Member-only story
Call Him Carl
Just when you think you’re getting to know your neighbours…
For months, the man who lives on my roof claimed he didn’t have a name. Then came last week, when he revealed the great secret.
It’s Carl.
Is Carl just a name he plucked from those magazines of his to get me to stop asking? Probably. But for a man who looks like a tornado swept him up from some start-up investor’s backyard barbeque and dropped him on my suburban eyesore, it’s as good a name as any.
He’s quiet, at least. And he fixed my antenna one time.
A storm is sweeping in, an obnoxious growl on the horizon. I retrieve my cobwebbed ladder from the shed and poke my head above the roof to find Carl in his usual pinstripe suit, reposed against the chimney, nose-deep in a bicycle magazine.
“Wanna kip on the couch tonight?” I ask.
Look at us. Quite the journey from those early days of shouting Piss off, this is my property until my voice tendered its resignation.
Carl, as always, doesn’t share my appreciation for personal growth. “So you can snuff me out and roll me up in your rug? Nah.”
“I was more thinking so your broken, waterlogged body doesn’t block my front door tomorrow morning.”
