Zeke Show

I ran into my next-door neighbor—we’ll call him Elmer—in the hallway between our apartments recently. “You think Ezra’s a bad name?” he asked rhetorically. Well, no, I actually like it quite well, I wanted to say, but before I could open my mouth Elmer continued, “Well, my family used to call me Zeke when I was growing up!” I wasn’t sure how to respond to this information, so I said something along the lines of, “Is that right, Zeke?” Personally, I like the name Zeke. It conjures images of hillbillies, and I like hillbillies.

In my experience thus far, Elmer/Zeke is always friendly, unless you are somehow engaged in defying the Tao of Elmer. The tao is easy to figure out, since most of it is posted around the building’s common areas on large, easy-to-read signs. Such as those in the laundry room.

Elmer presides over the laundry room, and his signs enforce order where there would otherwise be laundry anarchy. Elmer writes his signs with hyphens between each word, possibly on the theory that hyphens are too much fun to limit their use to adjectival compounds, such as “obsessive-compulsive.” There are signs commanding launderers to throw only lint in the lint-specific trash can, to clean the lint screens after a load is done, to turn off the lights on the way out, not to leave detergent bottles on the table or they’ll be thrown away, and to close the lid to the washer when it’s not running (to-prevent-dust-from-entering-the-drum). Over the spigots for the washer’s two water lines are the words “hot” and “cold,” just in case the spigots’ colors—red and blue—get confusing.

The other day I was in Elmer’s Laundromat putting my laundry in the dryer and was shocked to discover that some Snuggle-wielding nihilist left a sheet of fabric softener in there. I thought of forging a sign in Elmer’s trademark blue marker reading, “Remove-Snuggle-from-dryer-or-I-will-kill-you. I-am-watching,” but figured that would only spawn another sign that read “No-unauthorized-posting-of-signs.”

And Elmer is authorized as a manager-type person for our building. He has keys to my apartment and he’s not afraid to use them. Shortly after we moved in, our apartment was repainted by a Tibetan guy. Apparently the Chinese took away his brushes, because his only tool was a roller and he didn’t come within an inch of any corner, which gives the place an interesting two-tone look. I tell visitors that “shabby edges” is the latest interior decorating craze and it took me months to find a guy who knows how to do it. As might be expected from an absent-minded, avant-garde creative type, the painter left the lights on when he was done, which caused Elmer to swing into action with his “emergency” keys. Seeing that the lights were on in our apartment but the painter had left, Elmer let himself in and turned off the lights, then notified the management company that there had been a key-worthy incident. The building managers, in turn, were horrified, and suggested that perhaps Elmer should relinquish his keys before any other emergencies arise, like someone leaving the TV on.

I know about this situation because Elmer confronted me one day after work, explained what happened and offered to turn in his keys. I didn’t want to take away Elmer’s keys, because I really didn’t care if he’d been in the apartment, and he seemed pretty repentant about the whole thing. After all, he’d probably saved us at least 23 cents in electricity, and I’ve got nothing to hide. My roommate, Scott, might’ve been upset if Elmer had walked in while he was inside practicing kung fu moves and wearing women’s underwear, but as far as I know Scott doesn’t even do that. I don’t know why I even mentioned it.

At first I thought that Elmer’s iron rule of the building’s basement territory bordered on oppressive, but I’ve come to think of him as an arbiter of order in a chaotic universe. Inside Elmer’s Laundromat, the light is always off when you arrive and the lint screens are always clean. The question is what will happen when we have a party, as eventually we will. It might be hard to stay on Elmer’s good side with bass thumping through our paper-thin doors, even if we do adhere to the building’s 10 pm quiet rule. I see only one solution: A party ain’t a party till it includes a guy named Zeke. ∂