Our landlord, who once described renting to Rachelle and I as the biggest mistake in his life, is interested in keeping his maintenance expenses to a minimum. He fobs this off as loyalty, as the building we live in, a 125 year- old hotel converted into apartments, has been in his family for over 50 years. What this means is that the repairmen he employees– when he feels obliged to do so—are either the people whom his father employed to work on the building back in the day or their relations.
For instance, the buzzer didn’t work for the first year that we lived in our apartment. Our landlord refused to replace it, but could find nobody who knew how to fix it, as it was World War II era. Eventually, an ancient Italian man who spoke no English appeared, as if having mastered time travel. Sighing a lot and pointing emphatically at various things, he spoke with his hands and eyes before fixing the buzzer and receding into time, his life a mystery.
At any rate, our landlord’s go-to guy for any trouble we have in our apartment has become Ron, a neighbour who has lived his entire life in the same home just off of Queen East. Thin and bow-legged like a cowboy, Ron is 75 and has a shock of pure white hair.
He loves to talk, frequently bitching about our landlord, “Ah David, he’s an asshole, not like the old man at all. Now let me tell you, he took care of his tenants, this guy couldn’t care less, just as cheap as they come.” Ron shakes his head, considering the world falling apart around him, and then heads up to the roof to try to stop the leaking in our back room.
A few days later we bump into him on the street. Our dog loves him and always goes crazy when she sees him. Ron laughs, winking at Rachelle, “always had a way with the ladies.” The truth is that he has a crush on Rachelle and is unable to take his eyes of her, staring up at her like he’s just seen all the miracles possible in the world. He pays little attention to me, and speaking directly to her explains, sort of, why it’s impossible to fix our persistent leak.
“I just can’t find the source! I tell you, water’s worse than fire. A fire you can find and put out, but water it’s hard to find, and when you do, you can’t put it out! Water, it’s just there, nothing you can do about it.”
I decided to chip in, “ You’re right! I mean, God didn’t smite the earth with a flood of fire, he used water!”
“Fucken’ right,” Ron said, nodding wisely, “ God knew what he was doing.” And never once while he was speaking did he take his eyes off of Rachelle.