As I stepped out of the elegant Art Deco lobby for the last time, I expected the doormen to be smug and satisfied that the five-month-non-tenant-impostor was making her exit. But to my surprise, the doormen exclaimed, “We’ll miss you! You were always such a sweet girl. We put in a good word for you.” The doormen were my friends and not my enemies in the case of my mysterious Park Avenue maid’s quarters eviction…

The real culprit was a disgruntled middle-aged male tenant whom I had encountered in the laundry room. He is the Wanker of the Week who spread malicious gossip about me to the superintendent and co-op board. He even knocked on my apartment door in a panic, asking me if the “stuff cluttering the hall” was mine. I reassured him that the items did not belong to me. He hobbled off in his needlepoint loafers. The “stuff cluttering the hall” included: a large Oriental rug, two Chinese horse sculptures, and a few expensive lacquer end tables and porcelain lamps. I felt like saying to him, “I am a student writing chick lit and squatting in a maid’s quarters. Do you really think those valuable Asian heirlooms are mine?”

When my sister slept over, he interrogated her in the hallway, dashed off in his needlepoint shoes, probably clutching his antique briefcase and the key to his precious bicycle lock, and complained to the management about “the security of the building.” To this Park Avenue lawyer with too much time on his hands, my sister, a soft-spoken twenty-four-year-old girl in a pea coat and glasses, is “a security threat.” The recession is turning the world topsy-turvy.

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