The story started with a crack at the base of my shower. A week later, the crack widened, and paint around it started flaking off. So, on a Friday afternoon, I called 3 plumbing companies. None of them wanted to send anyone out and one of them went as far as trying to sell me a tube of silicon so I could fix it myself.
After all that, I decided to use my last resource: Lisa at the real estate agency. Over the line always sounded like she was on the verge of strangling someone. “It’s four pm can’t you find a better time to call? Matt will come over next week and check it out for you. He’ll give you a call!” She hung up and over the following week, I received a text message from a certain Matt who promised to come and have a look at 9 am on a Thursday.
For the record, I didn’t care for anything that happens before 11 am because sleeping when others were at work felt great. So, upon receiving the news that I had to get up at 9 am, I called my sister Ada:
“Hey, do you want to come by and have lunch together on Thursday?”
“That was out of the blue.” She said.
“Well, let’s just catch up it’s been a while.”
And of course, what I didn’t tell her was that even though she was great company, she was a greater alarm clock. Without fail, my intercom buzzed at 8 am on Thursday and I was forced to get up to buzz her in. I brewed some tea and sat her down before revealing her real purpose for the day. She wasn’t pleased.
“Next time, just ask me to give you a call instead,” she shook her head, “you’re paying for lunch because this is on you.”
We lounged around and waited for Matt to show up and fix the shower problem. But the only problem was that in the imagination of a plumber, 9 am was synonymous with 1 pm. And it was impossible to spend those in-between hours with ease. I couldn’t even go to the toilet without the looming fear of ending up with 40 missed calls on my phone and a grumpy plumber waiting in the lobby. Hence, we sensibly stayed in the apartment after lunch for 3 hours, and around 1 pm, the intercom finally buzzed.
“Hey mate, sorry for being late.”
I buzzed Matt in and he had a lost look about him. I rehearsed complaints and angry lines in my head over and over, but upon seeing that face, I couldn’t bring myself to yell at him. Instead, I nodded and directed him into the bathroom. Without even inspecting the crack closely, he said:
“Well … Mate. This is an emergency repair. What took you so long?”
I tried so hard not to point out the irony in that question, but given that Ada was around and I didn’t want to sound like an ass, I nodded showed him the way out.
“I’ll be back next week, eh?” He pulled out his phone and noted something down. “And oh! I live just down the street from you so anytime next week could work. But …” He paused.
“What it is?” I crossed my arms. This time around I was on the verge of strangling someone.
“You can’t shower for a few days because it’ll just …” He passed some air between his teeth that was meant to sound like running water. “Leak downstairs you know. But I’ll be back next week. You’ll be showering soon enough.”
And then he walked out while whistling. I closed the door and looked at Ada. She shrugged and said: “Well, surely you don’t need to shower every single day.”
But for me, not showering daily was a crime so I had to find an alternative solution. I called Jay and asked if I could shower at his apartment, but after a test run, I decided against it. Though his place wasn’t that far from mine, carrying around a bath towel in the streets at 1 am every day with messy, damp hair was not my definition of convenience.
After enduring those judgemental stares from my fellow Melburnians, I spotted my ultimate solution when I stopped at a traffic light. There was a 24hr gym below my apartment and I just happened to have a key card because a year ago, the gym coerced me into a permanent contract with them. For once, a mistake turned into a lifesaver, and over the following days, I became the “shower guy” at the gym and it would always go along the lines of:
Receptionist: “Hey! Back at it again?”
Me: “Sure.”
Receptionist: “Did you have a good workout?”
Me: “Just worked out how not to stink like a horse.”
Receptionist: “You haven’t touched any of the equipment?”
Me: “Does that mean you’ll charge me less for my membership?”
Of course, he said no and this went on for nearly two weeks before Matt sent me another message.
“Sorry, mate! I broke my leg last week and I was only back to work yesterday. Still have a cast on and everything would you mind if we come over tomorrow?”
At first, I thought the entire thing was a big practical joke, but apparently not. On the day of the appointed-shower-fixing-day, I dragged Jay over to write. We wrote for a few hours on the couch and Jay turned to me:
“Where the hell is this plumber? Wasn’t he supposed to come over at ten?” It was 12 pm already.
“I don’t know.” I drank some tea out of my cup. “Maybe he broke a leg?”
And 30 minutes later the plumber rang the intercom and came to my door with a giant scooter and a cast on his leg.
“Sorry, mate. I have a few more jobs around town.” No wonder he broke a leg because the scooter was made of metal and was as tall as himself.
“That’s a big-ass scooter,” Jay said, “How fast could it go?”
“Oh, man this thing goes up to eighty!” He patted the thing and rolled it into the door, dirtying my carpet.
“Don’t you need a license for that thing?” I said and looked at his cast.
He looked up and shrugged. “Well, maybe. Last week I broke me ankle and it’s still paying off.”
After he settled in, he dragged a few barrels into my bathroom and before he barricaded the door, “I’ll keep it quiet, eh? Won’t be long. It’ll be done real soon.”
And so, a string of loud bangs and chainsaw noise followed. I basked in the noise because it was the perfect revenge on my neighbor for their 2 am screams and knocks. After a while, everything settled down. I looked around my apartment and said to Jay:
“Great, now everything’s covered in dust.”
Just as I was about to take out my vacuum cleaner, the intercom rang again and I heard a deep voice. “Mate. Is this 919?”
“Yes, and this is?”
“Just open the door, mate. I’ll be up in the second.”
A man showed up at my door with a military-grade dust-proof mask and a terminator-grade vacuum cleaner. The one that you had to carry on your back to operate. He switched the thing on and the promise of “being quiet” went completely out of the window. The terminator did a decent job and exited my apartment without a word.
After the terminator left, the scooter guy finally emerged from my bathroom. “It’s almost done.” My bathroom looked trashed and I saw my bath towel on the toilet seat, completely drenched and soiled. He traced my gaze and smiled with that same lost look. I didn’t say a word. “We’ll find a shower base for ya, eh?”
“Yeah… sure…” I kept the door open and Matt walked out with essentially the entire base of my shower. He greeted the terminator at the door and hopped on his scooter. The cast clattered against the metal frame.
“We’ll be back in a few days, eh?” The scooter powered on and the two disappeared from the hallway.
“Ok… then.”
I shook myself awake and turned to Jay: “They said they’ll fix the shower, not take it away. They completely managed to do the latter without finishing the former.”
“Well,” Jay walked up to me and peeked into my bathroom, “You know what?”
“What?” I tried to keep my cool at the sight of what was essentially a giant hole where my shower used to be.
“At least you’re halfway there.”