Maria

The guardienne is gone, a family emergency, according to the note on the door to her "loge". The note was posted a week ago and said that she'd return in several days. There's still no sign of Maria. Funny that this coincided so nicely with the Easter holidays.

I noticed that she was gone almost immediately. The building's common areas were too clean and well-maintained. I walked in the front door last Thursday afternoon and noticed it right away. The courtyard had been cleaned, the stairway was not dusty (it was so bad there were footprints in the dust) and the glass in the elevator was spotless.

I told Terry that something was up. In fact, I told him that I didn't think the courtyard had been cleaned since Christmas, when the replacement guardienne had done it. I didn't know at that time that the replacement was back.

All week long the replacement has been doing nice little things for us. Today I saw her cleaning out the inside of the trash cans.

She has also posted phone numbers where she can be reached, just in case. Maria, the permanent guardienne, won't get a cell phone. She doesn't want to be reached. We had to ask three times before we could get a light bulb replaced in the hallway. This should be automatic.

I could go on and on. Maria is never around the building. The compensation that she receives, free housing, benefits and a salary barely get us mail delivery and the trash cans put out in the street every day. The rest of the day, she is busily working for others in the building, running errands, washing and ironing, cooking. All of this earns her extra cash, so why should she clean the courtyard?

One time, she accepted a Fed Ex package for us (we were home) and then delivered it to the wrong apartment. I had to track the package before she remembered where she put it.

I guess if Maria doesn't come back, the replacement will take over. In a few weeks, she'll get complacent and we'll be right back to where we started with Maria.

Until then, I'll be enjoying the new-found cleanliness of our building.