My first memory of being in a hotel is also my first memory of being in this country. We arrived in America from the former Soviet Union in the middle of the night in the summer of 1985: my father, my mother, my brother and me. I was eight years old and too tired from the journey to retain much of that initial touchdown or the rush of activity that followed our deplaning. The visa checkpoints, the baggage collection, the taxi ride home; these are all a blur. My first coherent recollection is waking up in a room of similar size to the living room of our apartment in Moscow but, unlike our apartment, this room was almost entirely brown. Dark brown carpet, wood veneer furniture, ochre-painted walls, mustard yellow curtains; all made visible by the dim glow of a 60-watt table lamp.
Excerpt from the introduction to A Room for the Night
Alex Yudzon
On the morning of our arrival, the street was blocked off with police cars. Behind the barricade of cruisers, an army of workers in fluorescent jumpsuits rushed to repair what we later learned was a ruptured gas line somewhere beneath the surface of the intersection.
My wife and I were ordered to provide proof of residence to a middle-aged deputy who motioned us through with a polite wave of his hand. Driving past the array of blinking lights, we entered an immaculately manicured corridor fragrant with the scent of linden trees and heated tar.
From the far end of the street, the house looked stately in a faded and lonely sort of way. Its facade towered above the surrounding hedges like a monument to a bygone era, marking the end of one neighborhood and the beginning of another. Its function as a tenuous boundary, however unofficial, conferred on the house a sense of provisionality that made our arrival feel uncertain, as if we were intruding upon something not yet fully settled or claimed.
Excerpt from the short story accompanying 5 Garfield Avenue
Alex Yudzon