After the first fire a young man with very pale skin and black hair who did maintenance in the building whispered to me that he heard it had been set deliberately. We’d previously discussed the election, then still in the heat of the primaries, and he’d informed me Donald Trump was definitely going to win. I said that was ridiculous and he replied, not unapologetically, that America would never elect a woman to its Presidency. I dismissed his mutterings of arson and conspiracy with a similar roll of my liberal over-educated eyes. I lived in a stout white hundred-year-old former grocery warehouse abutting the East River in North Williamsburg. It occupied an entire city block. A few months after I moved in it was announced the building had been purchased by Jared Kushner along with several partners and would be undergoing complete condo renovations. They changed the name from 184 Kent to Austin Nichols and hung a huge flag-like banner off the side scribed with elegant font. In the New York Times they advertise the addition, among other things, of a “jam room.”
