Ghosts of Apartment 1R

I have my own fireplace now.

I’m not allowed to actually use it because I’d burn the building down, but for the next 12 months, I’m allowed to sit next to it while reading in an uncomfortable gray tweed armchair, and this pleases me.

The fireplace itself is less than spectacular. It’s wooden frame is painted over in thick cream paint that hides the curling embellishments along its edges. The inside of the fireplace is black with caked-on soot. Gray cobwebs cling to the inner corners where a fire should be. A tiny iron wood rack holds two sad looking pieces of wood that will never burn. But I love my fireplace.

I like sitting beside it and reading, sometimes thinking about who has lived here before me (probably a lot of people) and whether they lived alone (like me). An old disabled telephone hangs next to the fireplace. It looks like it worked in the 1920s. Sometimes I think about who used that phone…maybe a young woman like myself. I wonder who she talked to. Could she also hear the neighbor clanging dishes through the wall? Did the sound of lovers’ quarrels and a drummer’s steady ‘thump’ lull her to sleep?

My apartment is full of unnecessary things—an old iron I found in the closet, a huge window overlooking the parking lot behind me that I can’t open because plaster dripped into the crevices and permanently sealed it—but this useless stuff is nonetheless precious to me. The detritus of the ghosts’ pasts makes my first apartment seem full.