Chapter 28
He plucks at the last button on my shirt above where the fabric disappears into my jeans. “Then let’s meet here again next Friday when we can be alone, and I’ll let you know when your credit’s run out.”
I start to thank him but he leans in again and presses his mouth to mine, sealing the date with a kiss.
THE ENDMaintenance!
Going back to work the Monday after a hurricane is hell when you’re the only maintenance man for a 130-apartment complex. My official title is “manager” but let’s be serious here—who am I managing? There’s Shonda, the girl at the office who fields calls from residents, and there’s me
The storm blew through over the weekend, leaving flooded roads, toppled trees, and downed power lines in its wake. A quarter of a million people lost their electricity, including an entire row of our townhouses on one street when a tree took out their transformer. I came in Monday with a line of work orders already waiting for me—many from the people without power, like I was going to be much help until the power company got that line back up.
The rest of the orders ranged from broken windows to leaking roofs to tree limbs fallen on cars in the parking lot. Plus the apartment pool had flooded, and lounge chairs now floated in the deep end along with dead leaves and debris.
It was going to be a long day.
Among the work orders were a few non-critical ones that had nothing to do with the storm. A blown pilot light on a water heater, a blocked condensation line on an a/c unit, a clogged shower drain, shit like that. When someone called in one of those, Shonda told them they were at the end of the line—too much else to do today, too many other major problems ahead of theirs. Still, I pocketed a handful of the easy ones to knock off as I could, knowing I was going to need a break from hurricane-related damage soon enough.
I was right. By noon, I was tired of looking at broken branches and green leaves plastering the sidewalks and parking lots. I’d fished as much of the mess as I could out of the pool and spent two hours cutting up an old tree that fell just inches from the back of one of the garden apartments. The upper limbs broke the railing on the apartment’s terrace, and though the resident bitched at me, her bathrobe clutched tight as she leaned out her French doors to complain, she was lucky the damn thing didn’t end up in the middle of her living room. I told her as much—one of her neighbors a street over hadn’t gotten off so easy.
With my lunch break just around the corner, I took a quick look through the non-critical orders in my pocket. One of them sounded simple enough—a dripping sound in the air conditioning unit, just a blocked line it would take me two seconds to blow out. And 6-B was in the same building as the lady with the downed tree, so I grabbed the shop vac from the bed of my pickup and headed upstairs to check it out.
I didn’t expect anyone home—it was Monday, after all, most people at work or school this time of the day. Since I change the filters on each and every apartment, I know who lives where for the most part, and in this apartment was a college-aged young woman with one cat. Whenever she expected me to show up, she left a note taped to the outside of her door, asking me to make sure the cat didn’t get out. As if I would. To be honest, all I’d ever seen of the cat was a streak of orange fur—the moment I opened the door and kitty realized I wasn’t her, it raced to hide in the bedroom closet.
So I was a little surprised not to see a note on her door. Maybe her classes were canceled because of the storm. Maybe she didn’t have any today. Who knew? Lugging the shop vac down the hall, I stopped in front of her apartment and knocked on the door.
No answer.
Of course not, that would’ve been too easy. I knocked again, this time shouting out, “Maintenance!” Just in case she was asleep or something.
I waited.
A minute passed; no one came to the door. I knocked a third time, my limit, and shouted once more. I heard a door open downstairs—probably another resident needing something, but I had enough on my plate already. Digging into my pocket for the ring of master keys I carried, I found the one for apartment 6-B and unlocked the door.