There’s still work. Things are tricky, but it’s not anarchy out there. Sometimes it feels like anarchy in here, though.
Our building still has security guards employed downstairs: Ernesto and Sylvia and Parker. I saw Sylvia shoot someone in the kneecap once, but that was an exception.
Some floors are still occupied by businesses: a couple of phone companies, the corporate office of an organic diaper manufacturer, the East Coast outpost of a Colorado-based solar company. We catch each other’s eye in the elevator sometimes; they’re nice enough.
The guards, obviously, are there for them, not us. We’re just taking advantage.
Want to know how we made this whole thing work, twenty-some of us living up here? Well, the building needed someone to rent the empty floors. That happened to be Nich; a friend of ours from college who had the cash to make it happen.
You need a password to get past security. We change it every other day, and relay it to our guardians downstairs on what used to be the receptionist’s phone. It’s like living in a big tree fort. Girls are allowed.
It’s called the Kram Kastle. Nich came up with that years ago. When he was living in Baltimore he threw a bunch of parties under the same name. He brought the parties with him, too: lots of Molly, lots of face paint, small-scale pyrotechnics. We don’t use the B-word, though. We hate what that shit turned into.
What we have is much more egalitarian. Granted, Smith and Emily Rabbit and Andre and even Nich all do some freelance software programming still, but they don’t draw much attention to it. It keeps the lights on.
**
We have lots of parties. It works out nicely: we all live on the 44th floor, which we converted into tiny bedrooms, sans windows. The bathrooms are communal. There’s one shower. The 43rd floor is reserved for fun.
The speaker system on 43 is insane; enormous, demonic. It’s like those speakers on the back of Live Rust. Just overwhelming. Shelley wired it. She came from Santa Fe, and did a lot of work at Meow Wolf.
We’ve never had a noise complaint, though. We’ve had friends staying with us from all over, from Nashville, Portland, Madison, who complain about the noise, or the Kram Kastle’s maximalist approach to partying - unmarked LSD punch, aggressive stripping - but we’ve never had a problem with the cops.
**
It’s January. I’ve been living at the Kram Kastle for almost two years now, since March 2021. I get work playing in a wedding band; trumpet. I played some in college. After I got laid off, Nich suggested I pick it back up; weddings are recession-proof, he said, his face clouded in weed smoke. At least for the people that made it through.
I can make it work because my college debt was erased. Everyone’s debt was erased. Talk about one way to sell a re-election campaign to the people that hate you the most.
A lot of the weddings are on Long Island. The finance crowd never really came back to the city when everything was said and done.
Chaz, the drummer and another friend of ours from Wesleyan, picks me up for the gigs in his dirty Honda Fit. He doesn’t come in the building, though; once, I was hungover and forgot to give him the new password and Ernesto threw him out of the lobby and kicked him repeatedly in the chest.
The wedding gigs give me enough to live on; frankly, I don’t need a lot. Probably my biggest expense is flying to Milwaukee a couple of times a year to see my parents. They are lonely, but they have a sweet puppy named Ruth that keeps them happy and sane, more or less.
Flying is still crazy. Shelley’s cousin spent three weeks in jail for trying to get on a flight with a fever of 100.2.
**
Things are all right. You can go out to restaurants again, but I prefer not to spend the money. Mostly, I go out to ride my bike, or to help lug our huge CSA pickup home. I’m on the food squad.
It’s been warm recently; a weeklong stretch in the 60s. It’s nice for biking, though, and we’ve been getting garlic in our CSA.
The other evening around 4:30, as the sun was setting, I was in the Reading Room; a corner office that belonged to some higher-up at the company that used to rent this floor; some of his books and photos of his family were still here when we moved in. There are big windows that wrap around the corner. We’ve decorated it nicely, too; Andre hung some of his photographs in here, and Shelley helped refurbish a beautiful old bookshelf she found in Williamsburg.
I could already hear the sound system coming to life below me, the bass groaning like a waking balrog. Honestly, I hardly notice it anymore.
I looked up from my book and out the window, south, towards Battery Park. I saw a guy in a dark blue suit walking quickly down a side street, Carlisle or Rector. Suddenly, two people in balaclavas came out of buildings in front of him, one on either side of the street. One must have pulled a gun, because I saw the guy in the suit’s hands go up and the glimmer of his phone, in his right hand, catch the light of the setting sun.
I couldn’t yell; the windows were sealed shut. The cops wouldn’t make it in time. I watched for another minute or two and went back to my book.
Max Savage Levenson: Usually writes about weed and music; used to really like Kanye; has a big soft spot for Baltimore, Maryland.
