"Do you happen to have bed bugs?"
Responding as automatically as if he'd asked me for the time I said:
"Yes, yes I do."
I get off the elevator with him on his floor to talk about this in more detail. He tells me that he had bed bugs a while back (last year), and paid out of pocket for an exterminator. He deducted the cost from the rent, because the landlord should be paying. And now the landlord is filing for eviction. So, as he attempts to defend himself in court, he wonders if other people have bed bugs. I say yes. At least three units on my floor do.
I drill him further about how his unit was treated, by whom, and when. He gives me his business card so I can get him involved with our growing efforts to organize. I bid him good night and go back up the elevator to my own floor. When the door opens, there's my neighbor F, the one who has bed bugs and urged me to file a complaint with the city.
"Oh!" I shout. "I was just talking about you! I just ran into a guy who lives downstairs - the landlord is trying to evict him over withheld rent because of bed bug expenses!"
"Aw, yeah? The asian guy?"
"Um, no. White guy."
"Aw shit. Then there's ANOTHER one!" Then F tells me his latest update: court-mandated extermination, mandated to occur by June 24th, and hasn't happened yet. He says he caught up with our other neighbor, D, this morning, and after extermination she's still getting bit and found a bug on her bed this morning. F and I both have leases soon set to expire, and we wonder if we should just run away. But half the problem is the risk of taking the bugs with us. Would we be any better off??
We agree it's time to get organized somehow - even if only to warn our other neighbors on the floor that this is getting worse. And we know we're not alone in the building. We just know it.
