Wrought Iron

You think no human being can be completely concealed and still walk among his equals? The wretched can and do. Everyday. Read on, if you want to waste your time.

Lambert is the last, regular human contact I have. Since he allowed me to sublet his basement apartment, we no longer see each other. I have never seen another tenant in the building. No one in the building, except Lambert, has ever seen me. I put Lambert’s payment into a wrought iron mailbox.

I suspect Lambert comes into my apartment occasionally. There is no proof of this. If the casement window is opened, or closed, and I remember it being closed, or open, I do not trust my memory. It is the same when I leave a legal pad on the table. Was it turned up or turned down? My memory must be turning wretched, too.

Nothing was unmistakably disturbed, ever, until today.

The lives of the wretched are concealed. Your ability to disappear increases as your wretchedness grows. The truly wretched completely disappear. Street beggars are not wretched. They are not hidden; thousands of people can pass a supplicant each day. People ignore beggars. People cannot see the wretched; you cannot ignore what you cannot see. Wretches do not want to be seen. I am not asking for anything except to be left alone. That is what I have gotten: only what I had asked for. Only, I have gotten more of it than I expected.

“Noble,” Lambert said when he handed me the apartment keys, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Haugh, haugh.”



I first saw Lambert when he came up to me outside the supermarket. The supermarket manager allows people to take away food that is just overripe enough not to sell, but is still safe to eat. You know how that goes. Urban gleaners can slice away the soft quarter of a head of lettuce or soak stale bread in a cup of coffee to get a meal.

I was just looking at some withered broccoli when a big man, a tall and wide big man, looked down on me. His left eye was slightly, almost unnoticeably, independent of his right. The expected bass voice that asked do you need a bag was instead just over the baritone edge of tenor. I mean you’re just stuffin’ the food in your pockets.

He was the blackest man I had ever seen. His close-cropped natural hair had begun to turn grey. Nothing else distinguished him from the other people on the street: blue jeans, tan polo shirt and white sneakers. There were no scars, tattoos or jewelry, not even a watch. The smoothness of his dark, black skin belonged to someone in his twenties, not to the man in his late forties or early fifties who was handing me a cloth, Whole Foods shopping bag.

I put the gleaned broccoli into the bag and nodded a thank you. He moved on without another word. Within a week I had taken up residence in his basement apartment and Lambert had taken up with a woman who lived on the third floor. The romance has lasted three years. I do not know what will happen if her passion for him cools off, or the other way around.

The wrought iron mailbox hangs on the inside of the basement door. Every person in the building passes the door. The door is locked and only Lambert has a key.

Lambert maintains the mailbox. He is the building’s super. Tenants pass notes into this box through a slot in the door, if they need his services, or drop in their rent checks. It is where I pass my payment to Lambert, through the top of the mailbox. The box is locked and only Lambert had a key, once. Now, I have one, too.

We never see each other. No one in the building knows I live in the basement. There is a separate entrance to the basement from an alley. I am the only one who uses this entrance. Both Lambert and I have this door’s keys (there are two, dead-bolt locks and a police lock).

Unless I do not give Lambert his money for the sublet, no one will notice if I am dead.

This arrangement has allowed me to disappear. Not such a difficult trick. All it takes is enough desire. I got lucky finding someone willing to abet my wretchedness.

It was already dark when I made my way back to the building, opened the locks and scurried into the basement last night. I usually take my shopping bag with me, in case I pass the supermarket on my way in.

The bag hung where I left it. Inside was a large cluster of grapes.

Lambert!