The other day, a guy called me from the front gate. He says, “It’s Tony! Remember me?” That’s a common name, so I ran down to see who it was. It was a neighbor who we all did not like when he lived here.
He moved to Colombia years ago and now is back and he wants to move back into the building.
First off, he aged so much, I did not recognize him. I asked him to take his sunglasses off. He was in a wheel chair. A mess.
When he lived here, he was a bully. He did illegal renovations to his unit and didn’t care what anyone else said, because his excuse was, “I’m an architect.” We never believed that because he was a mess and never knew what he was doing.
As I spoke to him, a neighbor walked by, I had to tell her who he was since he changed so much. She was shocked. She did ask him mockingly if he was still an architect. I honestly don’t believe he ever was.
He literally put a window in his unit without permission and without permits. We’re lucky it didn’t crack the whole facade of that side of the building while he was drilling illegally. I kept picturing a crack going up from his first floor apartment, all the way up to the roof, and then splitting the building in two.
Anyway, I was stuck downstairs talking to him. I told him there was nothing available and there usually never is in our small building. He asked about the two cabanas that people own and I told him they were not for sale or rent and it was against condo rules, and the law, to rent out cabanas as apartments. We are right on the water and that’s not a safe place to be.
He would not leave. I didn’t know what to do. He kept insisting on buying or renting, but there was nothing available in the building. It’s a small building. I know what’s available or not.
He would not give me his number, which was strange, because I told him I would call him if something came up. Which I knew nothing would come up. And even if it did, I was never going to call him.
Finally he went to the building next door, because it is larger and perhaps they had something available. I was glad he went, because he said he took the bus over and with the wheelchair and all, that had to be a project. I was afraid he was going to ask me to drive him somewhere and getting the wheelchair in my car would be an issue, I did it one time for someone and we shoved it in so hard, we could hardly get it out after that.
But since he went next door, he never called me or showed back up again. For all I know, he is still there bending someone’s ear about wanting to move back into the neighborhood.
I will give him credit for one thing – I had this leak where I could never figure out where it came from. I thought it was the washing machine, but it wasn’t. One day, when he was doing some of his illegal work, he called me to his unit to see something. I was the president of the board, so I was involved in everything, whether I liked it or not.
He showed me water coming out of his electric box, where all the breakers are. When we went up to the roof, we saw the main conduit was exposed and water got in. That’s what was happening to me all those years. The water was leaking in through the electrical box, which is right next to my washing machine.
Thanks to him, we had the thing fixed and no more leaks. So that was a good thing that came out of this mess of a guy. And water in the electrical box is not a good thing, so Tony did one good thing in his life. He complained selfishly about his own place, which lead to me fixing a major problem in my place.
Until next time . . . .
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