Small Apartments Read online

  Small Apartments

  Winner of the

  23rd Annual International

  3-Day Novel Contest

  “If an Oscar were awarded every year for the most unique film, the most eccentric film, and the most unlikely-to-succeed-from-a-creative-perspective film, then … Small Apartments would be a shoo-in for all three … Small Apartments arguably the most unique movie of 2012.”

  —Martin Liebman, Blu-ray.com

  “Small Apartments is … a weird, oddly likeable, and strangely engaging little comedy about the imperfections of humanity and our inveterate need for connection.”

  —Nathan Rabin, The Onion AV Club

  “There’s a definite Coen brothers influence … Quirky is an easy word to describe Small Apartments, but the peculiar nature doesn’t undervalue the odd impact of this black comedy with occasional serious and poignant undertones.”

  —Dan Bullock, The Hollywood News

  “If, like me, you dig the hell out of bittersweet, blackly comedic, quirky, intelligent, touching, character driven films, then Small Apartments could well be your new favourite movie.”

  —Mass Movement Magazine (UK)

  “Small Apartments is a black comedy about a lot of black sheep. Almost echoing A Clockwork Orange with its garish domesticity, violent bursts and concrete stairwells, moreso it recalls Jonathan Carouette’s Tarnation or Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude with their sense of ‘we’re fine, it’s just everyone else.’”

  —Mark O’Connell, Beige Magazine (UK)

  “From the beautifully weird performance of Lucas, to the darkly humorous, surprisingly emotional story, Small Apartments is set to be one of the sleeper hits of the year. A modern cult film.”

  —Matthew Tilt, Sonic Shocks (UK)

  Copyright © 2001 by Christopher Millis

  Second Edition: August, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, with the exception of brief passages in reviews. Any request for photocopying or other reprographic copying of any part of this book must be directed in writing to the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (CANCOPY) One Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5.

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Cover Image: Courtesy of Silver Nitrate Films

  Author photo: Mandy Dennis

  CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Millis, Christopher

  Small apartments / Christopher Millis. – New format ed.

  ISBN 978-1-927380-63-5

  I. Title

  PS3613.I54S62 2013 813.’6 C2013-911579-X

  Represented in Canada by Publishers Group Canada (PGC)

  Distributed by Raincoast Distribution

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the B.C. Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Canada Book Fund for their support of our publishing program.

  Anvil Press

  P.O. Box 3008, Main Post Office

  Vancouver, B.C. V6B 3X5 CANADA

  www.anvilpress.com

  Apartments are like bowling shoes,

  Small compartments for us to use.

  One removes us from the rain,

  The other improves our bowling game.

  For Lisa

  I wish to thank my friends and family who have always supported me in all my creative endeavours.

  And thanks to the staff at Anvil Press.

  CHAPTER

  1

  FACE UP AND smiling lay the warm, dead body of Albert Olivetti on the cracked, linoleum kitchenette floor of Franklin’s small apartment on the west side of Buffalo.

  With a butter knife, Franklin tore open an envelope from the previous day’s mail and read the brief note scrawled onto the back of a Wal-Mart receipt for a hand-held tape recorder. It was Tuesday.

  The note said: There are more where these came from.

  Franklin tapped three fingernail clippings onto the lonely, simulated-wood table by the window of his apartment. It was another bizarre missive from his brother Bernard, who was crazy. There are more where these came from indeed, thought Franklin. But for how long? How did Bernard replenish his nails so quickly? His personal supply must be near exhaustion.

  Three mailings per week made nine nails. Where did Bernard get all the money for postage? Did they have a postal desk at the psychiatric hospital where he was a resident? Franklin wondered if Bernard sent fingernails only to his brother. Perhaps there were others. Perhaps Bernard sent envelopes stuffed with fingernails and strange messages to his first love, Rebecca DeLeggio, from Miss Parson’s class at Grover Cleveland Elementary. What would prevent him from sending them to the clean-shaven, bald man with the profound stutter at the Rent-A-Centre on Hertel Avenue? Or even to the President of the United States, Himself.

  Franklin sat in his underwear and wondered. His ample white belly spilled over his Fruit of the Loom waistband. He poked it and it jiggled. Franklin chuckled to himself.

  Franklin assumed that he was the only one who received fingernail clippings and notes from his brother Bernard. But one must never assume, he thought. He was reminded of the lesson drummed into his brain in Miss Parson’s class. She would stand at the head of the class, her head like a wrinkled grape placed atop a stiff wool dress, and spell “ASSUME” on the blackboard, which was really green. She then circled three separate bits to make her point.

  “When you ASSUME,” Miss Parson would say, waiting a beat for the class to drone out the refrain, “you make an ‘ASS’ out of ‘U’ and ‘ME’.”

  “That is correct,” said Miss Parson.

  FRANKLIN’S HOUND DOG bit furiously at its ass.

  Franklin heaved a heavy sigh, causing his white belly to quiver. His brother Bernard was insane. This was a fact, not an assumption. Franklin carefully replaced the clippings and the cryptic note and placed the envelope with the others.

  Outside his only window, which was between the kitchenette and the living room, Franklin could see bits of his neighbourhood on Buffalo’s west side. It was late August and the leaves on the maple tree outside Franklin’s window were beginning to turn orange and red. Soon they would wilt and fall, giving Franklin a clearer view of the yellow building across the street where the pretty single mother and her daughter lived. The daughter was no more than fifteen, Franklin assumed (there was that word again), and the mother barely twice her age. Oh, how Franklin had lusted over those luscious ladies these last four years. Franklin had traveled around the world and back again with both of them, though they never knew it. For instance, Sunday afternoon, moments after they unloaded the groceries in front of their building, they were both in the bubble bath with Franklin, slipping and sliding and satisfying him, and each other. At least that’s how Franklin remembered it.

  Franklin lived at 100 Garner. His building was slate grey with a rusty, red trim. There were three apartments, two on the first floor and one upper. The first floor studio belonged to Franklin and the one-bedroom next door was occupied by the irascible Mr. Allspice. The upstairs unit was another one-bedroom rented by a twenty-four-year-old pothead who called himself Tommy Balls. Franklin did not know the names of the girls across the street, so he called them 101 and Little 101 because that was the address nailed beside their door. Of course he never had occasion to call them anything, their names were exclusively for his own silent reference. Staring absent-mindedly at the numbers on the side of their yellow building made Franklin remember his visit downtown four years ago to the Department of Motor Vehicles. He handed his form to the young woman behind the counter with earrings in her ears, nose, eyebrow and, as Franklin was about to discover, her tongue. She looked over the application and said, “Is that
Street, Avenue, what?”

  “Huh?” muttered Franklin.

  “On your application here for a driver’s license,” said the perforated state worker. “You wrote just 100 Garner on your form for street address. Is that 100 Garner Street, 100 Garner Avenue … what is it?”

  “I don’t know. It just says Garner.”

  “Where?”

  “Where what?” replied Franklin.

  “Where does it just say Garner, fool!” barked the young woman, flashing her studded tongue.

  “On the sign,” said Franklin. He looked around behind him to the weary souls in line and gave them an expression that said, That was an easy one.

  The young woman, ignoring Franklin’s victory smirk, took a black BiC medium round stic disposable pen from behind her ear and wrote “Street” on the address line after the word “Garner.”

  Franklin had lived at 100 Garner—now 100 Garner Street—for four years. Before that he had lived with his brother Bernard, who was now officially crazy, for twenty-two years at 57 Ashland. Not Street or Avenue, just 57 Ashland. For all that time Franklin had never needed a driver’s license. It just never came up. But now that Bernard was crazy, Franklin was responsible for driving his own fat ass around Buffalo.

  Back in 1A, Franklin’s first floor studio apartment at 100 Garner Street, the dog yawned. It was almost noon. Time for Franklin to turn his energies towards a much happier pursuit, his music. As he padded barefoot across the apartment, his belly swam back and forth, challenging the integrity of his elastic waistband. He picked up his alphorn, closed his eyes, inhaled deeply—his circumference expanding to a freakish degree—and blew. He blew a long, low eerie note. The dog howled as the apartment began to melt away like a ten-cent candle.

  Franklin re-opened his eyes beneath the crisp blue skies of Switzerland. He stood atop a green, grassy hill in only his white underpants. The Nordic wind parted his hairy back. A flock of California condors, unique to Switzerland, sliced the air above Franklin’s head. The birds cast a long, v-shaped shadow which Franklin and his mighty horn stood at the centre of.

  Picture frames on the wall began to rattle. Franklin’s teacup danced in its saucer as the boorish thumping of Mr. Allspice in 2A shattered Franklin’s vision.

  “This is a residential neighbourhood you fat twit!” screamed Mr. Allspice. “I’m going to screw that horn into your fat ass!”

  The cries from next door were muffled, but Franklin could hear them plainly enough. He set down the horn. Better to lay low, he thought, especially with the dead body in the kitchenette. He returned to his chair by the window and rubbed the throbbing bump on his head. He had banged it with such force that morning that it was now swollen and tender. When he ran his fingertips over the bruise it felt like his skull had bubbled up. I should ice this bump, he thought. He shuffled over to the icebox and removed a plastic tray—empty. He filled it at the sink, replaced it in the freezer, and returned to his aluminum-framed utility chair with the hard orange vinyl-covered seat and back. The small chair, with its skinny metal legs, looked incapable of supporting his gooey, 235-pound, 5’5” anatomy.

  I need to get out of here, Franklin thought as he again stared at the yellow building across the street. Out of this small apartment and away from this crummy city. He twisted his pinky finger into his left ear as his thoughts returned to his brother.

  Apparently, Bernard had not always been crazy. He earned his Master’s Degree from the University of Buffalo and worked as an accountant for a successful downtown law firm named Weiner and Fish. Bernard’s skin was the colour of communion wine. His suits appeared more expensive than they were because they were tailored to fit like a second skin. His ties were silk and monochromatic, green was his favourite—it matched his bottle-green eyes. He was 6’3”, 185 lbs., with ink-black hair that he grew long and thick so he could comb it straight back with a smear of pomade. Bernard had come home to 57 Ashland with a crew cut the day before he checked himself into the Buffalo Psychiatric Center on Elmwood Avenue. As far as Franklin knew, his brother still had the same haircut.

  Bernard brought home a parade of girlfriends. He would usually take them bowling on a first date. Bernard carried a 160 average, but he would sandbag for the girls. Bernard did not put on airs. He did not care what impressed a woman. “Take them bowling,” Bernard would say. “That’s how you flush out the tight-asses. Uptight chicks refuse to bowl. And if they won’t bowl, they won’t roll. If you know what I mean.”

  Franklin was pretty sure he knew what he meant. But not positive.

  Bernard brought home many girls but Franklin had his favourites. Frieda had wild, curly red hair. She worked as a waitress in a Greek diner in Allentown. She would sit on the carpet and paint her toenails while the three of them watched rented movies on Friday nights. The smell of the nail polish gave Franklin a headache but he would never ask Frieda to stop. He adored her bony feet from his dark chair in the corner. “Can you see the TV all right, sugar?” Frieda would ask. “I can see everything just fine,” said Franklin.

  Becca was a short, thin yenta from Suffolk County with spindly legs and freakishly large breasts. She talked and talked, never seeming to require oxygen. It was as if she possessed an internal breathing apparatus that rendered inhalation superfluous. Franklin was fascinated by the foreign cadence of her Long Island dialect. He also liked that she called him Boobala. He didn’t know what Boobala meant, but he would have handed her twenty bucks every time she said it.

  There were others, too. Andrea: the yoga instructor from Williamsville; Sarah: the jet engine mechanic from Tonawanda; the other Sarah: the peppy and athletic University of Buffalo senior who was captain of her lacrosse team. Franklin enjoyed the glimpses he got into these girls’ lives: the offhanded snatches of conversation which revealed one to be “on the pill,” or another as “constantly horny.” Bernard’s girlfriends would always chat freely with Franklin while his brother was en route from work, or in his bedroom dressing and applying a liberal coating of musk.

  Before he checked himself into a mental hospital, Bernard drove a maroon 1994 Mazda 626 four-door with standard transmission and a six-cylinder engine. Bernard used to drive Franklin all over Buffalo. He would drive Franklin anywhere he needed, or wanted, to go. He drove him to the flea market on Military Avenue the Saturday five years earlier when Franklin decided to buy an alphorn from a skinny old man wearing a short-brimmed straw hat with a loud, floral band.

  “You know what that is, son?” the man in the unfortunate hat asked Franklin that Saturday afternoon. Franklin was fingering the horn as it leaned against a fold-out card table with a colour ad for Lucky Strike cigarettes pasted to its top. “That is a gen-u-ine, goddamn alphorn.”

  “Is it from Switzerland?” asked Franklin.

  “Why, you bet your sweet balls it is.”

  Franklin paid the man $200 of Bernard’s money for the horn without dickering. As he and Bernard drove home to 57 Ashland they had to leave the back window rolled down with the skinny end of the horn sticking out because it was too long to fit in the Mazda. Bernard thought Franklin was crazy for buying an alphorn that day. How about that? thought Franklin as he sat on his orange utility chair inside 100 Garner sipping cold tea. It was less than a year from the day when the now famous self-help author and Guru of Mental Fitness, Dr. Sage Mennox, personally diagnosed Bernard as “Nuts.” Dr. Mennox said that without immediate psychiatric care, Bernard would be “miles and miles down the Road to Crazy.”

  FRANKLIN GLANCED DOWN at Mr. Olivetti sprawled out and smiling on the pale yellow, cracked linoleum floor. He rested his flabby elbows on his fat kneecaps and stared at the body. Mr. Olivetti’s head was upside down from Franklin’s perspective and resting between Franklin’s bare feet. What a look Mr. Olivetti had on his face. His eyes were wide open and his mouth was bent into the corniest grin. This old ginny looks like he just won a free trip, thought Franklin. I guess he has.

  “Where the hell did Bernard get a Wal-Mart
receipt for a hand-held tape recorder?” Franklin asked Mr. Olivetti.

  Franklin poured out the rest of his Moxie trying to aim it into Mr. Olivetti’s frozen smile, but he missed. Franklin was never good at those kinds of things, things that required skill and a steady hand. He sat back in his chair and stared at the dead flies inside the fluorescent light on the ceiling.

  “This apartment is too small for me,” Franklin told Mr. Olivetti. “Do you know that I am destined for bigger and better things? My brother Bernard always told me that I’m special. ‘You are special Franklin,’ he would say. Maybe I should just leave Buffalo. I’ll bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you Mr. Olivetti? Maybe I’ll just go someplace where people respect me, and they’re not so mean, and they appreciate my music. Someplace where there is no Mr.-fucking-Allspice in 2? banging on the walls. Someplace like Switzerland.”

  Switzerland. In every spare moment Franklin dreamed of Switzerland. It must be Utopia, he thought. A land of pastoral serenity where he would be free to lie naked in the tall grass beside an Alpine lake spooning with his mighty horn.

  Franklin’s dog sniffed Mr. Olivetti’s face. He started to lick the Moxie from his cheek but balked at the bitter taste. Circling a spot on the floor, he flopped down beside the dead man and heaved a heavy sigh. He then began to lick himself with intense focus.

  Dead flies. Dead Mr. Olivetti. Life is short and full of surprises, Franklin thought.

  CHAPTER

  2

  FRANKLIN’S UPSTAIRS NEIGHBOUR, Tommy Balls, was baked out of his gourd. Tommy’s project for the day was to construct a device known as a “gravity bong.” Tommy’s best friend Tony, who was three credits away from an Associates Degree in Hotel Management at Erie Community College, had drawn a basic diagram on a cocktail napkin of the components required to make the bong and how those components must be arranged. Over a couple of beers at Mulligan’s Brick Bar in Allentown, Tony gave Tommy Balls an enthusiastic testimonial on the gravity bong’s advanced effects. They had just finished assaulting their eardrums for three hours across the street at Nietzsche’s, with the four chords and confusing lyrics of the local band “Vomit.” They could barely hear each other above the ringing.