Killing Mr. Schmidt

“Some of the residents are really nice, though,” my new boss said. He then made it a point to indicate one such individual. “Like Mr. Schmidt. He’s a wonderful guy, easy-going and pleasant. Always has a nice word and a piece of candy for the concierges. He’s retired, so he’s around a lot. Wait till you meet him.”

Sounded great. I liked candy.

The second stop along my substandard life tour was a stint as a concierge at a high-end condominium complex in Boston.

My first conversation with the aforementioned Mr. Schmidt would take place the following day; it regarded the pending demise of his wife, and, from my end, proved to be rather mortifying. The exchange was primarily unfortunate due to its first several minutes, wherein I was under the gross misapprehension that he was referring to his car.

The confusion began when the property manager asked if I could assist maintenance with a resident’s car that would not start. I wasn’t sure why she wanted me to help, as my expertise when it comes to automobiles is generally limited to shifting in and out of park; ask me to so much as pop the hood and things get dicey. Fortunately, when I got to the car maintenance already had it running, allowing me to express my disappointment that I wouldn’t be able to proffer aid. The vehicle’s owner was Mr. Schmidt, a slight, stooped man who looked all of his eighty or so years. Eying it wistfully, he offered me his hand.

“I have to get to Wrentham and then bring her back for the last time,” he explained sorrowfully as we shook. He seemed pretty distraught considering it was just a car. “They don’t think she’s going to make it much longer.” At this point I assumed that “she,” naturally, was the Chevrolet, and “they” were the maintenance guys. I was perplexed at how they could have made such a snap assessment of the car. They weren’t mechanics.

“You never know, maybe she’ll surprise you,” I offered.

“No. They know.”

But how could he be so sure?

“Been together since the war,” Mr. Schmidt continued, still looking at the car. Since the war? Was he senile? I assumed he meant World War II, which would make this car approximately sixty years old. Knowing very little about the chronology of the automobile, I was nonetheless fairly convinced that this car could not possibly be circa 1940.

Hesitant about how I should respond to the man’s unusual attachment to his Chevy, I said nonchalantly, “Well, she lasted a long time.”

He had a far off look in his eyes, as if he was recalling the good old days… past Sunday drives, perhaps. Cruises along a coastal interstate. It was freaking me out. He said, “She might not make it through the day.”

Granted, a car can engender a little sentimentality, but this guy was going off the deep end. “Well,” I said, contemplating the old guy’s psychosis, “you don’t want to get halfway home and have her kick the bucket while you’re on the highway.” I actually said this.

He gave me a funny look. “Well… yes, she’d rather be here when she passes.”

Yeah, the car would rather be at home to die. What an absolute whack job.

“You’re sure you can’t have some work done?” I asked, nearing a state of panic. “Some new parts, keep her running a while longer?”

He sighed. “The cancer is in five places.”

He thinks the car has- oh…OH, mother of God.
I opened my mouth to say something, but when no words came out I closed it. She lasted a long time… you don’t want to have her kick the bucket while you’re on the highway… new parts, keep her running a while longer…

“I-I’m sorry for your loss,” I eventually mumble, horror washing through my body. Studying a drain in the floor, I wonder whether I could fit into it.

***

The crushing blow with regard to my relationship with Mr. Schmidt occurred a couple weeks later.

It was around ten o’clock at night. We received a phone call at the front desk from someone in his family saying that she hadn’t heard from him all day and was a little concerned. Not only was that unusual, the relative told us, but he’d been feeling a little under the weather lately.

Uh oh…

The management office was closed, so this responsibility ultimately fell to me. I tried calling his apartment myself, and when I got no answer I went up to the unit and knocked on the door with the same result.

Great.

Management stored a duplicate key to each apartment to be used only in case of a resident lockout or some other emergency. But did this qualify as an emergency? I couldn’t simply barge into Mr. Schmidt’s apartment on the say-so of an overly worried relative just because the person hadn’t heard from him. No, that would invite a boatload of danger. I decided to leave the situation well enough alone.

But what if he needed immediate assistance of some kind? He was an elderly man; the callused grip of death was near. If he required urgent medical attention and subsequently croaked because of my inaction, how would I live with myself? I had enough weighing on my mind without having to add "accessory to death by natural causes" to my conscience’s rap sheet. I had to do something, but what? Go in there? Then what? Damn it…

Seeing no other way around the dilemma and with Mr. Schmidt’s life possibly hanging in the balance, my unwelcome task became to retrieve the key to his unit and then ascertain the extent to which he was still alive.

This had to happen to me, didn’t it? I thought miserably as I rode up in the elevator. Of course. Of course it did, because these things only happen to me and not to anyone else. I am a damned lightning rod for the inanities of life.

I reflected that one of two things were likely to happen. Either I’d enter the apartment to discover a corpse – a human body, for godsakes – or Mr. Schmidt was going to be sleeping. If he was asleep, the odds were good that when he woke to discover me lurking in his bedroom, his elderly heart would immediately seize and then he’d be dead anyway.

No matter how you looked at it, I was going to have a lifeless Mr. Schmidt’s on my hands… and probably via the latter method. It wasn’t enough that I’d insulted this gentle old man’s dying wife.

Now I was going to exterminate him.

I knocked on his door again in a last-ditch effort to avoid what was truly a lose-lose state of affairs. With a quivering hand I slowly pressed the key into the lock, secretly hoping that maybe it wouldn’t work. The key turned and the door slowly creaked open, revealing darkness. I paused outside for a moment, working up my courage before I cautiously stepped in. I listened intently for any sound of movement. It smelled like the zoo in there. There was a hint of something else, too, like maybe rotten lettuce.

I couldn’t find the light switch and had unsettling visions of literally stumbling upon the cadaver, wherever it was. From reading numerous mystery novels, I knew that death had a sickly sweet smell, and my nose trawled the air for any sign of that. The only scent I could discern, however, was an overpowering aroma from the baboons with which Mr. Schmidt apparently lived.

Lifting my shirt over my nose so I wouldn’t have to smell the stale jungle that was this apartment, I moved deeper into the room. I made it a few steps when I suddenly tripped on something large and cumbersome on the floor. I froze with horror. Here he is! I’ve found him! Here’s dead Mr. Schmidt!

What did I do? A couple competing thoughts raced through my head. "Run! Get the hell out of there, fast!" Then my brain ordered, "Reach down and touch him, why don’t you." I didn’t like either of these two options, so I just stood there, idiotically motionless. The fact that there was a human body lying by me feet was too much to wrap my mind around; I wondered if I’d later look back and recognize this moment as the point at which my traumatized brain went permanently awry.

Something thumped somewhere in the apartment. What was that?

Terror coursed through my body. “Is someone there?” The most dreadful thing about this question was that I had not asked it.

“I’m here,” I called out to the darkness. Identifying myself with something more descriptive might have been in order given the circumstances, but the situation had taken on a surreal quality that did not lend itself to lucid thinking.

There was a snap and suddenly the apartment flushed with light. The first thing I noticed was that I was directly facing a wall. The second was that there was a golf bag by my feet. And the third was Mr. Schmidt, who stood there squinting on the far side of the room. He had on a velvet robe that he clutched together with one hand. His mouth was open in, what? Terror? Shock? The onset of a stroke, perhaps?

I pulled my shirt back down from its perch atop my nose. “Hi, Mr. Schmidt. I-I just came to check on you…”