The Maintenance Man

Julian Gallo
Aug 28, 2017 · 3 min read

Flushing, New York — 1981

He looks like how you’d expect a pedophile to look — bald, fat, beads of sweat on his forehead, nibbling on his thumb whenever he looked at you. He’s looking at your crotch and whenever he does, he’d get agitated, as if he were desperately trying to fight back an urge to simply pounce on you. If you saw that he had to take the elevator, you always let him go ahead of you, not wanting to be trapped in a confined space with him.

You were already well aware of these kinds of freaks. When you were eleven years old you were out in front of the house with Tad playing in the snow when one of them pulled up in a beat up old pine green Dodge Dart with rust on the trunk, stuck his head out the window and asked which one of us wanted to give him a blow job. We answered him by firing snow and ice balls into his window, cursing him out as he sped away.

Tad also knew about the Maintenance Man. He also had a paper route in the same building, also noticed the Maintenance Man behaved the same way whenever he was around him.

One day we go collecting together, enter the dreaded building when we see the Maintenance Man pacing around the lobby. He begins his usual ritual of probing us with his eyes, sweating, pacing and nibbling on his thumb. He’s waiting for us to get on the elevator. When it arrives we step on, immediately press the button to close the doors. The Maintenance Man, despite his immense girth, jumps on at the last second with the dexterity of an alley cat ready to pounce on his prey, and stands across from us. He stares at us — sweating, pacing, nibbling on his thumb. We stand opposite him, each taking a different corner of the elevator in the event he tried something, this way we could get at him from two different angles. We both lower our hands in front of our crotches, extend our middle fingers, wait.

The Maintenance Man keeps looking at us, the sweat dripping from his forehead down his hand, across his nibbled thumb, the sweat stains under his arm spreading beneath his man breasts. He looks as if he’s about to say something when his eyes dart towards our crotches, sees the extended middle fingers waiting for him. He lets out a groan, begins pressing the buttons on the panel. The elevator comes to a stop and he runs off, huffing and puffing, running off as fast as he did getting on. Tad immediately closes the doors. We continue on up to the upper floors to begin collecting.

We discuss lying in wait for him, perhaps beat the living shit out of him when he least expects it. We discuss calling the police but what were they going to do? He never actually did anything to us. Who knows if he ever did anything to anyone else, especially to the kids in the building. Aren’t the residents aware of him we wonder? Whatever the case, he now knew we were on to him, that we were hip to his game, and we weren’t having it.

Over time we still ran into him although he could no longer look at us. We always stared him down, letting him know that we knew what he was and there was no way on God’s green earth he was ever going to lay a hand on us. Perhaps we thought we were a bit tougher than we actually were. Perhaps we consumed too many Avengers comics thinking we could do anything to him. He was a big man, could have probably taken us both on with no trouble at all if he felt threatened enough.

He went about his business cleaning up around the complex. Whenever we saw him we’d stop and glare at him, letting him know, always.

His behavior towards us changed. He no longer got agitated, no longer nibbled on his thumb, no longer sweat and paced around.

If anything we saw fear.

)

Julian Gallo
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