From January to March, when I had no job and only one class there was a lot of time to study the room we were staying in.  After awhile, though, the place began to feel like a forgotten piece of history, one of those weird out of the way places most people don’t know about, a museum that showcased the relics of a time that evoked sweet muddy memories that people were glad to be rid of.
The air conditioner was a beige box mounted on the wall underneath the window.  Two knobs that looked like stovetop dials controlled the air conditioning.  One controlled the level of “warm/cool”.  The other selected high or low heat and cold, fan only, and off.  None of us ever turned the dial to “off”. As far as we were concerned it could have had only one setting; full blast cold.  The cold helped deaden noses that didn’t really want to experience three people packed into a space smaller than the size of a shipping crate.  The air current exchanged clean new air for our heavy dank breaths.  
The big brown machine looked like it had been sitting on that wall since the sixties, an example of plastic’s ability to make everything better.  When it was running it sounded like an airplane on a runway. Every night I slept on the floor next to the air conditioner.  I felt as if the thing was alive, freezing cold and quivering, encased in brown plastic from the acid sixties, sputtering coughing and blaring, reluctantly doing what was requested of it.   
The room itself was shaped like a human sized refrigerator box.  If you stood up you almost felt as if your head would brush the ceiling.  Half of the space was dominated by a bed two people could sleep in.  A quarter was taken up by the bathroom, sink, waist high refrigerator, and faux closet.   The rest was split between a desk, a desk/dresser, two night stands, and walking space.  My brother slept on the floor next to the bathroom.  My mother claimed the bed. 
The walls were the typical cardboard construction.  Stiff cardboard planks attached to beams, slathered with a thick mash, covered by a light paint job.  The carpeting looked like it had been laid down when the air conditioner was installed.  The furniture had handles that fell off.  Walls, rug, and furniture were shades of brown.   
There was one bathroom, with one standup shower, and one toilet.  There was a tiny refrigerator with a faulty ice tray that led to the growth of a pungent fungus.  On the third floor there were two washers, and two dryers next to two soda machines, one snack machine, and an ice machine that continually soaked the tile floor with water.  There was a TV with Cartoon Network, HBO, NBC CBS ABC and Fox. 