My landlord doesn’t actually live in my building, at least not during most of the year. When I first moved in here with Spencer, he’d spend his summers in the downstairs apartment and his winters in Florida. The landlord, that is, not Spencer. Michael would show up in late May and stay through early September, spending most of the intervening weeks parked on our front porch with a newspaper and a glass of something, leaving the windows open so he could listen to opera playing inside.

He took a sort of fatherly interest in me the first few months I was here; I was only nineteen at the time and states away from my actual father (whose birthday it is today!) and it was nice to go downstairs once in a while and have a glass of wine, even if it was this not-terribly-good white he makes himself. The hallway smells like grapes for a few months out of the year, but that’s not so bad either.

Michael spends less time here now; he doesn’t like the city very much and there’s not a whole lot he needs to be around for as there’s only three of us living in the building and we can all pretty much take care of ourselves. He kept a fairly close eye on me last year; he disliked (rather sensibly as it turned out) both my haircut and my boyfriend at the time. Upon his arrival for this year’s visit, though, I reclaimed my place as his favorite - he (like many others) is a big fan of me being blonde and back at NYU.

He left for Florida again today and while I won’t miss the careful scrutiny of my hair, I do miss the opera and the wine just a little bit.