Twelve ticking time-bomb days until the sublet goes BOOM and I go out on the street when the downstairs neighbor calls me in a panic. I am at my desk reviewing document 610 of 1895, drinking coffee that could remove nail polish—oh, if only I had not bitten my nails into little painful crescents of pink! My phone vibrates through the super-conductive plastic wood.
The neighbor’s voice is always tremulous. Every falling strand of hair seems to take with it a wisp of already balding confidence. He is one of those men who wear mushroom colored sneakers, puffy white socks, and undo all training in manners because it feels oogey to look him in the eyes. It is like he needs it too badly; it is as if he will suck my soul through that pinhole of intimacy and whack it into a sock under his bed, occasionally taking it out to smell it. “Girl,” he will think. Then he will either eat canned food in front of the television or cry. Either is bad. No—the better manners are to not make eye contact. It is a reasonable exception to the rule. He is nice enough, though. Nice enough.
Today, his voice is frothed up, rabid with panic. “Cristina, you have to come home right now! Your apartment is leaking. It is flooding my apartment!” He sputters desperately.
The reason people slap panicked people it is said to bring the panicked person around. No. It is because their panic is like the next Ebola virus. The proximity is dangerous. I feel my blood pressure rise. I pace before the metal doors, pushing the elevator button manically. I know this does not help. Panic does not help. In my imagination my computer is floating on a sea of dirty water, pouring in waterfalls into the apartment below.
When I get there, the downstairs neighbor is wearing the exact same green sweatshirt and khaki shorts I always see him in. He is in front of the building, gesturing and strangulating on his words as I jog from the corner. The lock takes its usual two minutes for it to let me in. Usually it makes me drop all my bags and swear, but today it spares me this final humiliation. The surly Russian super hovers over me. “Damn.” I think “The dishes are not washed!” We all burst into the apartment. Then:
Nothing.
Nothing at all. No wet floors. No drowned computer rushing my entire electronic life into a watery grave. No dead mice floating in two inches of dirty, burst-pipe inundation.
“The floors aren’t wet.” I say. The sink is unmoved, full of dishes and nothing else.
“I turned the water off.” Says Nikki, the Russian. He looks like he belongs with a glass eye.
“You would think the floors would still be wet.” I observe, walking into the bathroom. “Not even around the toilet.” I feel the back wall. It is wet. The toilet has been jerry rigged to work since the buoy snapped off, but it has been clear the whole structure was rotting. After running a finger along the back wall, I realize it likely was overflowing from the basin.
“It was toilet water?!” The downstairs neighbor paces.
“It was from the back basin, the tank, not the bowl.” I tell him.
The Russian says to wait, he will be back.
“How long?” I shout after him.
“Not long.”
“Toilet water is all over my apartment.” The neighbor peers around nervously.
The neighbor does not seem to realize that I already answered.
“It is not toilet water.” I say again.
“Well, it is from the toilet.”
“It is from the tank, not the bowl. The tank is fed by pipes. You could drink out of it.”
“Are you sure.” The fact that I have a toilet and its now trespassed onto his things seems to have eclipsed from the neighbor’s mind that I am a girl. I guess our relationship is over. I look him in the eye, briefly before the annoyance shines through.
“I am sure. It is from the tank. The fixtures and seals are all breaking. The whole thing is falling apart—much like this apartment.” If he goes into the bathroom he can see right in. There is no back on the toilet. I imagine it cracked over someone’s head in a 1930′s lovers quarrel. The dingy apartment looks like a crime scene. “There is an area in the corner where the ceiling is broke and pulverized cement and mouse poop drop onto the couch regularly.”
He seems relieved. He looks at the ceiling. “It is a nice ceiling.”
“Yes. Other than raining mouse poop on the couch. I assume the upstairs neighbor has a horrible infestation or the mice have burrowed into the wall there.”
This seems to distract him. The Russian comes back. He looks at the neighbor. “You go back to your apartment and tell Alex where to clean. Water is back on except for toilet. I turned that off.” The neighbor leaves obediently, mumbling complaints. Nikki the Russian fiddles around with the toilet. I sit down and begin typing on the computer. Eventually he gets up and tells me he cannot fix it. “Broke until we replace. It will take a few hours to go get things, come back, replace.”
“I have to go back to work.”
“You could leave the key.”
“Then how do I go in?”
“No key, then I cannot fix. Then you have no toilet.”
“Then I have no place to sleep.”
“Problem. I know, you have to go back to work.”
“Okay. Well, there are bars and coffee shops nearby I guess. I guess I have no toilet.”
“No. You home tomorrow?”
“I am.” I feel like I just told him I sleep alone—mostly because he smiles and tilts his head like he knows me now.
“Good. I come in the morning.”
“What time?”
“Nine A.M. You will be home? That is good for you?”
“I will. It will be fine.”
“Sorry.” He says and touches my shoulder sympathetically. “First thing, I fix toilet AND lock.”
Maybe I should be happy that the toilet exploded. Out of the twelve months in every year, I live here for two. This is when the timer on the terrorist toilet goes off. I am homeless. My expensive, enormous bed is in a storage room in Brooklyn. (I am hoping my misplaced over-sized libido is also there.) I have lost track of the inventory that comprises my life. It would make sense that leaving another place would be hard. Eleven more days and I could live on a park bench. At this moment, I do not care as much as I did this morning while walking the three miles to work.
