432: There is no . . .
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 2 continues
There is no concierge on duty when Matthew reaches his building. He sets the bags down, gets his key out, opens the door. A sign on the desk reads “Concierge on Break.” This sign appears several times a day, whenever a concierge abandons the post. To Matthew, it seems an invitation to burglars. He said as much to the manager of the building, who listened with a puzzled smile, said, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and then chuckled. The sign has continued to appear, and Matthew supposes that the staff now regards him as a paranoid crackpot.
The elevator arrives. The door opens, but Matthew waits a moment before entering. He wants to be certain that the floor isn’t going to leap up at him or vanish. Nothing alarming happens, so Matthew steps in, presses the button for his floor, and ascends without incident. It annoys him that he should feel relieved each time he succeeds in getting from the lobby to his apartment.
A piece of paper has been shoved under his door, a memo from the head of the condominium board, a contract lawyer with a great affection for capitalization. She writes: “As many Owners may already know, the Building was burgled sometime during the day today. The Individual or Individuals apparently gained access from the Roof. . . .” Matthew fights the impulse to chuckle. He turns his radio off and takes a quick look around. His apartment hasn’t been entered. Leaving the radio on, as he always does, worked. From his foyer table he takes a point-and-shoot camera. He returns to the hall and snaps a picture of some scraps of paper on the carpet just around the corner from the door to his apartment. Then he carries his bags into the kitchen and fixes himself a drink. He turns the lights on in the dining room and looks into the hole in the wall. The insulation has been removed; Matthew can see the metal framing in the wall and, beyond it, the brick facade of the building. In the cavity are several paper coffee cups from Dunkin’ Donuts. Were these part of the original construction, he wonders, or were they left behind by the smell-search team? One of the workmen has written on the wall, “Can’t smell anything. Until we smell it, there’s nothing we can do.” The motto of the building, thinks Matthew. He sniffs around a bit to see if the odor is still there. It is, but it’s in its quiescent state, subtle enough for the workmen to be able to ignore it. On the wallboard beside the hole, he prints:
TUESDAY: ODOR PERSISTS, BUT WEAK. SOMETHING BURNT? INSULATION? ROTTING SNACK FOODS?
Should I put my unit on the market? he asks himself. Matthew has been living in the building for a little more than a year; he has probably thought of selling once a week, on the average. The building is wearing him out. It embarrasses him. He’s sure that he made a mistake in buying into it. He hides this feeling for the sake of his self-respect. He usually doesn’t tell anyone about the slovenly way the building’s managed and maintained, and most of his guests don’t notice what he notices. They wouldn’t notice, for example, the constellation of paper scraps on the carpet in the hall outside his door. These scraps haven’t been vacuumed up in eight days. This particular bit of neglect gives Matthew a certain satisfaction, because he has been snapping pictures of the bits of paper, one picture a day, with his point-and-shoot camera, bought for this purpose, a camera that imprints the date and time on each photograph. He intends to display these photographs at the next owners’ meeting, as evidence of the attitude problem he perceives in the management company that runs the building.
[to be continued on Friday, February 17, 2023]
In Topical Guide 432, Mark Dorset considers Signs and Signage and Apartment Life from this episode.
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