I had to answer the door because Rosa, the office manager, was at lunch. I hate answering the door at work because it’s nothing but a parade of door-to-door salespeople asking to see the business owner. “I’m sorry,” I always say, “he’s in a witness protection program,” which generally takes the wind out of their sails.
Today when I answered the door it was Alvaro, the new property manager. I don’t know him well but he seems pleasant, although he tends to talk around an issue before he gets to the point.
Today he inquired about my health and the state of our business and whether Rosa was doing well and if we had seen any rat droppings in our break room and how lovely the weather had been and had I tried the new pizza place down the street.
I cut him off. “Rat droppings?” I said. “In our break room?”
He nodded vigorously. “Some of the tenants,” he said carefully, never making eye contact. “have a little rat problem.”
I’ve lived in South Florida a long time and I know there is no such thing as a “little” rat problem. Moreover, since all the building tenants share a common ceiling area if one office has a rat problem, they all do. But that was not my concern.
“You mean we have a rat infestation?” I asked.
Alvaro fixed me with his beady little eyes, and his nostrils twitched nervously before he responded.
“That’s a strong choice of words,” he finally said. “Let’s just call them ‘unwanted animal visitors.”
I laughed out loud and Alvaro’s eye’s narrowed. “I haven’t seen any rats,” I said, which was true. “But, “ I continued, “DO NOT mention this to Rosa.” He nodded. “I mean it, “ I said. “If she thinks we have rats she will either quit or we’ll have to move.” He nodded again, never looking at me. “Promise me you won’t mention this,” I said and he nodded again and I wanted to smack his head right off his shoulders.
Alvaro surely thought I was exaggerating but I was not: Rosa, smart, efficient and unflappable is in her early 70’s and can retire whenever she wants. She is working only as a personal favor to me and I hyperventilate at the thought that if she quits I will actually have to work for a living.
Unflappable as she is, Rosa is irrationally terrified of rats: Apparently when she was a young bride she and her husband lived in a crumbling old house with a major rat infestation. She and her husband heard scrapings in the ceiling but never thought much of it until the night that the ceiling over their bed collapsed from the sheer weight of the rats, releasing a biblical torrent of rodents all over their bedroom. She never quite recovered from that evening and although she lives in a beachfront condo now, with the obscure thought that rats can’t get to the 24th floor, the thought of a rat in the office would be enough to make her quit.
She was still at lunch when I heard suspicious noises outside our door: I poked my head out; Alvaro was on a ladder placing baited rat traps in the ceiling over the communal hallway. I was in near panic mode.
“Rosa will be back any second,” I said. “You have got to get out of here.”
He was replacing the ceiling tiles when Rosa rounded the corner into the hallway, blissfully innocent. “Hola, Alvaro,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing!” he said hurriedly and scurried away.
Later that afternoon Rosa was in her office doing payroll and I was in my office doing inventory; everything was serene and I was congratulating myself on a crisis averted when the afternoon quiet was punctuated by a loud “SNAP!” followed by a series of pathetic little squeaks.
Rosa rushed into my office, all color drained from her face. “Did you hear that?” she asked.
“Hear what?” I said.