Staring Down the Barrel of a Wrecking Ball

I just don't understand. I did my best. Come rain, snow, wind, and even the freak tornado of '84, I stood tall and protected the people from the elements. I've seen thousands of faces pass through my halls, and sure some have been sad or angry but never with me.

Well, maybe a few with me, but most of those were actually the plumber's fault. (Larry? Barry? Some white-bread name ending in -arry)

Yet I wager that plumber is sound asleep tonight in another apartment building, one with those hip, white stone walls and a Jamba Juice or something on its main floor. One that popped up just last month in a newly gentrified neighborhood to beckon the young hipsters and silently displace the old transients who have nowhere to go now except my own dilapidated halls. It is unfortunate, but having people to protect tonight soothes my supports as I stare down the barrel of a wrecking ball parked just inside my long-empty parking lot.

I knew it was the end when the people left. I had heard talk of closure for years, musings of my owner, Mr. Hart, repeated by my landlord Mrs. Mica to her bridge club.

Mrs. Mica was a good tenant, keeping her own balcony garden that infused her apartment with a smell of lavender that would linger long after the flowers had gone. Even now, a few shriveled petals rest on her old balcony.

I believe it was last June when I first thought something was wrong. Half of my apartments were empty. I couldn't make sense of it. There were always new tenants appearing, even if it were just for a month. But the people weren't returning. The music of barking dogs, crying babies, boosted bass, and televised football games was fading. After another few months, only five tenants remained out of my seventy five apartments (including Mrs. Mica). The stragglers finished their leases, my landlord packed away her collectible plates, and there was music no more.

Then, they put up the fence, locking me in a chain-link prison. The act still confuses me. Did they think I would run? It couldn't have been to keep other people out because other people came. Most of them were young, teenagers and college age kids like the ones who had lived in me for decades. I was always wary of those young adults. Each one was a ball of energy that had to outlet, and outlet it did in so many ways. The teenagers were fine enough, taking their destructive energy away from me and remaining only because of their persistent reliance on their parents. The older ones living on their own were much more problematic, with no authority to watch them. They filled my apartments with herbal smog, brought pets they had no idea how to care for, and some would multiply every night, drinking poison that directed their energy towards destruction. They broke me, a white table cracking a wall here, a baseball shattering a window there. I did not care for them, but Mrs. Mica would always make the destroyers leave and Mr. Hart would cover my damage with new wallpaper and glass.

Once Mrs. Mica left, there was no one to drive the destroyers away, and Mr. Hart wouldn't fix me anymore.

The first month after the fence was the worst. I became a playground for destructive deeds. My hope that the tenants would return broke with every new crack, each window shattered, each apartment desecrated beyond hope for repair. The new destroyers came with new poison that either maximized their energy or took it away completely.

I was not angry with them, and after my initial despair I accepted my fate. I did not like the destroyers, but in my decades of use I had learned how terrible anger could be. My favorite tenants were the families with youngsters. I liked their spirit, the potential that they did not realize they had. Many families stayed for years as they searched for what they considered better buildings, desiring privacy over music. I was fortunate enough to watch so many young lives grow and experience the world, but too often their bud would be nipped by anger. I found it strange that parents claimed themselves guardians when it was their voices and actions that hurt their children the most, curbing curiosity with insults and breaking potential that was deemed annoying or unnecessary. Anger unmade them. Theirs was my least favorite music.

Now, my beautiful wallpaper has been torn away, my supports broken, and my once-cushy carpet is coated in my windows' remains. My tenants are those with nowhere to go, and soon they will not even have me. They have no shortage of selection in the buildings I call neighbors. We buildings cannot communicate, only observe each other's ruin in stone silence, yet I feel kinship with them, and I am certain they feel the same. What is a city but apartments with the buildings as their tenants?

There is one apartment within me that has remained untouched: 412 with the corner views of North and East. The old tenant abandoned his furniture when he moved, a lazy man ragged with age. He never hosted any gatherings, and he seldom left his armchair let alone 412, so I felt kinship with him as well. One day he moved out in the wee hours of the morning, leaving all of his belongings where they remain now. I admit, I enjoy playing that I am a tenant in that apartment. Pretending to cook, clean, eat in my chair watching the football, and sleeping in my pillowy bed has kept peace within me as my end approaches.

The sun is rising now. The sun glints off of the dented body of the wrecking ball, a grim signal that my time has come. In an hour or two, the neon yellow and bright orange men will come and drive that wrecking ball through my walls. I imagine myself in apartment 412, rising from sleep and looking out over the sunlit city. I stretch, don my worn bathrobe, and walk to the kitchen to make some toast. I imagine turning on the morning news, where the weatherman says it's going to be a beautiful day. Maybe I will go to the park just down the road. A park with trees and tenants everywhere, and not a wrecking ball in sight.