Member-only story
My New Exterminator
A Trumper in the woodpile
My apartment doorbell rang at 3 PM two days ago as I sat at my computer doing whatever. I don’t always answer the call. It’s never good news so why would I? Still, I rose to open the door.
A dark-skinned Dominican man (he later revealed his ethnic origins) stood before me and responded “Exterminator.” Great! Yet another guy who thinks he can do something about my roach problem but can’t.
I’m the senior tenant in my building. The kitchen floor is rotted and the roaches are deeply ingrained. It’s a near impossibility to eliminate them.
But once I’d opened the door, I figured to let him give it a shot. Who knows? Maybe he has something new to pull a rabbit out of my hat.
The man entered, took a look around, and immediately knew what time it was. Exterminators don’t have to actually see roaches to know there’s a problem. There are telltale signs they see that lay people do not.
Exactly why this man became so familiar so quickly I can’t tell you (you’d have to ask him), but it wasn’t long before he observed “You’re American” (why that mattered you’d have to ask him) and then segued into his political views and his choice as Donald Trump to be the next president.
