The Impersonator in the USA

 

The Impersonator

 The black cat sitting in the hallway wakes me up with its pleas to be fed. The door to the room I am in is open, and I can clearly hear his meows. The red velvet curtains placed along the windows cast a blood-like radiance across the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Literary titles are numerous amongst all three of the four walls. The full sized bed is centered directly within a mini-library, and the masochistic red aura of the space makes me feel as if I am in a place designed only for love-making between bibliophiles. This room is not yet familiar to me, but I’m also not quite awake yet. It is a Friday morning and I am in a new bed, in a new room, in a new place of lodging. In the last six months I have slept in at least fifteen different places, some by invitation and others by sheer happenstance, so I suppose you could call someone like me a squatter. I don’t think this term is particularly accurate. I’d like to think of myself as a zip code-less economically-friendly occupant of New York City.

Today I’m in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn and I feel fancy. But really it doesn’t take much for a gal like me to feel fancy. Kino, the black cat, waits for me with wide green eyes. I take a second to remember where I am, ignoring Kino’s stern meows. Who did I recently befriend that offered their bed to me? And then I remember. Richard and Tracy, a couple I had only met once; a month ago.

It was the night of my birthday, and I had been gallivanting from one New York location to the next. I had nowhere to go, and through a mutual friend I met Richard and Tracy, young writers.

“You’re a very interesting person…I think,” said Richard, “You have complicated answers for simple questions. When I ask ‘what do you do?’ or ‘where do you live?’ I have more questions than answers after hearing your response.”

A month after our initial meeting Richard contacted me, and inquired if I could cat-sit. Sleeping in an apartment with a stove to cook on and a bed to sleep in, not fearing the janitors rating me out for sleeping on an air mattress in my office; exploring a new part of town? Of course I said yes.

I sit in the living room and watch Kino eat his breakfast. Organic venison and green peas mushed into a paste. Kino eats better than I do. I take a walk to the closest market to pick up produce. Sometimes I walk around the blocks of wherever I am staying at and pretend that I am following a daily routine. I believe that I belong in that zip code. I follow the neighbors around to see if I either mesh or clash with their footsteps. Could I really be someone just like them? Sometimes I wonder if my arbitrary neighbors realize that I’m out of place on their block. Would they think ‘Oh, how nice, a new person has moved in?’

I enter the market and the smiling stock boys look at me. They whisper something in Spanish to one another. I am a new face. Somebody different. Is it really that noticeable? I spend an hour wandering the aisles imagining the types of spices I’d stock in my own kitchen cabinets. I spend twenty minutes deciding which pear has the better deal, and realize that the stock boys look concerned. I am comforted by the overwhelming amount of choices I have in these aisles. One day I’ll have a fruit bowl stocked with both, no, all types of pears. I’ll even have fruit with names I am too scared to say out loud for fear of mispronouncing them. But I’ll find a way to offer them, without verbal identification, to my guests when we have a housewarming party. I’ll maybe even have my very own bed. But, for now, I’ll pretend I am a Cobble Hill resident and wander down Hoyt Street listening to the mid-day chimes of my local church. Today I belong.

And after this weekend when the façade fades away? What new people will I meet; what street will I explore; where will I wake up next? I am not without structure, but I am boundless like an alley cat, and ready to wander.

About the Author: Crystal Vagnier is an MFA candidate at the City College of New York, where her collection of travel short stories won The Henry Roth Memorial Scholarship, twice, and The David Dortort Prize in Non-Fiction She also hand-makes witty coasters.

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