He had always biked to work. When he was biking, he had a strange reckless personality that he didn’t have at any other time — he almost had a death wish. He went faster than was at all reasonable on the city streets, and he knew he should slow down, but the speed was exciting and he pushed the pedals harder and shifted into a higher gear. It was clear to him that he would not be able to stop should he need to, but he did not slow down, although he knew he should and he thought that he must have some kind of a death wish. And then one day an idiot in a Mercedes turned right, without signalling. He turned right in front of this cyclist with the death wish who was going too fast to stop. The cyclist came to a sudden stop, when, of course, he hit the car. The result: a dent in the car, a bike that had hardly been worth riding that was now unridable, and a cyclist who was, remarkably, only slightly injured.
The driver swore at the cyclist as he viewed the damage but the cyclist was disoriented and confused, having hit his head on the pavement. He looked around at all the people who were staring at him and he was embarrassed and the driver was yelling at him and so he got away as quickly as possible. He left his wrecked bike and in a fog he managed to get to the nearest subway stop and catch the northbound subway which would go to the stop near his home.
He lived in an apartment complex that looked like any other apartment complex. There were four twenty story buildings in a half circle, facing a fountain and each other and parking lots, blocking out all the morning light. The young man lived on the seventeenth floor in a single bedroom apartment, and paid too much rent for his run down space, but it was the cheapest there was in the overpriced city. He was from the country and had left behind his parents and the residents of the sheltered little town where it seemed everyone had known him since birth. He had left to try life in the freedom of the impersonal, anonymous city, where he thought people didn’t judge others as quickly. He had wanted to make a new start, away from the smothering little town where he had been born. And now he was living in the big city.
By the time he had walked away from the subway stop he was starting to realize what had happened, and he became aware of a pounding headache and his dead-tired body, and as he glanced around the cold and windy apartment complex, he thought of how nice and warm his little apartment would be. He went into the familiar lobby of the tall, stark building, and was thankfully let in the security door by a man going out to do his shopping. He had an irrational fear of elevator and so, every day, he walked up seventeen flights of stairs. This, of course, kept him in good health but was less than convenient when it came to having a headache and having to go home. He rested for a second, looking at the boring, plain display of furniture, and then he began the long ascent in the stairwell to his floor. Up and up and up, around and around through the narrow stairs he went. He was very familiar with these stairs, with the smoked glass windows and the dull lighting fixtures. Tenth floor, eleventh floor, up and up, around and around. And finally, as always happened, he got up to his floor and opened the staircase door that stuck in the latch and walked down the hall with the red carpet with the diamond design to his door. He tried to insert it in the lock like countless times before. But this time, it wouldn’t fit. Confused and shocked, he tried his other keys, but none would fit. He stared at his door and down the hall — it was the right floor all right — it was his apartment. So, thinking they must have changed the locks, he hurried down the staircase — floor after floor, each floor the same — all with the same red diamond carpet and drab lighting fixtures.
He reached the super’s apartment, but the woman who answered was not familiar. ‘Excuse me, is Mr. Finkle in?’ he asked, peering over her shoulder in the apartment hallway.
‘Who?’ the lady asked. ‘I’m the only one who lives here.’ She hesitated. ‘Can I help you?’
‘What happened to the old superintendent, Fred Finkle? Did they fire him or what? He was here a week ago.’
‘You must be mistaken sir. I’ve been the super here for three years.’
This was all very strange. The realization that he was in the wrong building hit him suddenly.
‘I’m terribly sorry Miss, I think I’m in the wrong building.’
The lady, looking annoyed, shut the door, and the man, increasingly tired and pained, hurried out of the building. But when he got outside and looked around the cluster of high-rises, he was sure it was the right building — it was definitely his building. Thinking that he must be losing his mind, he wandered over to the next building with the identical lobby, the same mailboxes, the same halls and the same diamond carpet. He climbed the same stairs to the same floor, tried the same keys in the same locks, and again they didn’t work, so he went to the next building, and then the next, but none was his. He sat on the curb, trying to clear his confused, clouded mind, wondering what was going on, where he was, why everything looked so familiar yet none was the building where he lived. He had been in each one, and they all had been identical to one another, and to the building he knew.
And so, in a daze, he walked along a side street, past a whole row of identical houses, all with identical cars in the driveways, while identical looking men in suits passed by him, looking at his strange, dazed look.
It was getting dark when he finally wandered into another high-rise complex that looked exactly like the last, with a fountain in the middle, four buildings in a half circle, and parking lots all around, and this time he went into the building, up the identical stairwell, through the featureless hall, and successfully into his little apartment.
It was all the same. Sixteen apartments below him, identical to his, stacked one on top of the other. And in the buildings around him, perhaps sixteen dazed and confused men who had just wrecked their bikes were trying their keys in identical doors in identical halls in buildings they thought were theirs in high-rise complexes they thought were theirs, each wondering what was happening — all eventually finding their place in the grand scheme of things.
The man was relieved to have finally made it to his small apartment. It wasn’t much, but it was his — he had made it his own. It was the only place in this city where he was the only one around, where he mattered, and where he could be himself. He thought about all those buildings he’d never realized were all the same, and the thought of all those people in all those buildings scared him. He took an aspirin for his headache and fed his cat, looked despairingly into his empty fridge, and turned on the news. Perhaps sixteen others thought much the same thoughts and stroked their cats. Seventeen men the same, except their cats had different names.
After the news, with his head finally clearing up and his stomach now demanding attention, the man deciding he’d better go to the local convenience store, where he’d gone countless times before; it was the one place where they knew his face.
The park behind the buildings was dark, for it was late, and he was hungry and the shortcut saved a five minute walk, so he glanced around and hastily began walking along the lonely path. He was almost to the end, having seen no other soul, when he felt a jab in his back and heard a panicked demand for money. His heart skipped a beat but he refused — he would not give in to a thug. In a split second he decided to make a run for it — he knew at that moment it was all or nothing. And then he ran.
The shots rang out and echoed through the buildings. As the gunman fled and the young man lay bleeding on the pavement, perhaps sixteen men who had heard the shots looked out across the buildings to see what they could see. The eyes of two men met as they stared into the darkness, and in each other’s eyes they saw a look of terror so real that it chilled them both to the bone.
And as the curtains snapped shut and the frightened men clutched their warm and restless cats, the young man lay bleeding. He could see the lights on the busy streets and he cried out feebly for help but nobody heard. He thought about dying and his parents and the damned city and he wished he was at home with them in the inbred and sheltered town he had left behind. And as he thought of this, the lights on the busy street faded to black.
Originally published in White Wall Review 20 (1995)