Apartment Maintenance

Ginger was waiting for a pizza to be delivered when she received a call from her tenant across town. She owned a four-unit in the neighborhood where she once tended bar. Most of the people to whom she rented apartments in that building were old regulars. She knew their criminal and credit histories without having them fill out the usual paperwork.

"Pipe burst in the basement," Ron, a one-time rabid whiskey drunk, said when she answered the phone. Most tenants called the service she hired to take such calls. The folks in that particular building called her directly to report problems. When they told her about the issue, it sounded like they were placing an order. They gave short, curt statements full of expectation. Because they expected swift service. The nature and location of their relationship had changed, but in a lot of ways, Ginger's role was exactly the same.

She looked at the little girl, who had already set the coffee table with paper plates and napkins. Eddie wasn't around, and if the pipe burst, she didn't want to wait until she found him to fix it. She considered, for a second, leaving the little girl alone in her apartment filled with power tools. Ginger sighed.

"Put your shoes back on," she said to the little girl. Ginger wrote a note on a napkin that said, "Leave it on the porch," and then taped the note to the door with a twenty dollar bill. "We've got to go take care of a place," she told the little girl.

They were quiet in the car. Ginger didn't like to take the freeway, so she drove surface streets to get across town. The little girl stared out the window and seemed to watch every turn that Ginger made. When they got to the building, the little girl reached into the backseat to grab Ginger's tool box. Ginger let her carry it through the building's front door. When they reached the door to the basement, she took it back.

"Stay right here until I make sure it's safe to come down the steps," she instructed. The little girl nodded.

Ginger was pretty sure that Daniel would be furious if he knew that she'd taken his daughter on an evening fix-it job. He had a real aversion to the possibility of his daughter leaving the duplex or learning a trade. If the little girl didn't love it so much, Ginger obviously wouldn't have kept showing her how to do things. But the little girl took to it the way Ginger took to it when she was growing up. And frankly, Ginger thought it was better to encourage her, to feed that hunger, rather than leave that curiosity wide open with no teacher in sight.

"Come on down," Ginger yelled up the stairs. The little girl stuck her head in the door first, then made her way down the open stairs. She stopped on the bottom step and looked at the floor.

"It's wet but not flooded," the little girl said.

"It's always a little wet," Ginger said. "I don't put a washer or dryer down here and no one has ever asked to use it for storage.

"Where do people do laundry?" the little girl asked.

"Down the street at the laundromat," Ginger answered.

The little girl stepped down and walked over to the tool box. She opened it up and dug around until she found the wrench. She held it up like an offering to Ginger.

"Because it's a pipe problem," the little girl said.

"Good call, kid," Ginger said. She was proud of her protege. She was going to smile at the little girl, but as she reached out her hand to take the wrench, she noticed her mouth had already made the decision. The corners were turned up. Her teeth were showing. She felt the weight of the tool in her grip and she stood there for a minute. Beaming.