Aperture

I first heard the voice of Anita Dubenski on a Saturday morning in July. A long, low moan came in through the open window of my balcony. It bucked me from the back of my hangover stallion, riding on the well-worn path of my post-alcohol healing ritual. I hit the bar the previous night right after work and drank cut-rate cans of domestic beer in quick succession so I could make it home early. I considered it a personal failure to sleep until noon. Enacting my Saturday morning routine, I scrambled three eggs with fried hot dog slices, prepared two pieces of toast-one with margarine, one with peanut butter. Washed it all down with a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice.
I tuned the tin foil-covered rabbit ears on my TV to Channel 27, just in time to catch the 9 a.m. airing of the Moon Rangers cartoon adventure series. Two bites of egg and a slurp of coffee later, that horrible sound cut through the TV's digitized laser blasts.

Although unlike anything I had ever heard, the noise registered somewhere deep in my muddy, aching head as a suffering human voice. I turned my head to the window just in time to witness a microsecond where the sound grew louder and the curtains parted in an abrupt breeze, revealing a flash of object with fabric fluttering around it.

I ran to the balcony and leaned over the rusty railing. Five floors below on the sidewalk was the unmistakable shape of a body. I stared at it, trying to refocus my eyes to see something else. Perhaps the light refracting off the summer ozone smog had caused this hallucination-making a pile of trash appear as a body. But the longer I looked, the more I was convinced it could be nothing else.

Other tenants in the building were bustling out to their balconies. A long, vertical row of the tops of heads, all looking down. A large woman wearing a blue bandana one floor below turned and craned her head skyward, as if thinking a cloud had opened like the aperture eye of a camera and dropped this person. Her eyes locked onto me with a look of horror. Apparently I had thrown this poor woman off the balcony. She covered her mouth with both hands. I shook my head and tried to say "No. It wasn't me," but all that came out was a flaccid squeak. She ran back into her apartment, and I had no doubt she was picking up her phone and dialing 911.  An apathetic old man on the third floor tapped the ash of his cigarette over the edge.

One by one, the heads disappeared from the balconies.  Tenants began streaming out the front door and gathering around the body. I scurried to my bed and pulled out the boxes underneath where I kept my clothes. I yanked out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I fell over trying to jab my leg into the jeans and fell sideways, thumping my head against the bedside table.  I swore loudly and finished getting dressed, rubbing the egg that was beginning to form on my forehead. I slammed the door behind me without locking it.

I jogged down the hallway, my vision slightly blurred from the blow to the head. The colors of the hallway, the dirty pink walls and matted green carpet, ran together in a chromatic approximation of the inside of a large intestine. Shouting voices seeped through the walls as they always did. Many people in this building apparently cohabitated with their sworn enemies. On holidays, the whole building vibrated with the muffled accusations and vitriolic taunts of families with time off.

Instead of enduring the excruciating wait at the elevator, I took the stairs, loping down them two at a time. By the time I reached the glass front doors, I was wheezing old cigarette smoke.

About a dozen people had formed a circle around the body. They mumbled to each other, some pointing upward to her departure point.

At close range, I could see the form was definitely a woman. A rotund older woman wearing what appeared to be her Sunday best: a white silk blouse, long chartreuse skirt, and a matching neck scarf. One high heel had managed to stay on during the fall. She was lying face down, her arms at her sides and her legs akimbo. Her skirt was hiked obscenely up her plump left leg, and the exposed skin was the murky gray of dishwater, with indigo varicose veins crisscrossing it. The wind shear of her fall had partially unraveled her gray ponytail, and long strands of hair hung over her face like a curtain of frayed rope. A thin current of blood crawled to the curb, rolling over the edge into the street.

"Has anyone called 911?" I asked.

Someone in the group grumbled an affirmative.

"Who was she?" I asked, wondering whether it was appropriate to refer to her in the past tense.

"Anita Dubenski, 9J," said Carlos, the building's super. Carlos was a middle-aged, barrel-chested man with no wife, no children, and a penchant for cigarillos.

"What happened to her?"

"She must have jumped," said Carlos in his thick Spanish accent. "She lives alone. No one to push her.  People that fall as accident don't no land like this."  The onlookers pondered this assumption, calculating fall scenarios, velocity matrices, and descent configurations. I trusted Carlos's assessment.

According to a rumor I overheard in the laundry room, Carlos was a Colombian refugee, a former hit man for the Medellin cartel who had operated under the name La Tortuga, the turtle. The signature of his killings was a foreplay of slow, methodical torture, letting his victims drift off over the course of days into excruciating permanent slumber. And considering Carlos had once spent more than nine hours without a break under my kitchen sink to fix a clogged drain, I did not dismiss the story out of hand.

Further proof of La Tortuga's notorious past was seeing him examine the body of Mrs. Dubenski scientifically, adjusting the dirty Mets cap crammed on his enormous head and finger-combing his thick salt-and-pepper mustache. He appeared to be strategizing about which chemicals to use to clean up what he hoped was not a permanent stain on his pristine sidewalk. A bleach and hot water solution?  Perhaps an industrial-grade ammonia-based cleanser with a lemon scent?

As a crowd of gawkers, we were now suspended in the entropy that occurs early in the life cycle of car accidents and other public tragedies: the few minutes that elapse before the cops and paramedics come out of their hiding places and validate the disaster. There is a need for the onlookers to be choreographed like film extras, told where to stand and when to say their lines to the blue uniforms taking statements.

The sirens eventually broke through the traffic noise on Flatbush Avenue and an NYPD squad car pulled down the street against the flow of traffic and stopped short of the gathering. They cut the sirens and left the lights strobing. Two officers lifted themselves out of the car and ambled toward us. The driver was short and clean shaven, with a baby face and the common NYPD body of an ex-football player who has been confined to a sedentary lifestyle. His gold nametag said Martinelli. The other officer was a stocky black woman who had the chiseled features of a gladiator in make up. She was clearly the more street-smart, and probably wore the pants in their partnership. Her nametag said Walters.

"Alright everybody, you need to back up," Walters announced, motioning with one hand. The group obeyed, slowly widening the circle.

"Anyone see her fall?" she said.

No one responded. "Anyone know her? Does she live in this building?" Martinelli said.

Carlos broke the circle and walked slowly toward the officers.

"Anita Dubenski," he mumbled.

"Hold on," said Martinelli, digging in his breast pocket and retrieving his notebook and pen. "What's the name? Say it again."

"Anita Dubenski."

"Is that with an i or -"

"Where is her husband?" Walters interrupted. "She got any family?"

Carlos shook his head.

"You got keys to her place?" Walters asked.

"Yeah, inside."

"We'll have to search her apartment.  After the paramedics leave."

Walters tilted her head toward the small, black radio pinned to her shoulder and called it in. "Car 722. We have a 10-56 at 27 Park Place. It appears that a woman has fallen from a balcony. We need rescue to assist."

Walters continued to interview Carlos as Martinelli retrieved the yellow caution tape from the trunk of the squad car. He made a tape triangle around Mrs.
Dubenski, trying to force us back even farther.  Additional squad cars appeared and blocked off the street at either end with blue wooden barricades.

Mrs. Dubenski had officially become an attraction.  Joggers and dog-walkers slowed to get a look, some even crossing the street to get closer. The cars on Flatbush slowed to a crawl, the drivers rubbernecking for as long as they could. The small group of tenants was now joined by newcomers vying for information.  "Yo, what's going on? Damn, check that shit out?"  Nothing brought this neighborhood together like tragedy.

Two paramedics in blue shirts and crew cuts lumbered through the crowd with a stretcher and a medical kit.

"You know her? Dubenski," said a male voice standing next to me.

I turned and saw Freddy Jimenez, who lived in 5D.

"No, I didn't," I said.

"I only talked to her once," Freddy said. "Helped her carry groceries. She invited me inside for some coffee. I said no once I got a look at her place. A real shithole. Totally roach-infested."

Freddy was two years older than me, much better looking, and had a penchant for soccer jerseys. Freddy was also my first and last attempt to make friends in the building. We had a few beers in his apartment once. We talked about movies and sports, but essentially we were a broken zipper whose teeth don't quite match up.

Freddy crossed his arms and frowned.

"Why do you think she jumped?" he asked rhetorically.

"How do you know it was suicide?" I asked.

Freddy lowered his voice. "I don't mean to disrespect her or nothin', but if I looked like her and lived that way, I'd take a nosedive, too."

"But doesn't she seem a bit old to commit suicide?"

"No shit, bro. She's probably 80 or whatever. She was almost dead anyway. Why couldn't she just stick it out another few years?"

I nodded.

"This is some sad shit," Freddy said.  "I got better things to do with my day." He tossed me a half-wave and walked away.

One of the paramedics took her pulse for the benefit of the onlookers. The medical examiner was now on the scene, and the paramedics stepped back and let him snap a few pictures. Then they ratcheted the gurney down to her level. They turned her over on her back and her hair parted to reveal a pasty, broken nose and one open eye, a lifeless orb bobbing on the surface. A few of the older people in the crowd made the sign of the cross, looking repulsed. Yet they did not turn away. The paramedics hoisted her onto the gurney and pulled a paper-thin disposable sheet over her, fulfilling the transition from person to corpse.

As they wheeled her to the ambulance, a breeze caught a corner of the sheet and lifted it, revealing one smooth, bare foot. The foot seemed to be grafted onto her body. It did not match what I had seen of the rest of her. It was dainty and pink, a duchess' foot.

Walters worked the crowd, taking statements. After the paramedics had put Mrs. Dubenski safely in the rig and closed the back doors, they each put a foot on the steel bumper and lit a cigarette. They watched the cars go by. They were in no hurry.

The news crew vans showed up and began to set up the cameras and lights. The preened reporters began trolling the crowd for quotable witnesses. That's when I walked back inside.

I hit the 5 button in the elevator and leaned against the back wall. The elevator always smelled like piss.  As the car crept up the floors, I realized that Mrs.
Dubenski could be my ghost of Christmas future. I lived alone. The few friends I had rarely came over because they lived in better apartments in hipper neighborhoods. They were all pairing off, getting married, breeding, and taking weekend trips to the Berkshires or Long Island vineyards. They were slowly leaving friends like me behind, the young dinosaurs who refused to evolve from a life of spending most of their paychecks at bars and matinees. They bought bottles of wine and drank at home while watching romantic comedies rented from Blockbuster. They had matching sheet and pillow case sets.

If I died in my apartment, it would be at least a week before anyone would find me. Eventually the neighbors would complain to Carlos about the smell.  La Tortuga would be the first one to find me, perhaps on the floor, perhaps lying in bed in my underwear. Or maybe on the couch, choked by a chicken bone from the half chicken and fries at Lucky's Number One Chinese restaurant down the block. The same two ugly paramedics would wheel my body down the hallway covered in a similar paper sheet. The neighbors would watch from their open doorways, covering their noses.

The elevator jolted to a stop at five and the doors opened. I let them close and pressed 9. I had to see her apartment. I needed an answer. When the elevator reached the ninth floor, I stepped off and followed the letters on the doors to the end of hall. 9J was around the corner on the right-hand side. I tried to breathe through my mouth to avoid the odor of ground beef and dog hair.

I heard a door open slowly in the apartment across the hall from Mrs. Dubenski's.  I ducked back behind the stained wall and peeked around the corner. A middle-aged man in a T-shirt and shorts emerged from the apartment and checked to see that no one was looking. He crossed the hallway and pressed his ear to the door of 9J, trying to detect voice or movement.  That son of a bitch is trying to steal her stuff, I thought. When he reached for the doorknob, I pivoted into the hallway to face him.

"Hey," I said.  "What do you think you're doing?"

Without even looking to see who had caught him, he ran back into his apartment, slammed the door, and locked it behind him. I rushed up to his door and pounded a few times.

"She just died an hour ago, you asshole.  I'm telling the cops."

He did not respond but I could hear him breathing hard behind the door. I punched the door and turned around.  I then crossed the hallway and tried the doorknob to 9J. Locked.

I walked back to the elevator and pushed the down button, discouraged by both the sleaziness of the tenants of my building and the disappointing end of my investigation. I would never reach the Ebenezer Scrooge state of enlightenment, never know how to mend my ways to avoid the path that ended in a swan dive from my balcony. I pressed the down button, left with the newfound fear of dying alone and the image of Mrs. Dubenski dragging a kitchen chair out to the balcony.

Clambering up on to the seat, stepping over the railing, carefully, so as not to tear her skirt, and standing on the other side of it, holding on. Then letting go. Her high heels losing contact with the cement lip like a platform diver. Her yelp of joy as the burdensome weight of her aged body is taken away like a magic trick and replaced with the certainty of wind and gravity.

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