HERE’S A THING

The tall caretaker carrying a mop and bucket, got in the lift on the floor below the one I had.
‘Alright?’ he said.
‘Hello.’
‘Where you going?’
‘Up,’ and I said the floor.
‘That’ll do me.’
One up and I said, ‘you any idea when the front lift’s going to be done?’
‘Now there’s a thing,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I keep asking and I get a different answer each time.’
‘They said a couple of weeks when I asked a week ago.’
‘We’ll see,’ he said.
When the lift stopped at my floor the man in the corner was waiting to get in and me and the caretaker got out. The caretaker held the doors either end of the corridor open for me.
‘Thanks,’ I said each time.
He said, ‘you’d think the time they spend here they could clean up a it more,’ and picked up an empty plastic water bottle had been there a few days that I’d noticed and not done anything about.
‘Whorr, it stinks of urine,’ he said from the small room houses the rubbish shute.
‘That always smells,’ I said.
He seemed pissed off as he moved the bits of the shelf unit’d been left there throwing them into one corner from another.
I unlocked my front door and went in the flat without saying anything else to him.