Keeping an Eye on the Neighbors

The building across the street from my dorm houses Columbia faculty. I’ve been watching professors totter in and out for two weeks now. Once it’s dark outside, I turn off the lights in my room and enjoy the half-dozen dumb shows that take place every evening behind the building’s windows. I swear it’s better than cable.

When I moved uptown to attend Columbia, my mother purchased a truck load of towels, blankets, and pillow cases—along with enough canned soup to feed the Donner Party. My father, whose sense of humor can border on the bizarre, supplied me with only two things—a chamber pot and a pair of opera glasses. The chamber pot was new, and its intended purpose was self-explanatory. (I’m pleased to say that I haven’t been forced to use it yet, though at times the dorm’s communal bathroom seems like it’s in New Jersey.) But the opera glasses were one of my father’s most prized possessions, and for years, they had been a mystery to me. During the day they sat on a shelf, looking prim and proper in their mother of pearl case. At night, however, whenever my father was suffering from a bout of insomnia, they came out of the china cabinet.

On many occasions when I was a child, I would stumble toward the kitchen for a late-night glass of water and find my father sitting in the dark, his favorite chair turned toward the living room windows and the opera glasses resting in his lap. In the building across the street from ours, I would see an elderly couple arguing in their living room or a teenage girl sneaking out of her apartment while her parents watched police dramas on TV. It took me years to realize that my dad was spying on the neighbors. (It’s not as strange as you think. New York is filled with peeping toms.) He could have used binoculars, he explained to me not long ago, but opera glasses made it seem so much more civilized.

Dad refuses to tell me what more than a decade of surveillance taught him about our downtown neighbors. He claims to think of them as friends, and he says their secrets will always remain safe with him.

Thanks to my father’s opera glasses, over the past couple of weeks, I’ve gotten to know the people who live across the street from my dorm. At first I hoped I would see something that might help explain what the man in the stacks was doing in the tunnel underneath their building. Instead, I’ve discovered that El Gordo (as I’ve started to call the rotund man on the fourth floor) likes to order in tacos and watch Mexican professional wrestling in his underwear, while the Anorexic Chef (I think she teaches creative writing) takes off her wig and prances around her kitchen while baking brownies that she never eats. There’s also an old man in a bow tie who spends a great deal of time pacing and talking on the telephone, as well as a handsome Italian professor who chooses to live like a fourteenth century monk.

DeeDee is convinced my surveillance is pointless. She spends every night at Butler Library, waiting for the man in the stacks to return. Kiki is also getting impatient. I can’t possibly keep track of all the apartments in the building, she’s pointed out, and even I am starting to believe that my time would be better spent elsewhere. Luz is installing surveillance equipment in the tunnel beneath the building. Once the cameras are ready, I’ll turn my attention to the videotape. But I’m not looking forward to leaving my new friends behind. Who else is going to call 911 if El Gordo ends up choking on a quesadilla?