Best Idea Ever!

Three months ago, our Apartment Manager showed up at our door with a big blue tarp and a large skein of rope.  I figured one of two things, either the landlord had found a tenant who could pay a lot more in rent than I, so I was on my way to the bottom of the Hudson River, or the landlord had found a tenant who could pay a lot more in rent than I, so I was on my way to the bottom of the East River.  Fortunately, neither of those possibilities occurred, but only because, thank god, I live in an overpriced walk-up with no dishwasher, bad electricity, and obnoxious neighbors.

Anyway, Apartment Manager was finally getting around to fixing the wading pool that covers the rooftop deck of the unit below mine.  It’s not a real wading pool.  It’s more like a catch basin.  Lacking any apparatus to drain water away from the enclosed deck, the lightest rain, morning dew, or spitting contest off my terrace turns the deck into an amusement park wave pool for local pigeons and the occasional vacationing sewer rodent looking for some fun and sun far from the din of the subterranean rat race (what happens on the roof deck, stays on the roof deck).  And of course, what would standing water be without mosquitoes?  We have those in proboscis abundance.  (Get it?  Proboscis = prodigious?  Dingo even makes entomology funny!) Let’s just say that, if you’re a New York mosquito in the know, Casa Dingo is the happening place to stop by for a drink and a bite.

After months of complaints, Apartment Manager finally came to solve the problem.  His solution consisted solely of laying a tarp across the deck.  That’s it.  No renovation, no reconstruction, just a big, blue tarp.  At first, I thought he might be an idiot.  But, as the day wore on, all doubts faded.  If he wasn’t hooting or humming the Vonage Woo-Hoo song, he was whistling the Vonage Woo-Hoo song.  All.  Morning.  Long.  By mid-afternoon, I was humming the Woo-Hoo song as well, but instead of cheap long distance, I was envisioning rolling his ass up in a big blue tarp before using a Hattori Hanzo katana to make my own Kill Bill sushi. Woo-Hoo, Woo-Hoo-Hoo!

I was sitting at my desk Googling tutorials on swordsmanship and wondering why it takes all day to place a tarp over a roof when suddenly, in the middle of the day, outside of the apartment went dark.  UFO hovering over the city dark.  Godzilla-like monster outside the windows dark.  Or perhaps, most frightening of all, ectoplasm-powered giant marshmallow man walking through midtown dark.  I knew this would happen one day.  I opened the terrace door — graham crackers and Hershey bars in hand — to find a waving, trembling wall of blue.  I should have guessed.  Tsunami.

But, I didn’t drown.  The wall just stayed there, wobbling at me.  Blue wobble wobble.  It was the freakin’ tarp.

“What’s going on?” I shouted as I batted my way through yards of blue nylon trying to find an opening through which I could reach Apartment Manager’s neck.  “This is a great idea!” he shouted back with glee, rubbing his hands together as if he’d just discovered how to make explosives with two three-ounce bottles of shampoo rather than one six-ounce bottle of shampoo.  Apparently, all the whistling and singing deprived Apartment Manager’s brain of much needed oxygen.  I can think of no other reason why he decided to secure the tarp to the top of my apartment, sloping the material over the terrace to the far side of the rooftop deck.  The back of the apartment looked like an isolation tent from a horror movie except there were no cute, superviolent monkeys with cute, superviolent viruses running around.  I did a double-take.  Nope, no monkeys.  Just one whistling ass.

“You’re blocking off all of our light!” I said.  Apartment Manager was convinced that it would be a short-lived inconvenience. He promised that a more permanent and probably far less convenient solution would be in place in less than a week.  I wanted to ask him if a “more permanent solution” meant actually fixing the roof so it didn’t hold water like a woman eating two pounds of taffy a week before her period.  But I didn’t.  Instead, I went back into the apartment to fume.  The fuming only lasted a few minutes.  Not because I took the high road and decided to just deal with living in a cloudless sky for the next week, but because my fuming was interrupted by phhhrrrt!  Phhhrrrt!  Phhhrrrt! 

I tried to ignore the sound but my curiosity got the best of me.  I went back out onto the terrace to find that Apartment Manager didn’t have enough rope to tie down the tarp.  So he decided to use duct tape.  Yep, Apartment Manager was MacGyvering the tarp to a brick apartment building.  It was his very own Blue Badge of Stupid.  “This is my best idea ever!” he kept shouting.  Woo-hoo!  Phhhrrrt!  Woo-hoo-hoo!  Phhhrrt! Best!  phhrrrt!  Idea!  phhrrrt!  Ever!  phhhrrrt!

Later that evening, a passing thunderstorm made mincemeat of the Blue Badge of Stupid.  It lay sad and alone for two months on the roof deck below forming a delightful mosquito duplex.  I watched passively for the first month, then I ordered Sea Monkeys.  I hoped to have a colony of cute, superviolent Sea Monkeys with cute, superviolent viruses waiting for Apartment Manager when he finally returned.  Alas, that plan was thwarted.  Last week Apartment Manager came to fix the roof deck as well as the roof on the top of our building.  I thought that would be the end of the repair drama, but I think the real drama is about to begin.  Now there is a swath of blue tarp draped over the top of our building.  Realizing that duct tape was not the best way to secure a big, blue tarp to brick, Apartment Manager decided to keep the tarp from flying off the top of the building by securing it with bricks wrapped with rope and draped over the edge of the roof like piñatas for kids you just don’t friggin’ like.  Or maybe the bricks just say, “Best!  Idea!  Ever!”

It’s supposed to storm tonight.  The wind has already picked up and the bricks swing precariously closer and closer to our living room window.  All I can say is that I’m going to bed tonight dreaming of all the Sea Monkeys I could buy with the settlement money.

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