The Bramford

Harold’s new apartment is a massive, sunny space in a lovely building just off the main road in downtown Chapel Hill. It would be one of those doorman buildings in Manhattan, not that I’ve ever lived in a doorman building, but I imagine it would be full of older professionals, mostly doctors and professors,  who’ve lived there for years. Some of them introduced themselves to the young couple carrying boxes of comics and figurines through the stylishly maintained common halls, congratulated us on our engagement, and even chatted about the symphonies and museums they like when they visit New York. There are no students in the building, but the location is walking distance to lectures at the university, and the indie bookstops and coffeeshops on Franklin Street.

I came in from chatting with a neighbor one day and told Harold  gleefully how it’s just like that novel, where the young couple lucks into a spacious, gorgeous apartment in a stylish pre-war building, where there’s never an opening, but they’re just lucky enough to find a space at the right moment, and… Suddenly, I realize I’m actually narrating the beginning of Rosemary’s Baby.

Guess I still have some unresolved issues with living in North Carolina.