Drama in Apartment 2226 ©2010

What drama & bedlam has taken place on my floor of The Paragon Towers.

Let me start by stating that the apartment next door to mine, is a regular “Theater in the Round” …you’ll soon see why!

When I first moved into the building in 1976, I rented apartment #2226.

My neighbor was a NYC Public School teacher. A quiet, respectful, fellow tenant.

She hailed from some small New Jersey suburban town.

That’s also where she’d run home to mommy & daddy, every weekend. (Excuse the slight, if you’re from New Jersey), but New Yorkers just don’t give a damn what town, after we hear you’re from “Joyzee”).

Diane Flaum was squirrel-like, small and desperately looking for a husband.

Finally, after 9 long years, in the city, she snagged an equally mousy fella, luckily before her biological clock…gonged!

Her beloved Milton Berger was from back home, a town bordering hers…in JOYZEE. They married, and then moved back from whence they came.

Diane had a dirt-cheap lease, for Manhattan, on her rent stabilized one bedroom flat. That constituted a treasure… in The Big Apple.

No dummy this Diane, she was not going let this “prize deal” slip out of her hands.

She decided to make a juicy profit by secretly, illegally, sub- leasing the desirable apartment. Mrs. Diane Flaum -Berger, ran an ad on craig’s list and hooked a loser named Randy Riley.

She was playing “catch me if you can” … with our landlord, Paragon Management Corp.👟👟

…a disaster!

The creep Mr. Riley living next door to me was thrown the fuck out of out for:

(1) illegally occupying 2225

(2) being a total nuisance to other tenants on the floor

(3) punching out the tenant of an adjacent flat.

Benjamin Zuckermann who lives in apartment#2224, is an undertaker, whose bedroom shared a common wall with Randy.

Poor Zuckermann, a longtime resident, very meek, silent sort of gent could not tolerate the antics of dandy Randy, the male slut.

Randy would be banging against the wall, while carrying on with orgies, and blasting loud disco music all night long. Randy didn’t work.

Let’s face it…it is not easy dealing with death with compassion, especially when Zuckermann’s nerves were shattered from the turmoil, like the earthquake, behind his bed, sending his headboard rattling.

One sleep depraved morning when he couldn’t stand it anymore, Mr. Zuckermann marched fuming into the building manager’s office.

He was still in his pajamas, robe and floppy slippers. The exhausted man pointed them to his red eyes, and ashen complexion, (so like his dead clients), and shaking, demanded relief.

The burly janitor, Hector Rodrigues was sent, (with the undertaker in tow), to ring bell and bang hard on #2225’s door.

Rodrigues confronted a stoned Randy, who answered the door, only in his bikini-strap shorts. (This at 3:00, in the afternoon). His stereo was still on howling thru its speakers vibrating all, evidently, thru the night… before.

Now, hector was waving his ham-hock of a clinched fist, while he screamed in foggy Randy’s face.

“You bett-ah got-cha your sorry ass out-ah here by Friday, (this was Wednesday), or I’ll throw you… and your fuckin shit outa the wind-dah”!

Thursday evening, Zuckermann, (a Mr. Maggoo look-a-like), was using his key to open his #2224 home. He had managed 3 funerals in his chapel that afternoon.

A revengeful Randy was waiting for him around the bend, in the hallway…hidden.

He grabbed the velvet collar of the Funeral Director’s Chesterfield coat, knocked his Derby from his head, then lifted the terrified man into the air…and clocked him! 🎆🥊

It was then the lowlife snuck out the building, the same way he arrived…by the back stairwell.