A friday in july

Storage lockers, lost love, and the stories of New York

I’m unsure what came first – the tendency of cinematic events in my life with New York as a backdrop, or New York as my backdrop, causing a tendency toward cinematic events in my life. Whichever it was, both are very present themes of late. So, here’s one of those stories.

I have four friends I met back when I moved to the West Village in 2020 who frequent the same coffee shop I went to every morning. Meredith, Roslyn, Bill and Margaret sit at The Coppola Cafe every day at the same time for at least an hour. They drink cappuccinos, watch people and dogs pass by, talk to tourists, wave at babies, laugh loudly. They tell great jokes, talk about the plays they have seen and the books they have read and the operas they have watched, and make retirement seem both blissful and protracted. They've become cheerleaders of mine in a way, guardian angels and protectors. They have seen me move through a lot, like locking down a green card, walking away from a corporate career, becoming a teacher, dating women, fighting to build my life back up more than once, they’ve watched friends and partners come and go. They cheered on my first group of students’ final project when I taught social entrepreneurship, they loved my dog who died and cried with me when I told them. They’ve met my family, my friends, came to my essay readings. Before I left the village, not least of which was made almost impossible because of how much I’d miss them, they became the people who saw my life unfold through the window of a daily dog walk and transformed into an ever more irreplicable facet of my life.

Three years after we first met, I was suddenly fired from a job of ten years. The four of them watched me schlep around stringing together jobs teaching, volunteering in schools, dog walking, and even running operations for an ex-addict my friend Nick met in AA named Big Joe; who runs a restaurant hood cleaning business. I taught myself classroom management skills and small business accounting, and they made me feel like I was the cleverest - at a time where everything felt like a blind scramble. They were kind and effusive in their comments of how impressed they were with my scrappy, humble approach to rebuilding my life.

Sometime in late May, Meredith, the most serious, private and intimidating of the group, pulled me aside quietly and mentioned that perhaps she could hire me to help her untangle a ‘situation’. I insisted hiring would not be necessary but was promptly shushed.

She explained that for the last twenty years, she has kept a very expensive storage space located somewhere in Queens, the expensive kind specialized in storing artwork. It was packed with prints, paintings and other work made by a man named Richard Sandberg. I only found out his last name, and the fact that he was a famed American painter, with work exhibited at the Whitney, the MET, and immortalized at the Central Park Arsenal Murals, through my own snooping and googling much later. From Meredith, I’m not sure she even told me his first name. What she did say, was that the best way she can convey the impact of this situation, is that frankly - she would be in an entirely different financial circumstance had she not held on to this storage space for so long. That it has haunted her, that the whole thing is heavy, that she wants to empty the unit, sell or donate the remaining artwork, and be rid of it. Worst of all - she has space in the basement of her building where she could have stored it all this whole time… But she just can’t get it done.

I tell her this is right up my alley as I despise unnecessary spending of any sort, and am quite experienced in navigating a storage unit, considering I once spent many days climbing mountains of boxes in the Bronx where my ex and I stored the remains of our life together after we spent the pandemic on a road trip and subsequently and heartbreakingly went our separate ways after he went to live on a boat in the sea – but that’s another story. Anyway - I had logged my time digging through my own boxes of painful memories and was happy to be of help.

When are we doing this? I ask. Let’s make a plan.

Ah, well, soon. She tells me, breaking eye contact. I have a friend, Harry, he has a van. His son can help. Perhaps in July.

Right. I say. But…When, exactly?

I pressured her about it for weeks. Finally, I get an email in mid-June, and she sets a date: July 11th.

Harry is available, she writes, his son is free that day, too. Can you join?

Of course! I respond, relieved. I don't think we need that many people to do this, and frankly, hiring someone for the job is always cleaner, faster, and overall easier than involving friends, but this I leave out.

After quips and reminders to her about our upcoming date when I stop by the café, the day before finally rolls around, and I email:

Where and when do we meet tomorrow? Let's get this thing done!

She emails back immediately.

Bless your heart! God has given me a reprieve in the form of Harry's son not being available tomorrow. But let's pow-wow about a better plan than the purely desperation-driven one I have now.

I tell her this answer is unacceptable and she is stalling - we need to go this week.

I get no response.

I head into the cafe the next day to stalk her in person. Sure enough, the crew is there. Meredith seems a bit bashful, but whispers on her own accord that perhaps we can devise a plan after the others leave. They eventually do, and we switch to a smaller table in the back of the coffee shop.

Meredith… I tell her, in what I believe to be a gentle but firm tone. We need to go today.

She is appalled by this suggestion.

We aren’t going today! She laughs a little too loud.

She needs to work that afternoon, she says. Harry can't possibly go last minute like this, nor can his son, and she can’t just change her plans. She fidgets with her fanny pack.

It's my last day before my new job starts Monday. I say, trying to maintain eye contact.

She smiles nervously, says nothing.

You knew this already. I continue. You’re stalling. You said they don't open on Saturdays, or holidays, so we are going today. What's the name of the storage place?

She tells me their name; I look them up on my phone and immediately place a call. She looks completely horrified. I step outside so she doesn't have to watch.

I use my favorite don’t-fuck-with-me voice, tell them I am Ms. Meredith Porter's assistant, that there is an emergency, and we need access to the storage unit to empty it that afternoon. Initially, they tell me they need two weeks’ notice. Two weeks quickly become one week which becomes a few days that turn into 24h when I mention something vague about a lawyer. I hang up. I check the Task Rabbit app for someone who has ‘Help Moving’ experience, and find Jean: many five-star ratings, a pricey hourly, a van, and availability that afternoon. Perfect.

The storage place had requested the unit number, and to send it over email. I go back inside, and Meredith is breathing hard.

We are not going today, she says, panicked. I have to work. We can't go. I'm not doing it. The answer is no. I can't go.

I tell her it will be fast, I promise, so much simpler than she thinks.

It'll be over soon, this is the worst part, this stalling. I say, as she fidgets It's been decades, it will be two hours and it'll all be over. Meredith. We are going.

This goes on for some time. I am curious where the line is going to be, and eventually reach a point where it starts to dawn on me that this is not worth losing this friendship over, and I’m not sure how much more I can push her. She’s upset, not angry, but she’s clearly being cornered. On the other hand, I also know the reason she involved me in the first place is simple, at least some part of her is desperate to be free of whatever this all means to her, of this history. To get out from under this weight.

If you don't agree to come today, I am going without you, I tell her.

NO. She says. I have to be there.

As the psychological warfare continues, I quickly type out an email under the table.

***

For the reader to better understand - Meredith barely has a phone. She does own one, but it's rarely with her. It's an iPhone she purchased last year, and it has her phone number, carefully written in her neat handwriting on what could very well have been a fountain pen, taped behind it. She, for most of her life, has been and is an editor for the New York Review of Books. Her apartment, on the 4th floor of a floral wallpapered and carpeted hallway of a classic brownstone in Greenwich Village, next door to her best friend Roslyn, where she has lived for forty-odd years, can only be described as a library. It has a claw-foot tub and magnifying glasses strewn about on top of beautiful prints. Her twin bed sits in an elevated nook with a rounded ceiling, literally surrounded by books, on all sides of the bed, above and around it. There’s a huge closet that when you open its priceless doors salvaged from some uptown museum or some legendary late author, is mostly a bar. She, obviously, is a member of the Criterion collection. She went to Bryn Mawr in the 60's, she goes to the Film Forum to see foreign and independent films multiple times a week. She consumes symphonies, plays, Puccini, Tolstoy. She gave the eulogy at Phillip Roth's funeral. She’s written for The Paris Review, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s. She is intimidated by no one, impressed only by true greatness, she is an absolute snob without a dash of cruelty – simply in the sense of phenomenal taste. She is a true feminist. It is enormous blasphemy to compare her to Carrie Bradshaw, but she is what Carrie Bradshaw would be if the audiences (yes, I include myself) had any propriety, or if Bradshaw was true to herself, inherently confident, brilliant, and epically cultured. She is the heart of the West Village, she has a huge, booming laugh. She never, ever talks about herself. She is curious, intimidating, and fearless. She has a dirty sense of humor, she loves dogs, she uses words in the most elegant of ways, she is seventy-six this year, she says cunt in just the right moments.

In an excerpt I found from a book titled Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, the author, Darryl Pinckney, writes about his time at The New York Review of Books in the seventies:

The telephone was everything in the editors’ hourly reasonings with proud and anxious writers. Meanwhile, the young who worked there were either so terrified or so cunning, their business took place as a humming of heads turned toward walls, telephone receivers cradled, or they hid behind hedgerows of books.

I, trying to buddy up, joked to Meredith Porter, a satirist who worked as a typesetter in the production studio. She smiled but withheld her laughter. An office of the tensed up went nuts at Meredith’s huge laugh, slamming doors or screaming that some people were trying to concentrate and then slamming doors. Her hair was cut like that of the actor Louise Brooks, who was then undergoing a big revival, but with Meredith that would have been just coincidental.

Meredith is, simply and without fanfare, a superior being.

***

This is the situation, I tell her as I shoot off an email to the storage place, recapping what I said on the phone, with Meredith’s email in copy for legitimacy, worrying for a second she could intercept but remembering there’s no way she will check her phone like the rest of us do so obsessively. I don’t include the storage unit number since I haven’t gotten it out of her yet but hope they won’t catch that.

I can fake a death certificate and a power of attorney in about 20 minutes. You hired me to convince you to go, and the bigger part of you that doesn't want to go is attacking the part of you that wants to be free of this. I take my job seriously, and we are fucking going, or I am going without you. I've hired the guy. I'm in touch with the place.

She is horrified. She is convinced that we cannot possibly do this job without me seeing the photographs she has taken of the storage unit, so that I can see what the boxes look like, so that I understand that it's a lot of them. I have to see the basement first, she says, see that it's hard to get down the stairs.

I once got a five-seater Chesterfield couch down a fire escape with rock climbing rope with New York City movers. These guys are magicians. This is a non-issue. This job will be nothing for them and will be done in two hours. We have. To go. This is a band-aid. You have to rip it.

She breathes hard. We sit in silence for a moment. I consider backing off, and we sit there, panting.

You will NOT coerce me. She says, quietly. I will not be coerced.

My hands are sweating. I start to feel guilty for pushing her, I don’t know if the right move is to stop or to continue. It’s painful to see her upset, and I certainly have never seen her be anything even close to vulnerable. It’s scary, it’s softening. And suddenly it’s familiar.

So... How long were you in love with him for?

She stares at me.

Oh, well. She says.

His whole life.

Right, I say.

Give me the storage unit number.

Ah yes, the great equalizer. The thing that fucks every single one of us if we are lucky enough to get it. If we are stupid and brave enough to allow ourselves to be shredded by love. That is what this is about, of course. She’s heartbroken. This storage space in Queens and the artwork she holds onto, the enormous financial burden it has now become, impossible to face or to let go of, to lose the last piece of him, the weight of whatever it was she carried when he was alive now transformed into an impossible errand she cannot complete alone.

My phone dings, the storage place responded. They’ve confirmed with the warehouse crew, and they can do it today. The last piece - they have written her unit number in the subject line of the email. I show it to her, triumphant.

She is frozen. I am quietly terrified. For a second I am reminded for the thousandth time how I should really put more consideration into running cons as a full-time job.

And then suddenly, she squares her shoulders.

Okay. She almost barks. OKAY. LET’S DO IT.

I am shocked. We had been at this for over an hour. I didn’t think she’d cave - I hadn't actually booked the Task Rabbit yet. I even had plans that afternoon that would be difficult to break.

OKAY! I say. I text my friend Josh I was meant to see in an hour’s time: Have to cancel. I am SO sorry. Will explain later.

The rest of the day, dear reader, was utter bliss for any project manager with a penchant for a good story, or for any mega-fan of Meredith Porter. For someone who is all of those things, it was epic. She insists I must see the basement first. I accept, knowing when to cave. She insists I wear a hard hat. I refuse. When she is satisfied I have looked around enough and think the space will do, we take an Uber to the last stop before Riker's Island, where she tells me that once, on one of many trips out to this storage unit where the last parts of Richard, who died decades ago, remain, she wound up at the famed Riker's Prison, and had to wait three hours for the next bus back.

It's difficult to imagine someone who is such a force in such a common type of pain, the worst, most privileged way to suffer. To imagine the loss she endured; to consider the love story I know not one detail of yet understand inherently, was both heartbreaking and irresistible.

The adventure runs like clockwork, surprising even me. We arrive at the storage place, and they have already packed all the art into three huge boxes. Jean, our Task Rabbit is waiting politely at his van. Jean is an absolute feast for the eyes. He flashes us a shy, blazingly white smile, a tiny gold cross dangles from one ear, his Black skin smooth over his romance-novel-worthy muscles under a sweaty blue-gray t-shirt. The storage guys are friendly and helpful - it’s all set. Meredith is shocked. Within ten minutes of our arrival the boxes are loaded, and I am sitting on a pillow on the floor of the van between Jean and Meredith’s airplane-like seats as we drive through Queens back to Manhattan, sweating. Jean is from the Ivory Coast, his muscles quiver as he grips the steering wheel, he has a quiet laugh and a tiny solar-powered airplane whose propeller whirls on the dash, my elbow touches his right thigh exactly four times. Meredith asks him about his business, his family, and tells him how worried she is that he won't find parking.

Don't worry, he says, in his French accent. I do this all the time.

We both, in our own separate ways, swoon.

Jean double parks near a fire hydrant. We quickly realize this is not a one-man job and Meredith is appalled when she realizes I will be getting my hands dirty. I am delighted. The boxes do not fit down the hatch to the basement, so Jean and I unload all the paintings, prints and glasswork and move those down first. I am soaked in sweat, my clothes are black from the dust of the boxes and the basement, and I hit my head on pipes far more than I admit after mistakenly turning down the hard hat once again. Roslyn comes downstairs to see the action and is speechless. Whether because of this long-avoided project that, as it becomes evermore clear, has long haunted her best friend being suddenly completed or because of this snack of a man on her stoop, it is unclear.

Within an hour, Jean has, to Meredith’s delight, happily adopted two of the biggest pieces and taken half the rest in the van for donation to Housing Works. We've moved what was left into the basement, broken down the huge boxes, got them down there too, put them together again and packed the rest inside.

Meredith gets tears in her eyes when Jean moves to leave.

You've made a heartbreaking experience into a swift and painless task, she tells him.

I swoon at the simple and perfect sentence.

Thank you. He replies, awkward, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

She hugs him and I see her eyes fill as she turns away.

We go upstairs where I sit in my dusty filth on her carpet, ecstatic, drinking an IPA and telling Roslyn the story of how I convinced Meredith. I don't want to leave, but start to go, and Meredith pushes an envelope on me that I vehemently try to refuse. Our regular roles readjust back to normal as she scares the shit out of me and tells me to not dare say anything and just take it, so I do.

We stand around awkwardly for a moment, none of us quite ready to put an end to what was nothing short of an epic day, and she reminds me to look thorough the smaller boxes to see if there’s anything I’d like to take. Large envelopes marked 'Bills Paid - 1963', endless loose pages in cramped, handwritten script, handkerchiefs pack the dusty old boxes. One box is filled with a book: Edited by Meredith Porter printed on the front. I set those aside and see the back of a small frame at the bottom of one of the boxes and turn it around. A beautiful black and white photograph of an impossibly handsome man stares back at me. He’s perhaps in his thirties, strong but slim, a cigarette in his mouth, suspenders and a button-up shirt undone at his neck. A cup of paintbrushes sits on the desk as he looks down, brooding, one arm reaching for something we can't see.

Is that him? I ask her.

Yes, she says, looking away shyly. That's him.

Later I sit at a dive bar in my dirty, sweaty clothes telling my friend Isabel the whole story. She listens, shocked and delighted, questioning why in the world I would do this, why insist in the first place, why not leave her be, how do I get myself in these situations?

I'm not sure, I say, but isn’t it such a great story?

On my way home in the impossibly hot July night, more than a little drunk after my two beers on an empty stomach, I walk down Fifth Avenue, the Washington Square Arch soaked in gold as the sun sets behind me. I remember the envelope, and rummage in my bag, ripping it open with my still dirty fingernails. Inside is a check for a thousand dollars and a note in Meredith’s perfect handwriting.

Thank you. To freedom.