The property management company is upping its revenue gathering efforts. The tenants were forewarned. Yesterday, it was my turn. At ten in the morning, as I was cooking my breakfast, two large scruffy men entered the Bat Cave with the intention of installing water meters on the copper pipes going to the upstairs and downstairs apartments. Instead of adding a flat fee to the rent to account for water usage, now through the magic of Wi-fi, we will be accurately charged for our long showers. Yay, accuracy.
I moved my electric skillet to a safer location while the guy cut a hole in my wall over the sink. My breakfast cooked and sat on the counter, growing bacteria. Eventually during a lull, I put it in the fridge. My kitchen was a disaster zone, insulation, dust, and roaches everywhere. When the guys left two and a half hours later, I had three plastic-covered square holes in my kitchen wall and some mental images I'd really rather forget.
The fun started when a grizzled dusty man named David sawed an 8-inch square hole in the dry wall and started yanking out insulation, also known as bed-and-breakfast for the nest of cockroaches I knew were living behind the electrical outlet. I warned him. I will spare you the details. I am still queasy.
While he waited for one of his compadres to bring him a tool, David pulled out his phone and showed me the view from his property, somewhere out a road I'd heard of but had no idea where it was, up a hill with a fantastic view of mountains and desert. He had a live camera going all the time, and he checked it periodically as he was working. The sound of wind ruffling across a web microphone kept coming out of his shirt pocket. It was like a baby monitor for his property.
"That's where my house used to be," he said, pointing at a flat bare area of dirt. "Burned down last year."
Terrified roaches fled along the counter, making a break for freedom. I shot them with alcohol.
"There was a tornado out there. Left a wire shorted out under the roof. Six months later, the whole place burned to the ground."
David went outside to get something and have a cigarette. A beefy guy in a neon vest came in and took over, cutting a second hole on the other side of the electrical outlet.
"Whoa, I found the nest," he said, dancing back and bumping into the Barbie stove, which was sitting in the middle of my 4-foot square kitchen. "I hate roaches," he grinned at me. He was missing one of his front teeth.
Soon there were cockroaches all over the counter, running for their lives. I gave the insect spray to the worker, and he nuked the vicinity. I shot alcohol at the ones who got past his first line of attack.
His brother Hector came in and out to fetch and carry things to the apartment next door. I sat in my TV watching chair, watching the guys work. At one point, they moved outside to show their boss something on their phones and to complain about the fourth worker, Jesse, who went AWOL during the afternoon and was not seen again. I looked at the hole in my kitchen wall and realized I was looking through a corresponding hole in my neighbor's wall, straight into their kitchen. I saw the back of a stove, part of a counter, and further away, the edge of a sofa. Their walls are the same color off-white as mine, and just as bare.
The workers did not bother to put back the pieces of drywall they cut out. Instead, they covered the holes with pieces of shiny white plastic. One is about eight inches square, the other is a foot square. The squares are shiny white. The walls are glossy off white. One of the squares is screwed into the wall at the four corners with black drywall screws. Do you know what it is like to see something black on the wall out of the corner of your eye? Not good. I feel inordinately jumpy whenever I am in my kitchen.
As soon as the workers were gone, I took wide masking tape and taped up all the edges on the two pieces of plastic by the electrical outlet. The electrical outlet was already well taped around the edges; until I put that tape on there, that was the preferred entrance to the roach bed-and-breakfast that was behind the wall. I know that nest is still there. Some got nuked, but eggs are hatching, and orphan babies are coming. I taped the plastic covers to block easy access to my living space. They will have to come in through the hole under the sink. The gateway to and from hell. I'm dusting off my handbasket.
