My Industrious Next-door Neighbor

As I climbed the stairs to my second-floor walk-up on the not-yet-gentrified Upper West Side after an exhausting night on my feet, I often heard the click click clack of a manual typewriter coming from the apartment of my septuagenarian next-door neighbor. Two in the morning, and she was pounding away. I tried to feel inspired by her industry, but what I felt most was chastened.

I hadn’t come to New York City to be a waiter; my ambitions were far loftier than that. I was one of the horde of kids fresh out of college who, along with the mob of misfits and dropouts, storm the city and take on menial jobs while pursuing a dream. In my case, I came for grad school, stuck around and put my advanced degree to work waiting tables. I might not have been ready to be a writer, but I was ready to work at it. In the meantime, I did what I could to keep a roof over my head, and that entailed, for me at least, a job working nights so I could spend my more productive daytime hours trying to develop my craft.

I’d been living alone in my small studio for about three years but, typical of New York apartment dwellers, I knew next to nothing about my nearest neighbor, Mrs. Gloeckner, other than that she was an obviously energetic writer who kept late hours and rarely left the building. A shabbily dressed, middle-aged woman—her daughter, I assumed—with whom I exchanged pleasantries when...