part two: revenge of the slumlord

Recap: We're moving.

My landlord refuses to have the building treated. And if this guy "can't even afford" the $250 inspection, imagine the results of filing complaints and legal formalities to force him. We were between a rock and a hard place before, with the gas situation: if we ratted him out, he would have been fined, bankrupted, and we'd have ended up in the cold anyway, so we spent the better part of the winter bundled by a space heater, living on take-out.

Now he's threatening me.

The Bug Dog Man identified three places where Champ found traces of live bed bug scent: the mattresses, the big blue corner couch, and the front door saddle. By his estimation, given that two out of three furniture pieces in question were brand new since we moved in, our apartment is not the source of the infestation. (My guess would be the basement full of the manky used furniture my landlord collects from his unsavory contractor friends—you know, the ones who built our building without filing the gas permit or measuring the doorframes.)

My landlord is a flaming retard. He has already made the rounds and told the other tenants how "those people in apartment five brought in bedbugs to the building" (how soon we became 'those people'), and is squawking that, since no one else has been affected, it must be our fault. So he calls and he yells and I get to feel small and helpless and alone, like a good girl should.

Then again, the last conversation we had ended with me barking, "You'll be hearing from my lawyer!" (I don't actually have a lawyer, but I've always wanted to say that.)

This too shall pass. Tomorrow morning I call the fumigators. And the movers. I will pack and load everything I own into a truck, and that truck will be nuked with an odorless, colorless gas that kills everything, in all stages of life, but dead. Then I will abandon the dowry of material possessions I have accumulated in my five years of adulthood (mostly books and cookware, because—hey—this is me we're talking about here) to a storage unit in the outer boroughs. Then I will skip town like my life depended on it.

It was time to leave. A conversation with a sympathetic neighbor (the one who gave me the heads up about the whole "those people" conversation) revealed three more bullet points in the "Get Me The Fuck Out of Here" field manual:

• First, when asked about a cockroach problem (not to mention the silverfish and centipedes), our landlord refused to arrange for an exterminator, saying "Oh those are no big deal."
  
• Second, a recent incident with a neighbor's CO2 alarm revealed that all our vents are fake. They don't actually vent anywhere. So when we cook or shower, carbon monoxide and shampooey steam just blow around within the aparmtent. Staying would mean months of ceiling drilling and construction.
  
• Third, the roof is cracking.
  

And so another chapter closes. Perhaps it was foolhardy to imagine I'd be allowed to fill a room with my all stuff and stay there for more than a year. But it appears I'm just not destined for normalcy.

Trouble is, Peter is leaving for France on Thursday. I get to do this all by myself, with a hostile and stupid landlord breathing down my neck. Times like these, a girl sure could use some back up—in the form of beefy Italian boys in muscle Ts who could help me cart and carry, and who would say things like 'ma'am' and "Don't talk that way to a lady, buddy, or I'll break your legs."