Emily Strasser Dear Diary:
At first, my new roommate’s cat, Romeo, was as charming as the Shakespearean lover. I enjoyed his purring company as I unpacked in my new sublet in Ridgewood, Queens. But when I returned from the grocery store to find the sharp odor of cat spray in a half-open duffel bag, I shut him out of the room.
“You can take the A.C. out of the window,†my new roommate had told me, “but I never have.â€
What he hadn’t mentioned, and what I was to learn suddenly when I decided to let some fresh air into the room to disperse the lingering odor, was that the A.C. was not bolted to anything. I had barely eased the window open when out it went with an astonishing speed, to crash on the concrete no man’s land two storis below. I stood stunned for several moments, peering down at the broken A.C. unit.
I went into the basement and poked around among the rusty bikes and abandoned baby cradles until I found a door leading out to a concrete no man’s land. Sure enough, there was a broken A.C., all bent and busted. It was quite heavy, but I managed to haul it out to the street.
I climbed the stairs and peered out my window again. My heart dropped â€" the A.C. was still there, still smugly broken.
At first I felt dismay that I had not managed to remove the evidence of my ineptitude â€" then, relief that I was not the only one to have so violently disposed of a perfectly good A.C.
I’ve spent the last week keeping to the outer edges of sidewalks, anxiously eyeing the A.C. units in the windows above.
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