What’s on my mind? Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.
I’ll call him Anonymous, though he’s a real guy and this hard-to-believe story is true in every detail. For one thing, he’s still traumatized by what happened when he worked for me. For another, if I told you his name, he’d probably sue me.
Anonymous is a carpenter - an honest Jacques-of-all trades who rescued me from the incompetents and crooks I’d originally hired to renovate the small, but beautiful, apartment I once called home.
I’ll begin at the beginning. The whole thing started because I thought Anonymous was dead. In fact, I was so sure he’d flat-lined that I called the police to arrange for the coroner to remove his body ... but I’m getting ahead of myself.
My daughter owns a Big City loft apartment. I’m afraid of heights and don’t like the idea that she scaled a 10-foot ladder to climb into bed, because I think that’s scary and I felt sure she’d break her neck.
My daughter and Anonymous are old friends, so she lent him her apartment while he renovated mine and she visited friends in New York. Anonymous is steady and reliable, but he enjoys the occasional tipple. A triple tipple, perhaps. During the time that steady, reliable Anonymous worked for me and stayed at her place, he suddenly went AWOL.
One day passed ... then two. I called Anonymous at my daughter’s place. No answer. I called his cell phone. No answer there, either. His message box was full. Anonymous had vanished.
I began to think dark thoughts. In my mind’s eye, I saw a boozy, woozy Anonymous miss a rung of the ladder up to my daughter’s loft-bed, only to crash to his death. If not that, then perhaps Anonymous rolled over in his sleep and - WHAMMO! Either way, I figured he was a goner.
But what if Anonymous weren’t dead? What if the fall had broken his neck, or left him paralyzed on the floor, unable to call for help? I banged on the door of my daughter’s apartment. Silence!
It’s amazing how fast the police will swarm a place when a woman reports a dead guy (“I’m pretty sure he's dead, but you’re more experienced than I am at that sort of thing”) in her daughter’s apartment (“You’ve got it all wrong ... It’s my daughter’s apartment ... I didn’t kill him ...”).
I wondered if the officers might know of any good carpenters, but didn’t think it was a good time, given that the officers were pondering a homicide, suicide, or (Whoopsie!) death by ladder.
The officers ham-fisted my daughter’s door, yelling for Anonymous to “Open up!” He didn’t. The apartment was quiet as ... well, quiet as a tomb.
Anonymous was the only person who had my daughter’s spare key, so the police started talking about a battering ram. I thought I’d better give my daughter a heads-up in New York to let her know she’d soon be the lucky recipient of free air-conditioning.
“Call a locksmith!” she screamed. I didn’t know a telephone could sound that loud over long distance.
The police agreed to hold off until the locksmith arrived. He showed up at the building’s front entrance at the very moment that Anonymous - in the flesh - sauntered through the building’s back entrance.
With so much happening at once and everyone appearing at once and with my being half-crazy with worry, I pointed to Anonymous and screamed: “That’s him! That’s the man!”
Acting on instinct, two police officers sailed through the air like balletic footballers, landing squarely on Anonymous, who - with a muffled scream - went down like a sack of potatoes.
It took a few minutes to straighten things out. The police went on their way once Anonymous explained he’d indeed had a drink, and another, and another. He’d slept it off and lost track of the time, until a couple of days - okay, call it four - slid past.
I red-facedly paid the locksmith $110 for services no longer required.
Anonymous wasn’t keen to work for me after that, and I had to hire someone else. Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen him since.
© Nicole Parton, 2019
