I'm a Good Tenant. Honest.

I am a good tenant. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm the best damn tenant any landlord could ever wish for. I pay my rent on time, I send holiday cards (always religiously appropriate), AND I caulk the bathtub. I always leave the place cleaner than it was when I moved in and with nice window treatments. Really nice window treatments.

Seriously, if you are a landlord, you really do want me to live in your apartment. I don't throw wild parties. I don't have a cat. And I always drop off your packages to your front door.

Having been a homeowner myself--a tiny 100 year-old rehab on Chicago's north side--I know that pipes...pipes can be sensitive. One bottle of Drano can truly and terribly take down an entire ceiling. And I want to be a good tenant. The best tenant.

So it was I found myself calling my property manager a few months after moving into my new flat in London.

"Matthew, it's Krista. From number 43."

"Krista, my darling. Top o'the morning to you." Matthew was Irish. He probably did call me "darling" but he probably didn't wish me a cheerful top o'the morning. I'm totally making this part up, but I'm allowed to because 75% of my people come from the Emerald Isle.

"Matthew, hey, so I just wanted to double check. My shower drain is clogged and I am happy to fix this myself with some Liquid Plumber, but before I do, I wanted to see if that was okay or if you preferred to send a plumber out?" (See, this is exactly the type of tenant I am. Never just doing random stuff that could break shit.)

"Your shower drain is clogged? Why is your drain clogged?"

I would have thought this was obvious, but apparently not. "Well, I it's probably just hair and stuff, built up over time. The drain has been slow since I moved in. So what do you think? Liquid Plumber? Or human plumber?"

"Well, Krista, I don't normally take care of this sort of thing. But you can't use Liquid Plumber because that could damage the pipes, so you'll have to pay someone yourself to get it fixed."

"OK, so do you have any recommendations for me? I only just moved to London, so I'd need a recommendation."

"Ah, it's a recommendation you're after?"

Matthew. A bit thick, this one. "Well, yes. If I can't fix it myself, I'll need a recommendation."

There was a pause on the other end of the line.  A long one. I started to repeat my question. But then he spoke. Quietly and authoritatively. Or as authoritatively as a 27-year-old property manager can speak.

"I've got a recommendation for ya, lass..."

"OK?"

"How 'bout you be getting a haircut?"

And then a few months later, he sent me his resume and cover letter and asked me for a job.

You're Invited

It was shortly after we had graduated college, but long enough after that momentous occasion that I had bought my own shoe box and was living alone somewhere close enough to the nice part of town, but just on the edge of where a man could get a hooker on a Saturday night--if he wanted one--really quickly and easily. I spent a lot of time on the Chicago Community Policing web site while I lived in that apartment, tallying the counts of solicitation. And mail fraud. A lot of mail fraud in my part of town. Hookers like letters too, I suppose.

That summer, I knew that pretty much all of my friends had been invited to a certain friend's wedding. I didn't feel too left out because personally, he was down with Jesus just a little too much for me. (And that's saying a lot for someone with 17 years of Catholic education. 18 if you count my year with the Lutherans. We won't get into that transubstantiation thing. )

Anyhow, there I was one afternoon at my mailbox at my shoe box, checking the mail. A big envelope pops out addressed to me. Mail, any sort of mail, is exciting to a 25 year old. It implies adulthood. Independence. I HAVE MY OWN ADDRESS. Yes.

I can tell it's an invitation of some kind and I start wondering exactly how many weddings I'll have to go to that summer because this is getting out of hand. I can only afford so many blenders.

The invitation is properly done. On the outside envelope, there's just my name and my address. On the inside envelope, they've written my name in crisp and pretty cursive letters. They've written my name and "and guest."

The "and guest" part has been crossed out, just as crisply, but not as prettily.

I'd Like a Lemonade, Please

I used to work at the beach when I was a kid. Inside at the beach. But still the beach. Jones Beach. Jones Beach State Park, Wantagh, New York. Field 4. In the space of my first summer, I worked my way up from cashier to Head Cashier. The older girls--who had all arrived before me--hated me. Big time.

I was good at math. Always good at math. And I counted fast. To this day, I have never had more money fall through my fingers than I did as Head Cashier at Field 4. We're talking $50,000. $75,000. All in ONE DAY. Lucky for them, they had hired a guilt-ridden Catholic, so it was impossible for me to steal anything even in a cash-ridden environment with poor inventory controls. I couldn't even steal a FRENCH FRY, be it golden or curly.

I quickly learned how to size-up a customer. College boys? Assholes, drinking beer all day long in the suburban sun, squawking at you to pour their beers faster. Faster! And any woman with long fingernails, wearing a bikini? Total bitch. She only ate fruit salad, kept her Parliament Lights tucked into the strings of her high-cut suit, and spent hours walking up and down the boardwalk, looking for a light.

Hells Angels dudes? Sweethearts. They might look tough, but they went heavy on the "Miss" and always asked for the lemonade. (Arnold Palmers for the gentlemen from the south. And me being part-Floridian, I understood their language.) Vietnam vets, many of them, with that sort of lumbering heavy gait that only got heavier on a Saturday in July, when the mercury soared past 90 degrees. Denim and black leather. Not a good look in the heat.

In the ice cream room, you had to watch the momey. A family of ten would arrive and buy ten ice cream cones with a one dollar bill with the corners from four separate twenties pasted to the front. Genius, really. Genius! But tricky, very tricky.

It would, however, give me an excuse to call the State Troopers. Counterfeiting was State Trooper territory--my kind of men-in-uniform territory--and they would arrive at Field 4 all suited and booted, calling me "ma'am," not "miss," and turning down any and all of my kind offers of turkey burgers or garden salads. (State Troopers...much healthier eaters than the Nassau County police.) Holding my fake twenties up to the light, walkie-talkie chirping with strange numbers and locations, they'd leave me there in the fading light of the ice cream room , the bug zapper quietly zapping, without a backwards glance in any direction.

Just Send Hot Sauce

I was an exchange student in college. In Innsbruck, Austria. Mornings in winter, I would walk outside my dorm and put my skis on the back of the bus and head up the mountain with the rest of Tirol. And then I would have lunch. Yes, no skiing. Sausages first. Skiing later.

I was 19 then. And then 20. At a dorm party one night, after who-knows-how-many-Stiegls, I remember looking around to find myself surrounded by the calf muscles of a bevy of strapping young Tirolean men; they were admiring the whiteness and shapeliness of my teeth. American fluoride, I thank you.

What was I thinking? It wasn't enough. I remember missing Taco Bell. And my parents' La-Z Boy recliner. I wanted to go home at some point. Badly. Enough to prevent me from finding joy in anything Austrian in between. Except the pastries. I found joy, much joy, in many pastries.

And then I got home. And we went through the Taco Bell drive-thru and I sat in my dad's La-Z Boy recliner, and I watched that white Ford Bronco speed across the television screen and wondered...what was I thinking?

Chicken or Pasta, Chicken or Pasta

I fly a certain airline. A lot. And without fail, the lunch or dinner choice at the back of the bus is always the same: "Chicken or pasta?"

Chicken or pasta? Chicken or pasta? The question is delivered sternly and abruptly more often than not by a hatchet-faced battle ax whose neck alone makes me glad I've never smoked a cigarette. (OK, except for that one time when I was 19 and drunk and somewhere in Austria with a Marlboro Red and promptly tossed my cookies in the Edelweiss.)

Chicken or pasta? Chicken or pasta? The pasta never changes. Always a cheesy sponge of tortellini with a side of tomato-y baby food. The chicken can be a surprise though. This time, served with broccoli--the mushy sort--and potato wedges left over from the previous blight. Last time, with carrots. And white rice. A high-margin dish if ever there was one.

Then there's the bread: shrink-wrapped and vacuum-packed, it has not tasted oxygen in 364 days and smells worse than I do after eight-plus hours in a silver tube, weighted down and buckled-up somewhere high above the Atlantic.

It's decision-time. And I choose chicken. Because some surprise is better than no surprise. Really.