I have written about Mrs. Wilson before. She is the woman who winds up my dopamine motor, chains herself to trees and appears, like Schrodinger’s Cat, simultaneously in northern New York and Alabama. She refuses to speak with Mike, the manager in her park. Early yesterday, my phone farted and a text from Mrs. Wilson emerged:
i think there is a busted water main line there is a river in the yard
I texted back:
Call Mike.
I was in central New York to finally, miraculously, belatedly, blessedly get rid of Joe Gurry. I was headed over to that park (the park where Mrs. Wilson does not live) to check up on things. Then I was going to deliver garnishment papers to the sheriff’s office, speak with Stan, the self-appointed mayor of that park, and head over to the lawyer’s office. If readers play their cards right I’ll write about that later, but right now, Mrs. Wilson was pinging me.
I called Mike:
-Mrs. Wilson says there’s a water main break. She didn’t say where, but I assume near her home?
-That’s crazy. If the main broke, the people who live near her would have told me they had low pressure.
-I’m just the messenger.
-I’m in the park now.
-Have a look.
Five minutes later, Mike called me on speaker with Mrs. W in the background. She said that she had not had water for three months, but she had assumed that that was because the pipes were frozen. Now spring was here and things were thawing, but she still had no water. This was the first either of us had heard that she did not have water. I asked Mike about the original complaint.
-What about the river in the yard?
-That’s snow-melt.
Mrs. W. said she did not have water. Mike said that she had water at the riser. Mrs. W insisted she did not have water at the riser, and the problem was a busted main. I asked where they were standing. Mike told me that they were in front of her home. I suggested an empirical approach:
-Climb under and have a look at the riser. If there is water there, she has water at the riser.
-Who pays for the repair?
-If there is water at the riser, it is a tenant issue. If the break is deeper, it is an infrastructure issue that we have to deal with.
Then, we hung up. It was, in fact, quite warm for this time of year in upstate New York. When I got out of my car to deliver an income execution to the sheriff’s department, I noticed that, except for a few dirty, granular piles, all of the snow had melted and been replaced by mud. It was probably the same seventy miles to the north. Mike called me back just as I got back to my car.
-It smells like cat piss under her trailer.
-Sorry.
-So the problem is that she has four shutoffs on her riser. Two of them were shut off.
–What?
-I turned them on, and her face lit up like it was Christmas.
-Oi.
-Her riser is made of four different materials. It should be pex all the way up, but she has pex, PVC, copper and galvanized. I guess each time she had it fixed, the guy used a different material.
-Any duct tape or chewing gum?
-And she removed her water meter.
-Uh- really? It has been recording water flow until recently.
-Well, maybe she took it out yesterday. She had it in her hand.
-She can take out her water meter but she can’t turn a shutoff valve?
-John. I just know what I see.
-Please take a picture of the meter number and send it to me when you can. I don’t want to charge her for someone else’s water use. And I will research the medicinal properties of cat piss.
-Hah, hah.
I I heard, through Mike’s laugh, Putz. You climb under a trailer for a change.
-Hah, hah, hah.