Our last upstairs neighbors were two women who moved in and then never paid rent. The apartment just above us has a history of people moving in who cease at some point to pay rent and then skip out. These women never paid rent again at all.
Earlier this week I heard someone upstairs at a time when the landlord would not be up there. “There is someone upstairs,” I told Marty. As it was around the first of the month, I wondered if it was a new tenant, though no one had moved in yet.
The next day I heard a lot of banging around on the stairs leading upstairs and then upstairs. What is amazing to me is how people make a lot of noise when they move in but when they are skipping out on rent they make no noise at all.
“Someone is moving in upstairs,” I told Marty.
He thought instead the landlord might be up there getting rid of any furniture left behind by the people who skipped out on their rent last month, because our landlord usually lets us know what is going on around here and he had mentioned nothing about a new tenant. I said, no, that this was definitely someone moving in and looked and outside was a U-Haul moving van.
We were returning from a trip up to New Echota on Thursday, saw G., the resident Super (he helps the landlord) and stopped to talk to him. I saw coming up the hill a pretty dark-haired young woman in a tight hot pink tank top. G. noticed as well and mumbled something about her and we made out that she is the new upstairs tenant. We progressed to the door of the building and I was thinking we would say Hello and introduce ourselves as we would reach it at the same time but she instead ignored us and walked by to talk to G. I heard her making hearty greetings as we went inside.
The first words out of my mouth when we got inside?
“She is stacked,” I said to Marty. Honestly, the bust was the second thing I noticed about her. First I had seen the pretty face but then immediately I had seen the hot pink bust leading the way of the pretty face. And when I had seen the bust in the hot pink tank top I thought well, if it was difficult getting some things fixed around here before now, it was a good chance that Pretty Young Woman With Bust would from now on be ever standing in the line ahead of us, which was why the bust merited first comment. I am a practical person that way.
“Is not she though,” Marty said. (Weird, not being able to use contractions.)
Marty went back outside to get the few things we had left in our car and heard Pretty Young Woman telling G. he had great sneakers on. They are whatever sneakers that have seen better days. Pretty Young Woman also knows how to puff up egos. I now know not to believe a word she might ever say to me in a complimentary fashion, should that ever happen. And I doubt that it will.
G. was strutting and said, “Yes, everyone likes my shoes! A man in a BMW stopped his car once and got out to ask me if he could buy my shoes!”
What a story. It is one of the reasons I like G. Anyone who can whip up a story like that on the spur of the moment is OK in my book.
I told Marty I was going to tell G. he better be careful or he is going to pop a blood vessel.
Then on Friday when I was washing dishes our kitchen sink backed up with black stuff. It is not often that this happens but I have noticed that it is when we have an upstairs neighbor that we start having plumbing problems. Even though there are a number of other apartments in the building, it is when we have an upstairs neighbor that we seem to be affected. I took the dishes out of the sink and got the plunger that is reserved for the sink and stood up on a chair, stuck the plunger in the nasty water, and for about twenty minutes attempted to make an iota of difference. It seemed after about twenty minutes I saw the water level drop slightly but I decided no and called Marty and asked him to pick up some Drano on the way home. I noticed the black in the water seemed not so black, was clearing up a little, but as the water level did not appear to be dropping any further I reasoned it was sediment settling. When Marty got home he walked in and made one stab at the sink with the plunger, just one stab and whump down went the water.
So seems my working at it for twenty minutes had almost made a difference but not quite. Or so I told myself. Having managed to have almost opened the sink back up made me feel as if I had almost managed a measure of success that day.
“Remember, I have a hundred pounds on you,” Marty said.
I bleached the sink and got the dishes out of the bath tub and hauled them back in. As we had just been at New Echota the day before, I had fresh in my mind their replica of an early 19th century kitchen with the well out back of the house and did not feel very put out by all this.
Leave a Reply