Elmer’s Glued

It’s been a while since I’ve updated you on the exploits of my next-door neighbor, Elmer, so here’s a quick refresher: Elmer looks like Grandpa Simpson, has lived in my building for at least 15 years, and for some tenuous building-management reason has keys to my apartment.

Elmer needs to get out more. Actually, if he got out at all, that would be more. I’m confident that if the government sent him to live with Pakistani tribesmen for a few months, he’d find Osama bin Laden just by barging into people’s tents and claiming he had to inspect their furnaces. Since I live in a “garden level” apartment, the furnaces for the building are behind one of my walls, and recent weeks have seen Elmer in my apartment three times with important furnace-related business. He’s also been in once to do something with the gas meters, and I recently returned from a trip to find that my bed had been moved to allow access to some type of drain in the floor. I’m waiting for Elmer to reveal that he’s also a T mechanic and there’s a train in my closet that needs maintenance, if he could just get in there for a second.

The maintenance-related visits are legit, as far as I know. But the fact that Elmer tirelessly monitors everything that happens on the ground floor is starting to get to me. For instance, a couple of months ago I let my laundry sit in the dryer for about a half hour after it was done. When I scooped my clothes out and went to clean the lint trap—leaving a dirty lint trap is a cardinal sin with Elmer—I discovered that it had already been cleaned. So in the half hour since the dryer stopped, Elmer had visited the laundry room and cleaned the lint screen. I suppose this was meant as a friendly gesture, but I found it highly unsettling that Elmer pays so much attention to my laundry. At least I’ve avoided the situation Roommate Scott found himself in while doing laundry recently, when Elmer made him come into his apartment and learn about all his medications. From what I understand, this wasn’t Scott’s idea of a good time.

Another night, Elmer came storming out of his apartment at 11:30 when I walked into the hallway from outside. No doubt he was hoping he’d catch the perpetrator of some post–10 pm drying. He was obviously unprepared to see me and made a poor transition out of confrontational mode, blurting, “So, you’re home late!” I didn’t know how to respond to that, but “And you’re being a nosy maniac late!” would have been appropriate.

The next example of the omnipresence of Elmer came when something died in the ceiling and stunk up my apartment. The odor was stifling, but the prospect of discovering the source of the smell was worse. If I poked up a ceiling panel and a decomposing rat fell out on my head, I might run through the wall like the Kool-Aid man and not stop until I reached McLean Hospital for a lobotomy.

I took a “let’s wait this thing out, it can’t decompose forever” strategy and began airing out the apartment by cracking the door to the small courtyard we share with Elmer. Since it was cold out, I never left the door open for very long. But one night I absentmindedly left it wide open while I was out for a few hours. When I returned, the door was closed. Did Elmer close it, and if so, how did he know it was open in the first place? He could’ve closed it from outside, but why would he be outside in the cold when there’s nothing on his side of the courtyard but gravel? Is it possible the wind somehow sucked it closed? I can’t be sure, and this uncertainty is spreading to other aspects of my life—are we going through toilet paper inordinately fast, or is that my imagination? I also had a dream the other night that it was I, not Scott, who got the medication tour, and it took me quite a while to get back to sleep after my Nightmare on Elmer Street. Elmer moves with ninja silence in his fuzzy slippers, and he’s all up in my head.

Ultimately, Elmer is harmless. But my personal paparazzo definitely needs another outlet for his considerable time and energy—the other day he called the building manager about a rattling hot-water pipe in my kitchen sink. I’m probably the only guy in Boston praying for a Wal-Mart to go up next to his apartment. Elmer would make one hell of a greeter, and I’m pretty sure their hardware department carries locks. ∂