TALENTS

 
I knew a building inspector who could smell rats. He didn’t have to see rat droppings; he could smell rats.

I knew a handyman who could jimmy almost any apartment door with a credit card.

My talent is figuring out if a tenant has skipped out or not. I knock loudly on the tenant’s door. If there’s no response, I yell “maintenance” a couple times and bring out the master key. I yell “maintenance” a third time, and step into the apartment. A couch, a bed . . . always. Skippers leave behind the heavy stuff. TVs, for sure. Everyone upgrades his TV on move-out. Some small items are left behind: beer bottles, pennies, unopened bills. Usually enough to fill three or more garbage bags.

The stove is fried. The refrigerator is always missing a plastic shelf. Why?

Underwear and socks . . . gone.  No socks means no tenant. The guy definitely skipped.

Some of his clothes are on the floor. Some good, some bad. I found a tux left behind. The guy was 6-4. I had the pants legs shortened. (He wasn’t a skipper. He was a dead man. And his place was clean.)

I enjoy wrecked apartments. Who doesn’t? A building manager once phoned me with on-the-scene reporting from a wrecked apartment: “It looks like a cyclone went through here crossways!”

But occasionally a manager will not react positively. “I’m creeped out,” one manager told me, standing in the common-area hallway while I went into the suite. She was creeped out by a few bottles of beers, cat urine and cigarette butts. (Probably because she had to clean it.)

I phone the skipper to make sure he’s definitely gone. I say, “You out?”  Nothing more that than. No lectures about housekeeping. Nobody wants to be criticized on their house-cleaning skills.