He had the apartment above mine

Eleven-fourteen Southern Boulevard. Six floors and no elevator, and don't ask me the cross street, because the city went and changed the name of it twice and I still say the old one.

Front apartments faced the boulevard and you heard every bus that ever ran. The back got the sun after two o'clock, which sounds like a blessing until August. Boiler was down behind a door Papo kept locked on account of the kids, and every February that thing knocked like somebody hitting a pipe with a hammer.

You got used to it. Dolores never got used to it. Twenty-two years in that apartment and she'd still sit up in the bed and go, "That's the boiler, right, Maurice? Maurice. That's the boiler."

I had 3C. Ruben Ortiz was in 4C, straight up over my head, same layout, so his kitchen sat on my kitchen.

Which is how I met the man. 1979. His tub ran over while Mila was downstairs at the laundromat on Fox and it came through my bathroom ceiling by way of the light fixture.

So I go up, I bang on the door, and he opens it with a towel in his hand and his sleeve wet to the shoulder, and the first thing out of his mouth is, "Is it bad?" I said it's raining in my bathroom. You tell me.

Papo comes up after a while. Papo was the super. Same pair of work pants for eleven years, I want that understood, eleven years, one pair, and he stands there looking up at my ceiling and he goes, "That's not water. That's condensation." Condensation. My light is dripping on my head and this man's giving me the weather.

Ruben fixed it himself. Didn't wait on the landlord, just showed up that Saturday with a bucket of compound and a knife. And he did it wrong. Feathered it too thin. You could see that patch for thirty-some years.

Now, Mila and Dolores, that was its own business and it started before me and Ruben ever said ten real words to each other. Mila couldn't keep coffee in her house, so she'd come down. My kitchen table was the one with the short leg and a magazine folded under it, and those two women sat at that table from about 1980 until Dolores died.

Mila's mother in '94, we put her out at St. Raymond's. Dolores's mother in '97 and Mila did every bit of the food and wouldn't let a soul in that kitchen, and that includes my sister. If you knew my sister you'd understand what I'm telling you.

Who else. 5A was the Kesslers, last white family in the building, held on until '88. 2B was Carmen with the dog that hated the mailman like it was personal.

I was at the TA. Thirty-one years. Started on track in '76 and finished up inspecting cars out at Westchester Yard, and in between there was the strike in '80 where I walked eleven days and Ruben drove me around looking at work I never took. He was on a beer truck out of Hunts Point then. Later on he had the parking at the hospital.

The club was on Westchester Avenue under the el. I'm not telling you which one. Half of them are a nail place now anyway. Cinder block. Bar down the left side and the dominoes up front where the fan was.

In the back they kept the cases and a cot for whoever had a bad night. The 6 goes over and the whole building goes with it, and every man in there quits talking for eight, nine seconds, because there's no point. Then you just start talking again.

Summer of '81. Couldn't tell you the month. Hot, so July.

He was in that back room trying to get a case up off the floor because his knee was already bad at thirty-six, and I went back to help him with it, and it happened right there, standing up. Then we came out front and he got beat at dominoes by a man who cheated, and everybody in there knew he cheated.

We walked home separate. It's a block and a half. You don't walk a block and a half with a man like it's a date.

I got in, Dolores had Johnny on, and then I hear his door up over me and I hear him cross to his kitchen. Seventeen steps. That night I laid there and counted them.

Papo played dominoes in that club on Fridays, by the way. So did two fellas from my yard. That's just something I'm mentioning.

After that it was Tuesdays, mostly, because Tuesday he was off and I was on the four-to-twelve and Dolores had her mother on Tuesdays. He had a Monte Carlo, brown, and we'd run it out to Pelham Bay or up to a guy in Mount Vernon who had parts. Sometimes that was a whole day. Other times we really did just go get the parts and come back.

Twice in thirty years we were stupid enough to do anything in the building, both times down by that boiler door. I said never again and I meant it, and then it was 1996.

I had a job and a wife I liked. Nothing in my week was hard except the four-to-twelve.

Where was I. Dolores got sick in the spring of '09. Ruben drove her up to Einstein on the Thursdays I couldn't get the day, and he'd sit out in that hallway the whole time, because Mila was the one who went in the room. That's how the women had it and nobody asked us. At the end I was down at the foot of the bed.

He came to my door that night with a pot of rice. Man never cooked a thing in his life, so he got it from somewhere and put it in his own pot.

Mila went in 2014. Building sold in 2016 and they papered everybody out of there, and the last one to leave was Papo, who had two pairs of pants by then. It's condos. I drove past it in '17 with Nicole and I didn't slow down.

I had the stroke in October of '18. Left side. My hands don't close all the way anymore. I've got a cane and I get around fine long as the floor is dry. Nicole moved me down here in '19, a block from her, Kissimmee, and there's a pond out back with a bird in it that hates me.

Ruben's up in Yonkers in a facility, which he calls the hotel. His legs are gone. We talk Sundays.

Nicole set me up with the big-button phone and she thinks it's the sweetest thing in the world, her father still calling his old neighbor. She'll say, "Dad, tell Mr. Ortiz I said hello." So I tell him. He says tell her hello back.

Then we sit there on the phone and don't say a whole lot, which at his end costs him air anyway. He's got the Yankees on with the TV sound down and the radio going, because he says the television men are two pitches late. I've got mine set the same way down here.

Last Sunday he asked me did I remember what color the hallway was. On three. I said green. He said no, green was the stairs, the hallway was tan, and we went back and forth on that for I don't know how long.