Sunday, 15 September 2002 | Window shopping

On Bedford Avenue there are a couple walls full of fliers for apartment vacancies: No Fee! A steal! No pets. Hardwood floors. This apartment will go fast! Small broker's fee. Very large, bright living room. Roof access + view of Manhattan. Cats OK—purr. Dogs OK—woof. A must-see! 15 minutes to Manhattan.

Most of them exaggerate, and all of them seem to say roughly the same thing, but with different train stops and neighborhoods and prices that fill the respective blanks. But the apartments themselves are really quite different; the only way to know if a place is worth visiting is to actually visit it, to take the train there and walk around the neighborhood and look out the windows and open the dusty cabinets.

Yesterday, just after hanging up with a potential landlord, I hopped on my bike and rode south along the East River. Of course it was much further than the woman had advertised, but I didn't mind, at least in terms of the bike ride. It was a Saturday and I was coasting through an industrial area, and, except for an occasional car, I was completely alone. It's an unusual feeling, to be alone in this city, while the jagged peaks of the crammed buildings in Manhattan are in full view.

My potential new street was also lonely, but made warm by the jovial-sounding Mexican music that poured out of one of the still buildings. The girl who showed me the place was young, maybe fifteen? As part of the tour, she pointed out her elementary school (across the street), her mother (raking in the back "yard"), and her father (working in the shed).

I really wanted to want the place, but I didn't. She will not be my landlord, and that street with the happy Mexican music hanging in the air will not be my street.

I always do that, imagine that I will take it, taking note of my "new" address, my new neighborhood, my new path to work, almost like a girl who tries on her boyfriend's last name to see how it sounds.

On the ride home, I was invisible. I rode through parts of Brooklyn I had only traveled through beneath the streets, finally putting the faces of the areas to the names of the subway stops. No one seemed to notice me, no matter how out-of-place I thought I might be. I watched as a pack of kids swarmed to one side of an ice cream truck, whose high-pitched notes were bouncing off the buildings; I saw quick boys playing basketball on cracked tar; I noticed a pair of old women sitting outside of a laundromat, fanning themselves. I was surprised when I finally hit my own neighborhood; I hadn't seen it coming.

I'm going to miss my mortuary home, but something has to happen.