That first apartment in Allentown was the best. Early twentieth century, high ceilings, good woodwork. I lived on the middle of three floors below the owners, an elderly couple who ran a jewelry repair shop downstairs. An old Czech named Jules who looked like a mantis with his headband magnifier, how it made his eyeballs bug out.

Jules with his scant English and yellow teeth, always a pressed shirt and tie, mild mannered and years older than his wife Mabel, diminutive, shy, possibly wigged, avoiding eye contact when I dropped off the rent. Who knew old Jules was a wife beater, who would think such a thing? The sounds of late-night slapping and muffled sobs. Or that old Jules, who couldn’t have weighed more than 60 or 70 kilos, could put away so much beer. First noting the bulge in their garbage bags on a Monday night trash pickup and the red and blue pattern of Budweiser labels behind the milky white plastic, The King of Beers.

Was it Jules or the neighbor right next to me? The guy who’d been to jail and his young wife? People kept to themselves. We were all sharing the same roof but I could swear he was hitting her too. I was reading Bukowski and drinking a lot myself so not sure. Could have come from his stories or ones I imagined.

That was 33 years ago, the start of my professional life. I worked several jobs that first year out of college. Waiting tables, temp jobs, writing for a newspaper, pizza delivery, flagging for construction crews, or my favorite: working at a theater downtown. When the actors came in for a new show I’d chauffeur them to their hotel. (We only did this for the star cast members, the rest were on their own. We wanted them to feel pampered.) They arrived from New York at a small bus depot on the edges of town, a 20-minute drive to the downtown hotels where they’d stay for a couple months. I had their headshot so I knew what they looked like coming off the bus. And they always looked like their headshot, like actors. The only one vaguely famous was a son to Alan Arkin. The only woman I ever drove I developed a mild crush on, playing a Patsy Cline cassette for our ride, her commenting on it, me hoping she’d invite me in or contrive some need for my services. Like to help with her luggage or fetch her some ice.

My apartment was close enough to the theater I could walk to work. And my mom worked downtown too at the newspaper, so I sometimes met her for lunch. And not long after that I got a job at a bar down the road, the Sterling Hotel. And sometimes invited reggae bands or bartenders back to my apartment after we closed at 0200h. to party all night.

They tore down that apartment and a friend of mine happened to be in the area on the day of the demolition and called me, sounding sentimental: he’d gotten a hold of a piece of the mantle for some reason, which I imagine now would look like a large tooth.

In dreams where our teeth fall out we are worried about losing control, as teeth are symbols of strength and personal power. It’s no surprise our teeth go bad as we age. I have no pictures of that place and can hardly remember it. But it’s funny, working so many odd jobs at the start of my career it’s like that now as I get toward the end. The only stability I had was in the middle.

Lying on the soft dentist’s chair I am tilted all the way back waiting for the dentist to check my x-rays. He is mantis-like himself with the headband magnifier, the long fingers tugging my lips back, picking and probing.

Remembering Jules, now long gone, his soft, gentle voice. Watching him work the tiny screws from the back of my watch with such care and precision. The thought of him hitting now seems so sloppy and brutish, so incongruous with the old jeweler, the screws come loose in him too.

I saved a receipt from a month’s paid rent signed and dated, it’s all I’ve got: the way Mabel swooped her script and twirled the characters, so uniquely her. Every last bit of it imagined, made up, disappeared.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir

Tags: aging, Creative Nonfiction, Memoir