By the third time my building’s maintenance guy brought up his missing screwdriver, I was starting to wonder whether I was being asked about a tool.
He had already left one in my apartment more than once. Each time, I texted him so he could come and collect it. Nothing particularly mysterious about that: a repair, a forgotten object, a message to arrange its return. I’m 28, and until this became a recurring feature of building maintenance, I hadn’t expected to be keeping track of another adult’s screwdriver.
Then he came by again and joked about whether I had it, because he’d lost it once more. I said no. Apparently, even when I wasn’t in possession of the screwdriver, I remained a person of interest.
He’s also my neighbor, and he’s talkative. That makes the line harder to see. Someone who both lives in the building and fixes things there has plenty of legitimate reasons to be around. A friendly conversation doesn’t arrive with a label explaining whether it belongs to his job, his personality, or something else.
The messages were what made me look at the whole thing differently. Repair people usually contact me during business hours. He started texting later: at nine at night to tell me I had a package in the mailroom, and at ten about a bathroom leak below. The subjects were perfectly practical. The timing was less businesslike.
A leak can need attention at an inconvenient hour. A package can simply be a package. Still, once I had noticed the late messages, the earlier visits stopped looking like isolated bits of maintenance admin. I had a small collection of ordinary things that, placed together, were becoming less ordinary to me.
And he’s married. That detail doesn’t prove he’s flirting, but it does change what the possibility means. This isn’t just a single neighbor whose friendliness I might be misreading. If he is trying to make the contact personal, there’s a marriage sitting behind those very useful messages.
Then there was the pool. When I was down there alone, sunbathing, he came down a few times too. I hadn’t seen him at the pool at other times. I don’t have a complete record of his swimming habits, which is an unfortunate gap in my otherwise growing expertise in building affairs.
He could be friendly and forgetful, with a schedule that happens to overlap mine. He could also be finding small reasons to contact me. I can see the possible flirtation; I can’t see inside his head.
What I do know is that I’ve seen him at the pool when I’m there alone. Before all this, I hadn’t seen him there at all.
