Trial by Water

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fri 14 dec 2007

As I sat out­side on my ter­race on the third floor at about 8:00 p.m., I heard a truck com­ing along the street. It stopped, engine run­ning, and next I heard shout­ing: “Arturo.” Pause. “Arturo!” I looked down and saw the famil­iar brown uni­form of the ups man, who was hold­ing a par­cel. Silence, then a few min­utes later he climbed back into the truck, drove along the side­walk across from my build­ing and stopped (the street is too nar­row for the truck, and park­ing is only allowed on the left side). The dri­ver called out, “Hector Fer­nan­dez.” And then again, “Fernandez, Hector Fernan­dez!” The door of the second-floor ter­race across the street burst open and a young guy with long hair looked over his ter­race wall and said some­thing in Spanish. “Aha!” said the dri­ver. Hector ran back into his apart­ment and pre­sum­ably down the stairs to col­lect his parcel. 

I had just returned from my third shop­ping trip of the day. It’s nearly half a mile to the clus­ter of main stores in this part of Old San Juan: True Value Hardware, SuperMax, the only super­mar­ket in the old town, Walgreen’s and its com­peti­tor, the Puerto Rico Drug Company, on the fac­ing cor­ner, and Marshall’s, a dis­count depart­ment store where one may pur­chase a painted kitchen sign that reads “I am in shape — it’s just that my shape is round” for a mere $10, reg­u­lar price $19.99. I’ve been mak­ing two or three trips to the stores each day since I arrived on Wednesday after­noon. I walk over there and carry back as many bags as I can. Charles, the land­lord, who lives down the street, had emailed me two nights before I left Toronto to say that his boyfriend José had failed to buy and install the promised addi­tional fur­nish­ings, so I might have to make the pur­chases myself. When I wrote back that I had no prob­lem with that, I did not real­ize the enor­mity of the task. I should have done a more pro­fes­sional inspec­tion of the premises before sign­ing the lease and hand­ing over the first month’s rent plus a deposit. The kitchen con­tained just two glasses, a few bowls and small plates, a fry­ing pan and two ice-cube trays. No sil­ver­ware or cook­ing uten­sils, no pots, no ket­tle or toaster. I noted the absence of a shower cur­tain and put that on Charles’s list, but had not yet dis­cov­ered the worn old mop that might have helped to clean water off the floor after tak­ing a shower.

But it didn’t mat­ter on the day I arrived any­way, because there was no water at all in the build­ing. I called Charles’s num­ber to ask what the prob­lem was. He had only recently paid the elec­tric­ity bill — the power was off the night José and I signed the lease by the light of our cell­phones — and per­haps he hadn’t paid the water bill either, and the city had hap­pened to catch up with him just that day. But Charles wasn’t there when I called, nor was he even in Puerto Rico. A female voice, sound­ing as con­fused and desir­ing to remain out of the equa­tion as José always sounds when we speak, said that she didn’t know any­thing about the water and didn’t quite know where Charles was or how to reach him, but would try to phone him and get him to call my cell.

At nine I headed down the hill to the Sheraton Hotel, where I had stayed for two weeks dur­ing my last visit. Everyone there had treated me like a guest of the fam­ily, and now, on my return, they greeted me like a long-lost rel­a­tive. The casino man­ager expressed delight to see me there so early, as it gave him the chance to comp me din­ner before the restau­rant closed at eleven. Jesenia, the young wait­ress who had served me at the restau­rant sev­eral times, was on duty, and we were able to get in an order for “the usual.” I kept the cell­phone on— no call from Charles. After din­ner I played the slots for a while, nei­ther win­ning nor los­ing, but also not receiv­ing a phone call. At mid­night I went to the front desk and spoke to my friend Alexander (the best-looking mem­ber of the staff, although my gay­dar has detected not a tremor). He said he’d be glad to get me a room, but didn’t I know: the water was off all over Old San Juan until noon the next day, Thursday — they were mak­ing repairs to the sys­tem after the recent storm.

It’s funny how get­ting the real story calms anger and anx­i­ety. Now I felt ready to return to the apart­ment and get through the night with­out water or a flush­ing toi­let. When I woke up at nine the next morn­ing, the water was back in service.

The storm Alexander had referred to, named Olga, had been unex­pected— hur­ri­cane sea­son offi­cially ended on Nov­ember 30. Charles men­tioned in his last email that there was a “trop­i­cal storm” in San Juan, and he hoped it would end before I got there. It didn’t. It’s been rain­ing like crazy since I arrived. The pat­tern is con­sis­tent. Torrential down­pours for up to an hour, then a few hours of calm. And then the next one. This has con­tin­ued day and night. I’ve got two big win­dows fac­ing south, one in the kitchen, the other in the bed­room, and three big dou­ble doors that open onto the ter­race fac­ing north. The winds gen­er­ally blow in from the south off the bay, and rush madly through to the north, toward the sea, so no air con­di­tion­ing is required. Just put heavy objects on every­thing that may be repo­si­tioned by a forty-mile-per-hour wind, and it’s very cool (if not calm). 

On the other hand, if win­dows and doors are open when the rain falls, water cas­cades through the flat, more or less flood­ing the place. On the first night with­out water, I made the mis­take of leav­ing all aper­tures open and awoke in the mid­dle of the night with the trop­i­cal storm fill­ing my bed­room. I stum­bled about clos­ing win­dows and doors, and the fol­low­ing morn­ing I cleaned up the mess with the near-worthless mop, sup­ple­mented by a few of my T-shirts. Since then I’ve been care­ful, bat­ten­ing down the hatches when­ever I leave the apart­ment, and grate­ful for hav­ing done so. The ceil­ing fan in the bed­room keeps me cool enough beneath my sin­gle sheet. The kitchen fan is bro­ken— one of many items that await repair when Charles bestirs him­self to return here from New Jersey.

Now I have begun, with my numer­ous trips to the stores, to add to the (very) basic fur­nish­ings. I’ve got two cook­ing pots. I’ve got sil­ver­ware. I’ve got a dish rack in which these items can dry after I use them — that is, after I steel myself to try the stove. Last night I used adhe­sive hooks to install a few bath­room shelves, which fell imme­di­ately after I attached them: the humid­ity is not con­ducive to adhe­sion. This after­noon I bought a shower cur­tain and bathmat.

This morn­ing I was wak­ened by my down­stairs neigh­bour Amber, the first per­son in the build­ing I’ve met. Apparently Charles didn’t inform any­one that a new ten­ant would be arriv­ing. She knocked on my door at 10:00 a.m. because last night’s tor­rent of rain was leak­ing down­stairs, and she didn’t know that any­one was upstairs. She and her hus­band Luis had been wor­ried that my apart­ment was unoc­cu­pied and let­ting in all the rain. She apol­o­gized for dis­turb­ing me as she stood there in the great pud­dles on the stair­case. I said it was no prob­lem, I was happy to meet some­one else in the build­ing. We mopped up the stair­case together, and all was well. Their neigh­bour across the hall, a very dig­ni­fied elderly Hispanic woman, told me her name — which I could not under­stand— and then seemed to extend a gen­eral wel­come, and assur­ance that if there was any­thing I needed, I had only to ask. “The tele­phone,” she offered, as an example.

sat 15 dec 2007

I slept all day and then headed over to the SuperMax, where they’ve got a bit of every­thing at mostly rea­son­able prices. The fruit and veg­eta­bles are dull and grey, as is the meat, and the staff behave as if they are serv­ing a tough sen­tence for some unnamed crime. But it is the only super­mar­ket in town so it always attracts a crowd, a mot­ley crew of drunks, wel­fare recip­i­ents, tourists, hyper young­sters, and the old and decrepit. The wait to check out is inter­minable and con­fused. There’s a rumour that more mod­ern and better-stocked super­mar­kets can be found in the newer part of town, but I’ve yet to fig­ure out how to get there by pub­lic transit. 

mon 17 dec 2007

I was wak­ened at 9:15 this morn­ing by Luis, Amber’s hus­band. He was extremely apolo­getic for dis­turb­ing me, but DirectV had shown up to install his satel­lite con­nec­tion and, he explained, you never know when they’ll come, and you don’t dare turn them away. I said it was no prob­lem, and the installer went out to the ter­race with a lad­der, climbed to the next roof and ran the cable over the side of the build­ing down to Luis and Amber’s apartment.

Luis is extremely hand­some, svelte, smil­ing and well dressed (and a slight gay­dar read­ing, mar­riage notwith­stand­ing, or per­haps it was just his very cor­dial man­ner). Puerto Rican men, I’ve learned, can be sur­pris­ing in their age-to-appearance ratio. The best-looking server at the casino, Ismael, turns out to be thirty-nine years old, though he looks like he’s in his late twen­ties. With Luis I could only guess: thir­ty­four going on twenty-eight. Amber looks great — her appear­ance does not illu­mi­nate the ques­tion. They are both artists. Luis has a com­mer­cial gallery, and José told me that he is con­sid­ered one of the great new Puerto Rican talents.

While the installer does his work, Luis tells me that he and Amber have lived in their second-floor apart­ment for two years now and have man­aged to adjust to Charles as the land­lord. A month ago Charles for­got to pay the water bill and all the water in the build­ing was shut off. The other ten­ants went into a frenzy. Luis didn’t phone or write or com­plain. He headed over to the water office, paid the out­stand­ing $700 and went home. It takes the city two days to turn the water back on after such an inci­dent, so Luis found a wrench and took care of it him­self. “We never heard from the city,” he said. “They never dropped by. What did they care? They had their money. We had our water.” He then called Charles to report the inci­dent and said he would deduct the $700 from their next month’s $750 rent. Charles said, “Oh, just keep the extra $50 for your trou­ble.” That, said Luis, is what it’s like with Charles. If some­thing breaks, you just get it fixed and then deduct the amount from your next rent pay­ment. Charles has no appar­ent inter­est in play­ing land­lord here. He’s got his legal pro­fes­sion in New Jersey, and seems baf­fled as to why he got into Puerto Rican real estate in the first place. His boyfriend José helps a lit­tle, but he is com­plet­ing his stud­ies in nurs­ing and has no inter­est in real estate either. 

I once asked Charles why he didn’t just hire a prop­erty man­ager — surely he could jus­tify the expense for the fifty units he owns. Charles said that Puerto Ricans were too unre­li­able. If he didn’t do things him­self, he said, they didn’t get done. 

I wrote him my most force­ful email this evening, out­lin­ing all of the remain­ing prob­lems and ask­ing why he’s unwill­ing to hon­our any aspect of the lease we’ve signed. I don’t mind employ­ing the Luis tech­nique, but I need an elec­tri­cian to fix the kitchen fan, the bed­room light and the washer and dryer. I need trust­wor­thy trans­porta­tion and guid­ance to the sub­urbs to locate and pur­chase the fur­ni­ture required. Luis sug­gested that I take a taxi into the great unknown. There is a Kmart, he said, and next to that there is an expen­sive fur­ni­ture shop and then a cheaper one some­where nearby — per­haps if I ask in the expen­sive one they will tell me where it is. In my email to Charles, I wrote: “I still want things to work out, but the task is begin­ning to appear insur­mount­able.” I con­cluded on a slightly ruder note, and I expect him to respond with a num­ber of weak reassurances.

I made a sort of beef stew tonight, not exactly trop­i­cal fare but I’m at a loss as to what to do, cooking-wise. Then I headed over to Café Berlin and dined on one of their earnest offer­ings, a chicken with arti­chokes that wasn’t half bad (my stew needs another day of — well, stew­ing). But this ain’t cos­mopoli­tan Miami Beach. The kitchen was clos­ing as I arrived just before ten, so I had to down the meal pretty quickly. The always friendly staff dis­played just a touch of anx­i­ety to get the hell out of there.

There were four cruise ships in port today. The town was packed with their pas­sen­gers — loud, pushy, over­weight, forc­ing one to recon­sider whether a cruise should ever be in one’s future. By late evening two ships had departed, leav­ing the Liberty of the Seas and the gar­gan­tuan Carnival Triumph, which fea­tures an out­door movie the­atre on its top deck. Tonight’s film has ended, and the screen is show­ing psy­che­delic images while a live quasi-calypso band is giv­ing the old­sters a light musi­cal menu to dance to. The screen is so big that I can see it from the ter­race, and the music so loud that it is audi­ble inside my apart­ment. I’m not moved to shake my booty, but judg­ing by the audi­ble cheers from the ship, quite a few pas­sen­gers are.

Now the Liberty of the Seas is head­ing out of port to the lib­erty of the sea. Perhaps it was the music: we just were offered a ver­sion of “Red, Red, Wine” and now a sing-along has begun. “Did you have a great time today in Puerto Rico on your way to St. Thomas?” a female enthusiasm-builder shouts to the crowd. “Let’s hear it!” (Loud cheering.) 

Will there be one, two or more ships docked here in the morn­ing? I never know until I wake up and open my shutters.

tues 18 dec 2007

No word from Charles in answer to yesterday’s mis­sive: I’m still on my own. I walked over to Radio Shack to buy a local cell­phone, but then stopped, real­iz­ing that if Charles doesn’t do some­thing soon, I’ll prob­a­bly just leave. I hope it doesn’t come to that. By way of con­tin­ued semi-commitment I bought a shower caddy and a mea­sur­ing cup at True Value hard­ware and an unbreak­able plas­tic cup at the Puerto Rico Drug Company. Went into Walgreen’s to buy the local paper, but the place was jam-packed with tourists, so I read it there and left.

I’ve made addi­tions to my stew — more veg­eta­bles and broth and wine. It seems ready for a go, and I’m ready too.

thurs 20 dec 2007

Charles con­tin­ues to elude me. He won’t answer emails or his tele­phone, and he no longer has voice mail. Last night I wrote a note on a pad of yel­low paper. It said:

It was sad,

So sad.

Signed,

Thad

On my way to the SuperMax I slipped the note through the slats in Charles’s front door. Late last night I had also com­posed a long email mes­sage of despair, hint­ing at law­suits and gen­eral ret­ri­bu­tion. But I sus­pected I might not want to send it today and merely saved it, rather than send­ing it to the out­box. While I stood in the check­out line at the SuperMax, a scruffy, bearded man, the sort who has no fixed address, set upon one of the male clerks in a noisy bat­tle. Blood flowed from the clerk’s nose and the secu­rity guard restrained the assailant, pos­si­bly await­ing inter­ven­tion by the police. The argu­ment was in Spanish, though one could eas­ily imag­ine its slight con­tent. I paid for my gro­ceries and left.

sat 22 dec 2007

Still no word or sound from Charles. It’s the annual neigh­bour­hood Christmas street party tonight, orga­nized by the local “god­fa­ther” (as Luis calls him). He’s not a crime-style god­fa­ther — quite the oppo­site. He runs a lit­tle vari­ety store a few doors down, a dark, dank place that I’ve never seen any­one actu­ally enter. The god­fa­ther looks about seventy-five, short and slight but with a wide, friendly smile offered even to me. As one walks by and peers into the dark­ness, a few bot­tles and tins are vis­i­ble — per­haps some folks in the sur­round­ing build­ings occa­sion­ally make a pur­chase there. But he sits in his chair out front all day, gos­sip­ing with the locals (includ­ing the local beat police, who spend an hour or more with him every few days), and gen­er­ally keep­ing an eye on things. Luis says that I should intro­duce myself soon — pay my respects, as it were. The god­fa­ther can arrange any­thing prac­ti­cal that one might need. The morn­ing I met Luis, for instance, he quickly located a lad­der for the DirectV installer to use to climb to the roof. The installer appar­ently didn’t think to bring one — very Puerto Rico, they tell me.

The rain still comes unex­pect­edly, usu­ally very late at night. I’ll be work­ing on this com­puter and sud­denly drops of water will appear on the screen, blown in from the win­dow ten feet away. I jump up and close the two south-facing win­dows. By then the rain has stopped, and when I step out onto the ter­race, the sky is clearing.

wed 9 jan 2008

In Old San Juan there are no beaches where swim­ming is allowed. Is it unsafe? Do they worry about drowned cruise– ship vis­i­tors? It was never clear. Another Luis, who works at the casino and has become a friend, had been promis­ing to take me to a good swim­ming beach. Today he picked me up in his fuel-efficient car and we headed east from Old San Juan at about 12:30 p.m. We passed all the big hotel beaches and trav­elled far beyond, finally reach­ing a near-deserted beach, per­haps fif­teen miles east of town. Last week, Luis told me, he’d enjoyed a quiet swim here and watched small crabs bur­row­ing into the sand.

The waves were so large we could see them from the road, and Luis remarked on this, sur­prised that on a quiet sunny day, when we’d had very lit­tle rain, there would be any waves at all. But there were a few other swim­mers, includ­ing two kids, so he parked the car and we stripped down to our swim suits and ram­bled into the warm waves.

In the ocean all was well for the first ten min­utes or so. The water wasn’t deep, and the waves were just strong enough to throw us back­wards in a gen­tle spill. Luis said again, “There weren’t waves like this when I was here last week.” I said, “But they’re fun.” We were able to wade far­ther into the surf, in between occa­sional crashes of four-foot waves.

We ven­tured out a lit­tle far­ther. Still good fun.

Then sud­denly we were both pulled out into deep water by the under­tow, and the waves were six or seven feet tall and con­tin­u­ous. Neither of us could find our foot­ing in the deep water, though we still seemed very close to shore. The waves engulfed us. When we had first moved into the water it occurred to me that Luis wasn’t really a swim­mer. It hadn’t wor­ried me then, but now he was drown­ing. “Pull me out!” he implored me, in a voice some­where between a croak and a cry. I tried to swim closer as the waves crashed over us. “Pull me,” he pleaded, his mouth fill­ing with water. I man­aged to reach him, and grabbed his left arm with my right. Then I began to swim hard toward shore with my left arm, strug­gling to pull him for­ward. “Pull me,” he said again. “Help me!” 

I tried to swim for­ward. “Just try to float,” I gur­gled at him. “Slow down, Luis, help me.” But he began to panic and grabbed at me, forc­ing me under­wa­ter. I couldn’t breathe in the crash­ing waves. I knew I would have to let go and try to swim to shore. In that moment, I thought: You are sav­ing your life and sac­ri­fic­ing his.

I rolled over on my back, the path of least resis­tance, but I could see the panic in Luis’s eyes. “Come back!” he said. “Help me.” If I could just touch bot­tom, I could catch my breath and try again to reach him. In the next moment a wave tossed me onto a sandy foot­ing and I col­lapsed, exhausted. I looked back at Luis as another wave engulfed him and he spat out water. I knew I had to force myself to try to reach him. I stood up just as another wave crashed over me and knocked me toward shore. I got up again and tried to push back into the ocean. Luis was pan­icked, about to be swept under the sur­face again. Still another wave hit me and sent me careen­ing toward the beach. In a minia­ture moment I saw it all: Luis would drown, I would search for his body, I would try to fig­ure out how to get help, I would take his body to the hos­pi­tal, I would notify his fam­ily and friends and try to make them believe that I had done every­thing I could.

No. I needed des­per­ately to be doing more. I got up again, and another wave threw me down. I looked up, try­ing to find Luis, and a huge wave thun­dered toward me. The moment of his death. The wave grabbed him and cat­a­pulted him to shore, and a sec­ond later he was pulling him­self out of the surf and walk­ing toward me in the wet sand. 

Luis col­lapsed on the beach beside me. He said noth­ing. I bab­bled a bit. A minute or two later he said: “There’s a calmer beach we should go to.”

sun 20 jan 2008

On Wednesday, in mid-afternoon, the elec­tric­ity went off with no warn­ing. The power depart­ment had some con­vo­luted story about how the account was not in Charles’s name but in the name of a for­mer ten­ant, but either way it had not been paid. If I wanted the power turned back on, I’d have to travel to the sub­urbs by taxi with a copy of my lease and a cash deposit of $150, and they would trans­fer the account to my name. I moved back into the Sheraton Hotel that night, think­ing I’d go and change the account on Thursday. But Thursday was the begin­ning of the fes­ti­val of San Sebastian, and 300,000 peo­ple were head­ing into town for the next four days. And I thought: I don’t want the power account in my name — the lease spec­i­fied that the land­lord would keep it in his name and I would reim­burse him. I don’t want to be on the hook for the power till the next sucker gets cut off.

I tried call­ing Charles and his boyfriend roughly a thou­sand times, but Thursday, no power. Friday, still no power. The Sheraton cost me $275 per night because of the fes­ti­val. My friends tried hard to find me another apart­ment, but every­thing was in poor con­di­tion or required a one-year lease. I finally told them to call off the search, that I was going to give up. At least in Toronto the water and elec­tric­ity work. I read the tea leaves and flew back to bleak, freez­ing Toronto tonight.

I got off the plane, col­lected my lug­gage, went through Customs, got into a taxi, rode home, wheeled my lug­gage into my apart­ment build­ing, went to sum­mon the ele­va­tor and found this notice posted there:

Notice to Residents:

water shut-off

In order to re-line the domes­tic hot water hold­ing tank, ALL water to the build­ing will be shut off
on Monday, January 21^st, 2008 from 9:30 a.m. to approx­i­mately 3:00 p.m.

We apol­o­gize for any incon­venience, and appre­ci­ate your pa­tience and under­stand­ing in this regard.