Narcissus lived in the same apartment on Sweetzer Avenue in West Hollywood for five years. In the winter of his fifth year of residency at the Chateau Cortez, management invoked a fee for gated underground parking, twenty five bucks a month. He considered street parking but the myriad of regulations and restrictions became too overwhelming for him to deal with: you can park on this side on Tuesday but not on Wednesday, you can park on that side on Friday but never on Thursday from 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM.
He decided it was time to move.
Looking through the newspapers or the Penny Saver for a new apartment was not an option. Narcissus hated getting newsprint all over his fingertips. His nails and cuticles were manicured weekly so it only followed suit that the grooves of his fingers — the pits and ridges that form his fingerprints, the very thing that gives many a murderer away but not Narcissus should he ever commit a crime, he’s not that stupid — should remain smudge-free.
Driving through desirous neighborhoods looking for new gigs wasn’t a viable alternative either. Narcissus knew in advance what would happen if he chose that option: he would get rear-ended by some asshole in an SUV while he was momentarily stopped to write down a FOR RENT sign phone number. Instead he went through one of the listing agencies on Santa Monica Boulevard, the people who collate, collect, and sell you the same information, for a very high mark-up, that you could glean from reading a newspaper and the Penny Saver. If you dared to get newsprint all over your fingers and wouldn’t that just look attractive when you go to shake your new landlord’s hand?
The first apartment on the list from the agency was a lovely loft in the hills. Not a lot of room, a small bachelor pad, really, but the ceiling mirrors in the bedroom almost forced an impulse in him to immediately say “yes” to the manager until the wiser angel in his nature spoke to him.
“If those glass ceiling tiles come down while you’re sleeping,” the angel whispered, “your face will be scarred for life. And you cannot afford reconstructive surgery.” Deformity frightened Narcissus more than death; after all, the Mayan calendar says that the world is coming to an end in December of 2012 so he knows when that’s going to happen. It gave him great comfort when he thought about it – the world ending in one gigantic whatever it was going to be – to suppose that his demise would not be a solitary one; billions would die right along beside him, choking their last breath at the same moment he was inhaling and exhaling for the final time.
The Seven Fountains apartments on North Harper were very plush and spacious with a dazzling exterior that faithfully recreated the Spanish courtyard architecture of the 1920s. The unit available had a second room off the kitchen that could serve, Narcisus observed, as a perfect art studio for his painting and photography projects. Narcissus was a brilliant watercolor artist and photographer, natural-born, he liked to boast, with never an hour of schooling outside the hundreds of hours spent in museums and galleries comparing the work of the so-called “masters” to his own stylings. In the final analysis, however, the place on Harper had paper-thin walls and that would not do. He did not need his neighbors eavesdropping on his conversations or pounding on the wall for him to turn down his TV at three o’clock in the morning.
The last apartment to look at for the day — he had a lunch appointment with his astrologer at noon — was a two-bedroom with a cozy wood-burning fireplace and vaulted ceilings. An upper-corner unit in a 20-unit building. Laundry on site, refrigerator, stove, balcony, paid utilities, water. $1075 a month. The extra bedroom, he considered, would make an excellent writing room. Narcissus was on the 600th page of Volume Two of his autobiography; unpublished so far, of course, but he was willing to go the self-publishing route if those idiots in New York who buy books didn’t have the vision to see how good it was. My God, having to split one’s life story into Proustian volumes should say something about how complicated, involved, and absorbing his story really was, Narcissus reasoned.
When the manager proudly boasted that the bedroom caught “the first rays of sunshine in the morning” Narcissus couldn’t beat feet off the premises fast enough. He still had many more listings to go but his monthly astrological chart was awaiting him over lunch at the House of Blues and after that he had to pick up his dog at the groomers.
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Before his brother could take the thick wad of cash from Narcissus’s hand, it retreated to the opposite side of the table.
“Oh come on,” she urged playfully. “It’ll be fun. Lots of explosions and car chases. I’ll even buy the popcorn if you pay for the parking.”
She pulled a copy of Joan Didion’s “Salvador” off the shelf and studied the dust jacket. Narcissus snatched the book out of her hand so fast she nearly received a paper cut.
”You mean,” she gasped, with almost too much theatrical flourish, ”after all we’ve been through, after all the shit we’ve been through together, you want to just end it? Like that?”
