officer on the other end of the line. “Fifty percent chance it was a psycho looking for trouble. You know what the neighborhood is like.”
“Yes!” I replied. “And I’ve never felt a bit unsafe in a year living here!”
“Come on down to the precinct any time if you want to see the stats on assaults, murders, rapes,” he said. “All that fun stuff.”
It was true that just months earlier someone had been randomly shot only a few blocks from my apartment, and at least two people in the area had been murdered. Man, was I an idiot!
A few hours later, having removed both my air-conditioners and locked all my windows, I fell asleep — or didn’t — clutching a pen knife and thinking that the rapist must have had his eye on me for a while. Why else would he have rung my apartment and not my landlord’s? Clearly, I was going to have to move, I told myself grimly.
* * *
I WOKE up the next morning in desperate need of a little human contact and strong coffee. As I began packing up my things for a trip to the great little coffee shop around the corner so I could search the real estate ads over an espresso, I discovered that my wallet was missing.
A light bulb went on in my head. I ran down to mailbox, and there it was — my black leather billfold, which had apparently fallen out of my bag and been run over by a car. My credit card had broken into two pieces, along with my library ID, but everything was there, down to the $27 in cash that I had left when I’d last opened my wallet at the corner market.
I was so thrilled that I told a few of my neighbors, including a couple of older men who work at the laundromat down the street. “That was Jesus, returning it to you,” one of them said.
His buddy gave him a funny look, then winked at me and smiled, flashing a gold tooth. “Nah, not Jesus,” he said. “But someone very close to him.”
For all my heathen ways, I couldn’t disagree.
Maura Kelly’s personal essays have appeared in The New York Observer, The Washington Post and Salon, among other publications.
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