He's the man who masquerades as a doorman from 11 to 7 most nights in my building. I would guess him to be about 80.
Travis uses our lobby as his personal bedroom. He locks the front door, pulls up a ratty looking chair and pillow, falls asleep, and then gets paid.
Around 3 a.m. this morning I hear a consistent beeping sound. I think maybe I'm dreaming.
I get up and walk around the apartment. I definitely hear a pulsing beep-beep. There is some alarm going off somewhere, and it's not in my apartment.
I throw on a coat and a pair off shoes and set out to investigate. I go down one flight to the lobby.
I wake Travis by asking, "Do you hear that?"
For the first three times I ask, Travis completely ignores me. Finally he says, "I hear nothing."
I open the door to the basement where the boiler room is, and hear this.
Travis is still adamant, "I don't hear nothing." I implore him to stand at the basement door (a few feet from his bed) but he refuses. He also refuses to wake the super.
"Besides," he tells me. "There is nothing the super can do. Even if there is something wrong in the boiler room, the super would have to wait until morning to get it fixed."
"The whole point of an alarm is to not wait," I yell. "It could be a gas leak. It could be carbon monoxide poisoning. It could be something else. But whatever it is, the alarm is telling us to do something now."
"Listen, Travis, if you refuse to acknowledge the alarm, and refuse to call the super, I'm calling the police." He doesn't bother to respond.
And so I call 9-1-1.
The police come and together (with Alexander) we all go to the basement.
That's when we hear this and see this:
The police tell Travis he needs to do something.
Finally he agrees and calls the super.
The super takes care of it, though it takes about an hour. Obviously it turns out not to be life-threatening. But it could have been.
And for some reason unclear to every tenant living here, management refuses to let go of Travis.
No comments:
Post a Comment