Last weekend, I am happy to say, we finally moved to our new apartment.

Moving is never fun, but getting out of our old place, which seemed to have new problems every day, and away from our old landlord, who threatened to evict us when we wanted her to fix them, softened this blow considerably.

Since I’m pregnant – at this point, very pregnant – we sucked up the cost and for the first time hired actual movers, not Craigslist scrawny musician movers or a ragtag man with a van, but actual bubble wrap, boxes, cover your furniture with pads movers.

“This is the best move we’ve ever had,” I told Andy from my spot on the sidewalk as the movers, wearing orange T-shirts bearing the company’s logo, loaded our things into their matching logoed paneled truck. “We’re such grown-ups!”

“Mm,” Andy mumbled in lackluster agreement. It was easy enough for me to stand on the sidelines, but I was getting the sense that letting the movers take over was somewhat of a challenge to his manliness. “I’m gonna bring down that box of breakables,” he said, and headed back into the brownstone.

Yes, it was good to be getting out of here, I thought, smiling at the movers as they passed on their way back in. The smile still on my face, I turned to the street with the vague idea of seeing how full the truck was. Instead, I found Tonya, our possibly psycho landlord, standing on the corner, hands on hips, scowling.

Seeing Tonya there was not really a surprise; a receptionist at a law firm when we’d first signed the lease, she was now a waitress at the French restaurant up the block. Since we’d announced our decision to vacate, she had been giving me dirty looks every time I passed there. For weeks, I’d been avoiding the intersection.

I had half expected to see Tonya there, working the brunch shift, but the way she was glaring gave me a start, and for an instant, replaced my giddy getting out of here feeling with something dark and unsettling. But the movers coming down the stairs made me happy enough to shoot Tonya a satisfied little smile. In a mere few hours, we would be out of here, and she’d still be there, serving eggs Benedict and thinking of ways to torment her next unwitting tenants. I fought the urge to add a smug little wave.

Once the truck was loaded, we drove to our new place. It may have been just ten blocks away, but it felt as if it were a whole new world. In fact, it was a different neighborhood. We’d gone from grittier, just-now gentrifying Boerum Hill to old-time Italian Carroll Gardens. The hipster moniker BoCoCa (short for Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens) may encapsulate the two, but where our old block featured a fashionably gritty French restaurant on its corner, our new block was home to two Italian social clubs. I noted the particulars of each as we drove past. One had old men and linoleum tiles. The other had a pinball machine and middle-aged men who could have come straight from “Sopranos” central casting.

But even better – for me at least – were the establishments on our new corner: a bakery and a pizza parlor. The bakery, I noted as we pulled in to double-park, had a line that stretched out its door. The pizza place, it’s awning read “Vinnie’s,” had three old men sitting in front of it at a small wooden table. They weren’t playing cards or dominoes or anything. They seemed just to be looking around, and, now that we’d arrived, watching us prepare to move in. As Andy went to unlock the door for the movers, I smiled at the old men from my side of the street.

“You movin’ into that building?” one of them asked with a point of the chin.

“Yeah,” I said, the smiling new neighbor.

“Which apartment?” asked another, wearing a newsboy cap. “Top floor?”

“No,” I shook my head. “The one above the parlor.”

They nodded, satisfied. “Nice place,” the first one said. “Sunny.”

“That one has a terrace, right?” the second one asked, though it was unclear whom he was asking.

“Yeah,” answered the third. “He’s been doin’ a nice job with the renovation.”

Not knowing quite how to respond to this, I simply nodded and continued smiling.

“So when are you due?” the one in the cap asked me.

I told him and he said, “Best of luck.”

“If you ever need anything,” the first one told me, “you just come over to us.”

“Thanks,” I said, turning to head inside to the new apartment.

“I see you’ve met the welcome wagon,” said a man in a leather jacket as he walked down the stairs of the brownstone next to ours. Once in front of me, he extended his hand and said, “Johnny. I live next door. Pleased to meet you.”

I introduced myself with a “Pleased to meet you, too.”

“Is everything going okay?” Johnny asked. He was slim and well groomed and wore a large ring on his pinkie finger. There was a covered motorcycle in his yard. “You guys need anything? Or any help?”

“No, we’re fine,” I said. “Thanks so much for asking.”

“Okay, then,” he said, unlocking the black BMW parked in front of his building. “But let me know if you need anything, or if anything in the place needs doing.”

“That’s so nice of you,” I said, touched, if a bit confused by this level of good-neighborness.

“Hey,” he said, stepping into the driver’s seat. “It’s just called being a landlord.” He rolled down his window, started his engine, and with a wave of his hand, called out, “Welcome to the neighborhood!”

The Brooklyn Chronicles, a work of fiction, appears each Friday. Previous installments are available at www.nysun.com/archive_chronicles.php. The author can be reached at kschwartz@nysun.com.