Earl, the super of a century-old 5-story tenement house on Horatio Street in the West Village, lives in a three-room apartment on the first floor in the back. His door is open from 7 a.m. till dinnertime. A short, stocky Italian man, Earl has thinning gray hair that he covers up with a cap and a fine set of false teeth that he got at St. Vincent’s. Dressed in blue jeans and T shirt (one says THE BEST SUPER IN THE WORLD), he sits in an armchair near the open door, watching television. Sometimes the stereo is on too. Even so, Earl hears the floorboards in the hall creaking and turns to see who’s passing.
“Hi, Jim,” he says, sounding like he’s surprised himself. That’s his standard greeting. But he doesn’t say anything when it’s Harry. Earl rarely speaks to Harry. If they pass in the hall or meet on the stoop, Earl just glares at Harry. When Earl’s door is shut, a note on the front door to the apartment house will say where he is: in the boiler room, at Garber’s (the hardware store on the corner) or at one of the three other buildings he tends to. Earl loves notes. He uses them to give directives to his tenants. “It’s windy today. Please pull the door shut behind you. Thank you. Earl Super.” The year when no one remembered or knew to send him a card for his birthday, he posted a note: “Thank you for helping a 70-year-old man celebrate his birthday. Earl Super.”
His pet peeve is garbage. He’s sick of it. About a year ago, he posted a garbage directive. “Tenants, Garbage pickup is Tues. Thurs. Sat. at 6:30 AM. Put it out the night before. Paper pickup is Thurs. Furniture pickup Sat. Put it out Friday. Let’s keep area clean. Thank you. Earl Super.” Four nights a week now, between 11 and 12, when Earl is sure to be sleeping, tenants carrying their garbage bump into one another trying to sneak down the noisy stairs, tiptoeing past Earl’s door.
The day after Thanksgiving begins Earl’s happiest time of the year. That’s when Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Earl begin decorating for Christmas. He hangs lights in the hall, along the railing of the front stoop, over the doorway, on the scrawny tree in front of the building. Our section of Horatio Street blinks nonstop till after New Year’s. He mounts a Santa Claus poster on his door and covers it with holiday cards. By Christmas, his door and part of the wall are completely covered.
Along with the cards, he receives bottles of whiskey from grateful tenants, and starts drinking more than usual. His daily greeting gets more and more slurred, and he becomes sentimental. “How’s your mother?” he asks. Earl loves mothers. He got into the super business because of his mother. He started out as a croupier in Las Vegas, but when his mother fell ill, he moved back to New York City to care for her, and that’s when he took up his current profession. Some afternoons, and some weekends, a young woman and her two small children come to stay with Earl. She helps him with his household chores and does some other things. He gives her money. Feeds her kids. Some neighbors say she’s on drugs and takes as much money as she can from Earl, especially when he’s drunk. But nobody knows for sure. She keeps coming back, and he keeps letting her in.»
Late last August when the days were steamy and tempers hot, Earl’s notes began to disappear. In the evening they would be up: the garbage sign, the no-smoking sign, the don’t-let-strangers-into-the building sign, the call-the-landlord-and-demand-that-the-mailboxes-be-fixed sign. By morning, though, they were gone. The following afternoon brand new notices were posted, but when morning came, they had vanished. After four days, a seething Earl was stationed on the stoop between 5 and 7 in the evening to greet and interrogate his tenants. 4A approached. “Do you know who’s been tearing down my signs?”
“No, Earl, I don’t. I love your signs. They make me feel like I belong, like I’m part of something, a community.”
Next 5B. “I’m at work all day, Earl. I come home. Eat dinner. Watch some TV. Go to bed early. I haven’t seen a thing. But, you know, I follow your instructions to the letter. I only put my papers out on Wednesday nights. And I never bring garbage down on Saturday or Sunday. Not like some.”
Then 3C. “No, Earl. I don’t know. Isn’t it terrible how the neighborhood’s gone downhill! Hoodlums everywhere. No respect for nothing anymore.” Earl just couldn’t get to the bottom of it. He had even stayed up past twelve one night, listening for footsteps, spying through the peephole, but he had seen nothing. His major suspect was Harry, of course. Harry lives on the fourth floor in a 3-room, rent-controlled railroad flat. Every weekday, he leaves at 8:30 for his job as a typesetter. He’s a medium-size guy in his 40s who used to have a pot belly, but he’s lost that along with five or six teeth. Some of them right up front. Neighbors at first thought the drop in weight was connected to a dread disease, but Harry doesn’t seem sickly, though he smokes on his way in and out of the building, ignoring the no-smoking signs that Earl has posted on every floor.
In the morning Harry smells of aftershave and English Leather soap, but at night he’s slack-jawed and reeks of gin. Harry has a problem hanging on to his front-door key; he buzzes other tenants to get in. Sometimes he climbs up the fire escape to the second story and knocks on Maureen’s window until she opens it and lets Harry climb in. Maureen knows about drinking problems, so she tolerates Harry’s quirks. To be honest, the other tenants thought Earl was probably right about the note thief being Harry. But Earl needed hard evidence. The time he had accused Harry of tearing the name tapes off the mailboxes, there had been a call from a lawyer about harassment. Yet Harry knew that the landlord would be very happy to be able to get rid of a rent-controlled tenant.
The morning after the fifth day of the disappearing signs, Earl put up an all-new message: TO THE TENANT WHO’S DESTROYING MY NOTES. I AM WATCHING YOU! I THINK I KNOW WHO YOU ARE! IF I CATCH YOU I’M CALLING THE LANDLORD AND I’LL TELL HIM A FEW OTHER THINGS TOO. AND YOU KNOW WHAT THOSE THINGS ARE. I HAVE LETTERS FROM TENANTS TO BACK ME UP. EARL SUPER.
That note stayed up two days. Then Earl re-posted his other notices, and they too remained untouched.
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