Tonight I was going to write a short story about Svengard and his impetuous boss at the hardware store who asks him what kind of name that is- a Communist one? His boss was an idiot and a jerk, also know as an ijiot, but Svengard is kind to the good ole ijiot and he just does his job and then he goes home each night and lathes on pieces of cedar for a runabout he’s been at it on for nearly 7 months now- perfect takes time- so he can make runs up and down the coast.

I was going to do that, and then I found two sizable volcanoes of cold yellow cat food on the carpet in the front room, and all of the creativity disappeared from my mind.

All I know is that the carpet is nasty and dirty and tinged here and there yellow and brown, my feeble efforts at cleaning things up not quite like Svengard’s. As they say in the movies, “That’s gonna leave a mark.” In this case, it’s a mark on the carpet that is a stain of cat offering from partially consumed proteins and grains.

I pat the cats on the head and each one looks at me like I am the building superintendent and the dang radiated heat is too high again. They are concerned if I will disrupt their leisure time and practice of non-movement activities, and they watch me until I am away from them at a distance of about 4 feet, far enough away that I cannot pick one of them up, and they resume their lethargic prone poses.

I am the building superintendent, and at times it is laughable. I use pliers to get a grip on the knob with the metal tab I have to twist to get the front screen door locked or unlocked. It’s broken or stuck or tired and will not let me lock or unlock it with my bare hand.

Plaster falls from the underside of the porch ceiling on nights when a little moisture fills the air and decides to use the large chips as surfboards to find the earth. The ceiling looks like it is acquiring blotchy skin like the leather hands of an old alcoholic day laborer.

I have not smelled the odor for some time- that foul scent that smells like part sweat, part water damage rot, part dead mouse stew. It’s a strong unpleasant smell which I think comes from a dry P-trap upstairs when I do not flush the unused toiled for a few weeks.

I am the supe of this tenement and the boarders are intense and harsh and always demanding of things, paying me in patches of black hair and piles of extract for me required service to them and the building.

I pat them on the head, and sometimes I lift them up to shoulder height, where they protest with lazy cries and quick flicks of their tongues, fast tail swishes, and snorts.

That is how I let them know I am the supe still, with power beyond theirs, until I put them down and they give me the look declaring my ijiocy.

I have power over them, though, at least until it is the morning and I have to clean out their commodes of grit.

There is much to take care of as the building supe.