Vacancy

You know it’s sad when, upon seeing a cleaning crew working on a unit, the question you ask is, “Did he move or did he die?” But that’s exactly how it went when I headed out to the dumpster and spied cleaners working on the upstairs unit across the quad.

Knowing Nosey, the across the quad downstairs corner unit neighbor, who keeps an eye on all the comings and goings would have the answer, I posed that question.

“Oh, he moved on Monday. He has Stage 4 cancer. The doctor said going up and down the stairs was too rough on him”.

“Management couldn’t give him a downstairs unit?” asked I.

“Oh, I suppose they could, but they moved him in with one of his sons.” 

I was home all-day Monday, didn’t hear the movers, didn’t look up from my needlepoint and see a thing. Goes to show how attentive I am in this new normal where one should always be aware of what’s going on around them.

Poor guy. He hasn’t lived here long. Moved into the unit around May of last year.

That particular unit has been a revolving door ever since the original Maintenance Guy, beloved by all residents and with this building since it was first built 20 years ago, was fired by that mean Nurse Ratched and forced to move out of the unit, even though he was age and income qualified to remain irregardless of no longer working here.

Ratched quickly moved the current Maintenance Guy, his wife, a three-year-old and a four-year-old into the unit. But the children were so disruptive — always running around inside, jumping off furniture onto the floor, causing chaos for the downstairs resident, playing out on the patio making noise late at night, causing chaos for all of us in the quad, that she had to relocate the family, less than a year later, to a unit over the Game Room.

Then Cranky moved in. Cranky was the woman who was quite nice, but complained about anything and everything — the woman who threatened to contact the Attorney General when management wouldn’t give her the parking space she wanted.

She got the parking space, but was always threatening to move for one reason or another -- she moved here to be near her son, ended up not liking his girlfriend, felt he didn’t need her, didn’t like California, didn’t like a lot of other things I can’t recall and finally carried through with her threat and relocated to the Long Island area of New York as soon as her year’s lease was up.

Now the unit is vacant again, with this latest tenant moving out to live with one of his sons.

Won’t be vacant long, because we have a waiting list.

Can’t wait to see who’s next.

Every time the unit goes vacant, us residents of this all-female quad (except for the 20 something kid that lives with his mom), hope for some good-looking testosterone to move in.

How that 20 something kid gets to live here with his mom is unknown, but he came with the furniture when she moved in three years ago. A retired school teacher was the previous tenant and she too, like the original Maintenance Guy, was a long-time resident, having moved in when the building was first built. Her family moved her out because they feared for her safety when Nurse Ratched began managing the complex, ran off all the nice long-time residents and, when faced with a mass exodus, began leasing to questionable characters.

At any rate, the Universe has failed to fulfill our request for some good-looking testosterone in the upstairs unit across the quad in the past, but hope springs eternal.