Meet My New Super

I'm not sure why I wrote this as a story, or in the third person. I think maybe I wanted to distance myself somehow from this whole event. My super was a bit creepy and I felt more uncomfortable looking back on the meeting than I did when I was actually there. I don't claim that it's a story written well, or grammatically correct or anything. While names have been changed, this is how it happened.


Skye knocked on the door. He waited for a minute or two and finally decided no one was home. Turning to leave, he heard a shuffling sound in the apartment, and the door unlatched. It opened.

"Hey, you must be that new guy", Dex greeting him gleefully. Too gleefully, Skye thought. "They keep asking me if the new guy moved in yet, but I said I ain't seen him. Come on in."

Dex was in his underwear, a black and white pair of briefs. He was a black man of medium height, with a salt-and-pepper full beard. He was probably in his late forties or early fifties, well built - obviously the product of a lot of visits to the gym. Across his chest was a tattoo of a large bird. Skye thought it was an eagle, but it was a little difficult to make out against his black skin.

Skye thought he must have woke him from a nap, given the underwear and how long it took Dex to answer the door. "I just wanted to stop by and say hello. I'm sorry - I didn't want to disturb you."

"No, no, come on in." Skye followed the scantily-clad Dex into the unusually dark apartment, although it wouldn't occur to him until later how strange this was. Traversing the hallway, they passed through a beaded curtain to get to the living area, where Dex rolled a high-backed chair toward Skye and told him to have a seat. Skye really did only want to stop by for a quick hello, but now he was committed to having a conversation with his new super, so he sat.

He had been warned that Dex was 'a little eccentric', but hadn't thought about what this might mean: the underwear, the tattoo, the beaded curtain, and now, the leopard print - which was everywhere in the studio. Dex had faux leopard fur draped over bookshelves, and a leopard print bed sheet on his bed, which Skye tried not to stare at.

Looking at the floor, Skye then recalled from his lease a rider, which stated that all hardwood floors should have at least 80% coverage by rugs and carpets to reduce noise and wear on the hardwood floors. While perusing this note, he recalled how ridiculous a clause this seemed to be, and figured that it must have been included in the event that there might be complaints about a tenant's noise above another tenant. Skye didn't really think anyone would go to an effort to cover his or her hardwoods to such an extent. But there they were - area rugs of all different sizes - all over Dex's floors. Skye guessed that the coverage was at about 85%. And they were all leopard prints. The whole place had been leopardized.

"So you're down in 2A, right? When did you move in? You musta done it during the night, slippin' in like that so fast, 'cause I never seen you!" said the astonished super.

"Nope, just on Saturday."

"Any problems? Anything you need?"

"No, I had a friend who lived in that apartment, and he pretty much told me everything I needed to know about it." Skye replied.

"Yeah, that guy, he was a good guy, then all a sudden, he done all moved out, jus' like that! We got some good people living here, you know. Real good people. But there are a couple bad ones, too, and we gotta get'em out. Don't need the bad ones. Don't need them whatsoever! There's this one here in 3D, and that one by you in 2D."

"Yeah, I'd heard about her from Ted." Skye already knew about Crackwhore-Across-The-Hall. His friend Ted, his apartment's former tenant, had already warned him that she was loud and had many people coming and going from her apartment at all hours. Ted was pretty certain that she at least used to be a prostitute, and although he wasn't sure if she still was one, he knew, along with most of the other tenants as well as Dex, that she dealt drugs. There was a lot of traffic to and from her apartment.

"You don't want anything to do with her, an' if she causes any trouble you just let me know. "Her and this guy, they all gotta go," he said, waving towards the apartment across the hall. "They makes noise, don't no pay their rent on time, and always causing trouble. We don"t need them people here.

"But I tell you, things are a lot better since I became super. When I moved in here, back in '97, this place was shit! There was garbage everywhere, and these people were no damn good. I became super about 4 years ago, and we got a new management company, and I tells you, this place turned around! I don't take no shit from nobody. Now we got some good people, professional people. Skye, what do you do for a living?"

"Landscape architecture," Skye I told him, and presuming Dex didn't know much about it, Skye explained that he did a lot of design of parks, plazas, and other public open space.

"In Manhattan?" he asked. This was the response that Skye got the most, so he went on to explain that he did a lot of work for New York City Department of Parks and Rec, and New York Department of Transportation. Somehow this answer always seemed to satisfy the person posing the question, even though it didn't answer the question. The actual answer would have been simply: 'Yes, Manhattan. Believe it or not.'

"That's some cutting edge work, right there. Good business to be in. Right now there's so much stuff goin' on here in the city. It's like this." Dex gestured with his arms coming together to indicate space was shrinking.

"Around here, they been building so much, things been changing, the whole neighborhood's different now." Dex went on to tell Skye which buildings were 'real gold mines' in the neighborhood, but Skye couldn't quite tell by the ambiguous pointing at adjacent walls which buildings he exactly meant, and decided it better to not ask for clarification. Obviously Dex had some issues here and Skye felt it best to just let him have his say, and nod in agreement. Skye looked around the apartment, but tried not to look like he was looking around the apartment. He particularly wanted to know if the leopard-print motif carried into the kitchen, but the kitchen was unfortunately too dark to see into.

"Yeah," Dex went on, "when I first got here those brownstones down the street were all boarded up. There was drug dealers everywhere. Then they cracked down on them one day, and the cops rounded up about twenty guys. Big bust, I'm tellin' ya, I ain't seen nothin' like it! Next day these other guys, stupid as they was, come back thinking they'd get more business, and the cops - they was right there again and busted them too! Now things are all cleaned up and all these professionals come in and bought up all those places and things got turned around. We got some good people living round here now."

Dex continued to say that he wanted to own one of these buildings, and that he could get one for two or three million He claimed he was well on his way to achieving that goal.

"Buy a building and sell it as condos - that's the way! None of this apartment shit. Ain't no money in apartments. I'm gonna do it one of these days. I had it once, but lost it, and it's harder to get it back a second time," Dex said. Skye expected him to launch into an extensive history of past financial successes and failures, but Dex suddenly returned to his building super role.

"So everything good with the place, no troubles, I hope?"

"No problems. I had put a bundle of cardboard out yesterday and I saw that someone moved it to the side of the building. I have more empty boxes. Should I put them there too?" Skye inquired.

"I moved that 'cause that's recycling. Yeah, you go ahead an' put those boxes on the side of the building. Anything else? You all settled in? You need any help moving anything? Furniture or stuff?"

"Pretty much settled in. I'm fine with the furniture." Skye considered mentioning the inch-and-a-half-long cockroach that Medley, his cat, had presented to him outside the shower that morning, but thought better of it. Pets were against the rules, and given Dex's adherence to the 80% floor-covering rule, he probably wasn't going to let the pet rule slide. Medley would need to remain an illegal alien, although now if he was asked to get rid of her, Skye at least had a good argument for keeping her around.

"Well, you just let me know if there's anything you need, any problems, anything at all, you call me, all right?' Dex wrote his number down and passed it to Skye. Skye already had it, but took the piece of paper anyway.

Skye rose and walked back through the dark room, across the leopard prints, guided by the half-naked, tattooed black super, toward the door. Passing through the beaded curtain, they both exchanged a "Nice meeting you" with each other, and Skye stepped out into the hall and headed down to his apartment, as Dex locked the door behind him.

About a half hour later, Skye went out for a short jog. Upon returning, he re-entered his new home, and observed a drug-deal taking place across the street.