Needed

You ring the buzzer outside of his door and it will open eventually. The janitor, grey hair and wheezing lungs, is always there in his windowless flat, always with the telly on. Everything in there looks like it would be appropriate on the set of a black and white sitcom, the couch, the carpeting, the chairs. The only time I make my way down the stairs, through the garage, and past the boiler room to his flat is when I need tokens for the laundry machine. Rent cheques I just drop into his mailbox.

They took him away in an ambulance today, although they didn't bother with the flashing lights and the siren. The landlady found him when she came to collect the rent cheques. None of the tenants remember the last time they saw him. Maybe last week?

During the winter, when he was in the hospital for a month, they told him there he needed an operation, triple bypass surgery. His life, they said, depended on it. He opted against the surgery.