Day 28: Shadow
Imagine you are someone’s shadow for a day.
I am the shadow of the maintenance man for my apartment complex. I choose this dude (I can't remember his name) because he has to enter people's apartments all the time to fix things. So he sees and hears things that people usually hide from the public. And most people may not notice that he's around and reveal things they probably shouldn't.
Like the tenant in Annex West in the two-bedroom townhome. She has a little Shetland Sheepdog mix that can't seem to control its bladder. She's constantly requesting maintenance for "leaks" in her kitchen when it's most likely her dog pissing all over the place. She refuses to go to the vet to get her dog checked, it's a problem.
There's another tenant whose boyfriend always double parks in the garage. Every weekend, never fails, he's parked in the garage next to the dumpster. When the maintenance man was in her apartment fixing her washing machine, the boyfriend stomped in very angry. Apparently he got a tow notice from the complex and now he wants her to complain to them about it. She rolled her eyes. "You literally aren't supposed to park there, I tell you this every time." Maintenance man snuck out as they began to yell at each other.
A third floor tenant in one bedroom always has the windows and doors open with the fan going but none of that can really rid the apartment of the stench of marijuana. Maintenance man is pretty sure the dude's a dealer since there always seems to be people in and out of there. One time, the tenant kept trying to tip him a couple hundred dollars because he saw stacks of cash underneath the bed in the room he was in. He wasn't planning on telling anyone, he's not a narc.
Maintenance man thought he was done for the day and was going to clock out when he got an emergency request: PIPES! BURSTING! EVERYWHERE! HELP! So he ran over to a corner apartment in Annex East with his partner to assess the problem. Moral of the story: don't pour grease down your sink, it builds up over time, solidifying and then shit hits the fan.
By the time 7 p.m. rolled around, he was ready to pass out on his sofa bed and wake up in two days when he was scheduled to work next.
“Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.”