Books of Adam Read online

  I was sleeping late one afternoon when I awoke with a start to my mother shrieking my name in the furious tone of voice I’d heard only once before as a teenager when I’d accidentally left the stove on for an entire weekend. I shot out of bed with a start, and emerged from my room half-asleep and very confused. My mother stood in the kitchen holding a piece of paper and a newly opened envelope. She was clearly livid.

  The grocery store I’d stolen from hadn’t quite forgotten the incident as I’d hoped. They had sent a damages bill to my apartment in Massachusetts to the tune of two hundred dollars. It had arrived after I’d moved out, and since they’d received no payment, they’d escalated the bill to five hundred dollars. My school had finally forwarded it to the only other address they had on file: my mother’s home in Montana. She, unfortunately, had been the first to receive the mail that day. She frequently opened my school mail since it was usually about tuition and my loans were under her name. This was obviously not the kind of letter she was expecting to open.

  “What the hell did you steal that cost five hundred dollars?” she roared, outraged that she had raised a thief.

  “Nothing!” I croaked, “I mean, I tried to steal chocolate milk, but only because I was about to die! I was just hungry, I swear!” For a moment it seemed like she didn’t believe me, but when my embarrassed, guilty expression made it clear that I was in fact telling the truth, her face rendered the same look of pity I’d received from the security guard.

  “This is ridiculous, Adam. What is wrong with you?” She set the bill down on the counter and picked up the telephone, then dialed the number of the grocery store. “Yeah, hi,” she said into the receiver a few moments later. “We just received a bill for five hundred dollars, for chocolate milk… Adam Ellis… Yes… Yes, I understand it’s for shoplifting, but five hundred bucks is bullshit… I don’t care, it’s bullshit… Yeah, we’re not paying that. How much does chocolate milk cost in your store?… Mmhmm… Okay, then we’ll send a check for $1.49… Okay, great. Goodbye.” She set the receiver down and glowered at me. I felt like a child, not like a newly graduated twenty-two-year-old ready to start a grown-up life.

  “I would’ve paid it…” I said meekly. I would have too, and I’m sure my mother knew that, but I think she was secretly thrilled at the opportunity to argue with someone in retail. After all, this was the woman who once convinced Target to accept a return on boots she’d purchased at Payless. Still, I could tell she was disappointed in me, and I was embarrassed for myself. Not a month into my post-college life and I’d already done something idiotic. Worse, my mother had bailed me out of the situation. What a wonderful start to my adult existence.

  CITY LIVIN’

  When I was a teenager, I had a list. It was a loose, ever-changing inventory of features my future home had to have, and since I was young, it was rightfully insane. My prospective living space (a Dubai high-rise, or maybe a Tokyo loft) had to feature hardwood floors supplied from endangered Peruvian forests, modern enameled lava countertops, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking panoramic views of whatever gleaming cityscape I’d decided to call home, plus a service elevator that opened into my cavernous living room. I figured by the time I was twenty-five I’d somehow be a millionaire and able to afford every expensive thing I saw on television or read about in a magazine.

  When I graduated college, I had naught to my name but a thousand dollars in the bank and a 1994 Nissan Altima. I’d had enough of the East Coast for a while, and besides, I’d never be able to afford rent in New York or Boston’s nicer areas. As for Tokyo, I’d seen enough bizarre Japanese commercials on the Internet to nullify any desire to become an expatriate, though that was most likely an excuse to avoid learning a foreign language. Still, a small part of me clung desperately to the hope that someday, somehow, I’d magically come to live in the kind of apartment that only existed in ’90s sitcoms. I moved to Portland in part because it was so much cheaper than other cities, and I felt it wasn’t such a wild notion to expect at least some of my fantasy features to come to fruition, despite barely having the funds for an IKEA desk, let alone a gold-plated Jacuzzi or one of those giant room-dividing aquariums that I could fill with piranhas. I kept my chin up, dreams of extravagance burning brightly in my heart.

  I had little time to orient myself in Portland at first. I slept on a friend’s floor for a couple of days while I called around and checked out apartments. Because time was short, I had to choose the first livable place I could find. I didn’t really care, though. Portland was shiny and new. The air smelled cleaner, the streets miraculously clear of Dunkin’ Donuts wrappers, and everyone seemed almost too friendly not to be on some sort of upper. Maybe they were all intoxicated on the fresh summer breeze. It was easy to see why. Portland was beautiful.

  My first apartment was far from impressive, but I viewed it as a sort of starter home. It was entirely basic: a square living room connected to a similarly shaped bedroom. It was bland, but over the next few weeks I filled it with furniture and covered the walls with posters and photographs until it felt more like a home. I forgave most of its faults because it felt so thrilling to be on my own. It was located just off Hawthorne in Southeast Portland, a hip neighborhood full of vintage houses and coffee shops. It was close to a multitude of bars and restaurants, so I overlooked the fact that half of its outlets didn’t work and there was a large mysterious stain on the living room carpet. I forgave the fact that the water was sometimes brown, and I tolerated the management, who seemed indifferent to the safety of the tenants.

  On my first afternoon in the apartment, I was startled by the unit’s former tenants unlocking my front door from the outside and stepping partway into my living room before realizing the place was occupied. I had barely unpacked all my stuff, and I was already experiencing my first break-in of sorts.

  Apparently the building’s owners hadn’t bothered to demand the keys back from the past occupants. Since I was hidden behind the door and out of the couple’s view, they didn’t see me and quickly closed the door. The whole encounter, if you could even call it that, lasted no more than a few seconds, but I stood there for what seemed like an hour feeling baffled and unsafe. I have no idea what they’d come for, and I never saw them again. As I listened to them hurry away, I wondered how many other people in the city might have keys to my apartment. I made a mental note to buy a Taser and get the locks changed, and continued suckling my Popsicle. The incident left me feeling a bit violated, but I rationalized it to be an honest mistake on the part of the former tenants.

  Over the next several months I heard talk of a few robberies in the building and became increasingly suspicious that my downstairs neighbor might be a drug dealer. And yet none of this bothered me as much as it probably should have. This was my first home that wasn’t subsidized by my college or ruled by my mother, who had a tendency to paint everything in the house taupe. I was thrilled to feel independent. It was comforting to know that if I was robbed or murdered in my apartment, the newspaper article would read, “Local Man Dies at the Hands of Coked-Up Thieves,” and not “Student Dies.”

  It wasn’t until the complex became infested with cockroaches that I decided my time in the building had to end. I may be perfectly willing to live in constant fear of robberies and meth lab explosions, but I won’t put up with bugs. Bugs are icky. I noticed a single cockroach one night while doing dishes, and had it been a viable option, I would’ve packed up everything on the spot.

  Adult Apartment Number Two was a step in the right direction, allowing me to hold on to the delusion of someday living large. Though it was nothing like the spacious fantasy apartments I dreamed of as a teenager, it was surprisingly equipped given what I could afford. I’d stumbled upon it by chance while wandering through a Northwest neighborhood I’d never been to before. It was a corner unit on the top floor and had those desirable hardwood floors, plus exposed brick in the living room and the bedroom. Brick walls always felt romantic and bohemian to me (though I’d
later learn that brick just means “lots of places for spiders to live”). It seemed that this apartment was worth a lot more than what the management was renting it for, which should have made me suspicious.

  During my tour of the place, the landlady explained that in the spring she’d lost a dozen or so college-aged tenants who had graduated, and since she was having trouble filling the vacancies, she’d dropped the price. This made sense to me. She described the building as a hotel from the 1920s that had been shut down in the ’30s, reopened as apartments in the ’60s, and renovated in the ’80s. My brain translated this to “former brothel, probably haunted by ghost hookers.” I was sold. When I was growing up, a girl down the street had claimed her attic was haunted by an Indian chief, and I had always been jealous of her. I couldn’t wait to have a haunted house of my own.

  I only had enough cash to rent a U-Haul for one day, so the move was marred by stress, sweat, and ugly frustration. I had a friend help me, and frankly I’m surprised the move didn’t ruin our friendship forever; hauling a couch up six flights of stairs is enough to break even the strongest bond. I told myself I’d stay in that apartment for years and wouldn’t have to lug furniture up narrow staircases again until I was thirty. Plus the giddy anticipation of ghost hookers kept me strong and focused.

  I expected at least one slutty poltergeist to show up in the apartment, but I had no such luck. No mysteriously disappearing valuables, no faint whiffs of stagnant rosewater, no soft wailings traveling up and down the hallways. (Still, I never truly gave up on the possibility of my apartment being haunted, and I like to believe the ghosts and I just never got the scheduling right for a proper haunting.)

  Before signing the lease on my new place, I’d had to do a fair amount of internal convincing since the apartment was slightly out of my price range, but once I made up my mind to splurge on rent, I settled into the apartment like cake batter being poured into a pan. I loved it instantly and completely. It felt like home in a way my childhood house never did, because I’d found it on my own and I was in charge of it. If I wanted to decorate it with animal skulls I bought off eBay, I could—and I did. I rationalized the pricey rent by telling myself it would even out in the long run if I bought smaller Americanos every morning and didn’t eat out as much. I’d opted for cable television in my old apartment, but I forwent the luxury in my new place because I was already overspending. It didn’t matter to me. As with any first love, I made excuses to be happy. And I was happy. I was deliriously happy in that apartment, and even when things started to spiral downhill, I continued to convince myself that this building was the place I’d live forever.

  Winter came, and with it arrived the first little annoyances. The building was old and poorly insulated, and though Portland winters are not fierce, the winds can be biting and the chill finds its way through windowsills and cracks in the walls. One brisk night it snowed (as it does once or twice a year in Portland), and the next morning I awoke shivering. My fingers and toes felt numb and my eyeballs ached dully in my skull, barely shielded behind my eyelids. I recalled chilly January nights walking home from the pubs in Boston, and curled up into a ball. My bedroom felt as arctic as it looked outside my window. Disgruntled, I wrapped myself up in my blanket, trudged out of bed, and made my way into the living room to inspect the radiator. I twisted the icy black nozzle, but nothing happened. I kicked it and still nothing. I thought, Maybe it takes a while to initiate after the weather gets colder. Maybe the heat hasn’t been activated yet. I waited patiently for a week, but still my radiator lay dormant. Eventually, I was able to see my breath in my own living room.

  I notified my landlady of the issue, and she assured me it would be fixed. She seemed unfazed by my complaint. “Sometimes it takes a while for the heat to get going. I’m sure it’ll kick in later tonight. You’ll know when the heat’s starting up, since the pipes rattle a bit.”

  My landlady saying the pipes “rattle” was like calling North Korea “bashful.” I awoke that night at 3 a.m. to such a ruckus, I thought an airplane jet engine had crashed through my roof like that early scene in Donnie Darko.

  A quick scan of my darkened room revealed no sign of demon rabbits or other horror-movie characters, and in my half-awake confusion I briefly hoped the racket might be all those ghost hookers finally making their presence known. When I realized it was just the building’s pipes coming alive, I was understandably disappointed.

  Despite the heating issues, I still felt like I’d lucked out in finding that apartment. From that point forward, I decided to keep the heat turned off—the noise just wasn’t worth it. I spent the winter months wrapped up in blankets, and I wore extra socks and fingerless gloves, bundled up like a survivor of some post-apocalyptic nuclear ice age. I took lots of hot baths to thaw my frozen limbs and brewed tea several times a day to warm my insides. It didn’t matter that I was becoming a one-man rendition of Grey Gardens. The apartment was a freezing hovel, but it was my freezing hovel. Sometimes I’d forgo heat for weeks at a time, but I stayed put, steadfast and defiant to my apartment’s faults. I swore I’d never leave.

  Winter passed and the heating concern became a memory, though new problems arose in its place. The building was just off Burnside, a busy street that acts as a main artery through the body of the city. Not far away was a homeless shelter, and at night the homeless folks would disperse and wander up and down Burnside, often congregating on the sidewalk outside my building. This had never bothered me, but one morning I noticed a flyer in the lobby window that made me uneasy.

  I soon learned from another tenant that whoever this woman was, she’d been idling about in the lobby waiting for someone with a key to open the door; then she’d slip in behind them and just sort of hang out. She’d amble about the halls and mumble to herself until someone kicked her out, only to return a few days later for a repeat performance. She’d never go into any apartments, and nothing had gone missing, save for the flowers in the lobby once or twice. For some reason she insisted on returning time after time, and it had become enough of a problem that management had put up flyers in an effort to keep her out. It caused a shroud of uneasiness to fall upon the tenants.

  The intruder woman eventually ceased her visits, but less than a week later a haggard-looking man was discovered in the basement rummaging through someone’s freshly dried laundry. He refused to leave and became vocally aggressive, so the police were called. A couple of tenants demanded a doorman be hired to combat intruders, but management refused, citing the cost. I shrugged off the intruder scare, figuring I’d rather put up with trespassers than pay higher rent to cover the cost of a doorman. Not everyone in the building was so forgiving, and both my upstairs and downstairs neighbors fled, prompting a shift in the type of tenants inhabiting the building.

  The upstairs unit was the first to be reoccupied. A pair of elderly Russian immigrants moved in, and though I saw the man only twice and never his wife, I garnered enough information about them simply by listening to their arguments through my paper-thin ceiling. They screamed at each other from morning to night, with no real anger, but with the weary frustration I assume results from eating nothing but cabbage soup for sixty years. They had no television that I could tell, but listened instead to an old tinny radio at maximum volume throughout the day while they argued. Because I am a product of the American schooling system, my knowledge of other countries and cultures hovers somewhere between zero and Britain’s Got Talent, and as such I crafted a crude depiction of my upstairs neighbors that resembled something akin to Boris and Natasha from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

  When the apartment below me was filled, the result was far less tolerable than my upstairs neighbors’ constant Slavic shrieking (which was actually somewhat therapeutic to listen to—almost like an angrier, atonal Enya). My new downstairs neighbor was a girl about my age who, I learned, worked as a florist. From what I could tell from first appearances, I liked her. She wore a lot of long flowy dresses, and her hair was always the pe
rfect amount of tousled. She had a penchant for bulky jewelry. She was quiet and seemed like a nice neighbor to have until a couple of weeks after she moved in, when her boyfriend joined her. I found myself trapped in the elevator with him on a few occasions, and each time was galling. He wore the same hoodie every day. He described things as “faggy.” He had a tribal tattoo that looked like his buddy did it for free in a garage, all jagged edges and jerky linework. One morning he didn’t say anything, just farted in the elevator and laughed to himself. He’d complain to me (or rather at me, as I did my best not to engage him) about the homeless people milling about our block, grumbling about how they were always in the way and “smelled like garbage.” He was insufferable, but I would’ve dealt with it fine if it weren’t for the music he blasted from his girlfriend’s apartment all day long while she was at work. He blared an endless stream of Black Eyed Peas, David Guetta, and LMFAO, like a playlist created by Satan himself. I was working from home during this time doing freelance design work, a reluctant subject to his musical predilections, and I knew if I ever asked him to keep his music down he’d probably only crank it louder. I prayed regularly for his girlfriend to dump him or for him to find a job, but months passed and I eventually learned the lyrics to every Black Eyed Peas song in existence.

  After several months of this, I’d had it. Eager to avoid confrontation and bordering on a manic, Peas-induced hysteria, I did the only thing I could think of: I drafted an anonymous, threatening note with cut-out magazine letters. I’ve always been nonconfrontational, but I was desperate. I feared speaking to the guy face-to-face might lead to my corpse being zipped up in a body bag, so I took the passive-aggressive route instead. I sliced tiny letters out of my back issues of Portland Monthly and methodically glued them to a piece of paper.