I was home this afternoon on the couch, enjoying back-to-back episodes of The Dog Whisperer (I know I'm late to this party but OH MY GOD Cesar Milan is freaking amazing and those white teeth!), when I heard a huge CRASH! in the apartment next door, and then a big THUD as something heavy hit the floor inches from our shared wall.
This sort of noise should normally cause concern, right? Except that I knew immediately what it was. See, our neighbor here on the 6th floor of a west Harlem walk-up is a 63 year-old man. Well, a 63 year-old drunk, I should say. He's a raging alcoholic, and almost never leaves the apartment because he's so sick and damaged that it takes him an hour (literally) to make the trip back up the stairs. Both my roommate and I have been caught by him trying to get up or down the stairs at some point when he's sweating like a pig, heart failure imminent.
My building super told me that Mr. Elmer (the neighboring drunkard in question) fell on the bottom landing of the stairs once and was so drunk he just rolled around on his back "like a turtle" until Will (the super) came to help him up. Once some random guys who were running errands for him knocked on my door and asked if they could go through my apartment to the fire escape to get to his apartment, because Mr. Elmer had fallen next to the door of his apartment (we could hear him talking through the door) but couldn't get up to open it for them. I declined, not surprisingly, and told them to call Will.
Bree (the roomie) and I were hanging out in the living room the last time we heard him fall. When we heard the tremendous thud of something heavy hitting the ground, we both stared at the wall and waited to hear signs of continuing life. At the time I looked at her and said, "You realize we're going to smell him one day, right? And that's how we'll know he's dead?"
So, yeah. Not too appetizing. But I guess that's better than what happened to the guy on Long Island. Apparently he died in his chair watching tv and was dead for over a year when they found him, tv still on. At least Mr. Elmer has me and Bree on smell alert, whether we like it or not. Home Sweet Harlem!
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
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4 comments:
OMG that's scary! Did he make it this time? Will should really contact his family to see if someone can do something about him, you know, like help him or something, no?
I am so appalled that no one ever checked on that LI man! Wow, that is sad about your neighbor. Sad, and scary.
Hopefully he is ok...
Maybe you can get him a Pinball machine, then you'll be able to tell if all is well by the loud dings and chimes of the game?
Happened to a friend of mine in Boston-- terrible smell for a couple of days and finally someone jokingly said "Hey, haven't seen Joe from downstairs all week!" Oh yeah, it was Joe.
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