The Old House by Joe Moler

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I tried to push it again and the endless ringing stopped.

And then all of a sudden, right next to the dog, a man appeared without half of his teeth, unshaved and probably drunk.

"Are you from the IRS!?" he shouted at me.
"No I am not".
"Are you an undercover cop?"
"I am not a cop either"
"You are not even a fucking mailman" the old man shouted again
"No I am not"
"So what the hell do you want?"
"Do you rent an apartment?"
"No, nobody rents apartments around here. Where do you see an apartment and in which papers did you read about it?
And Then I pointed to the window and showed him the big red sign stating: "Apartment for Rent".
He came to the window, took the sign and looked at it for a while...
"My dear friend, I placed that sign only for the purpose of someone actually ringing my doorbell, you know, so that I could talk to someone from time to time because otherwise I would die of silence. It has been days since someone came to this cursed house that cops say it will collapse. It is not going to fucking collapse. The downtown buildings would collapse way before these small wooden houses that are going to rot to their foundations but that will still stand."
The man kept talking and talking while the dog was sadly looking at me...
"My dog is deaf and blind so I can't hear him anymore. Therefore I put the sign so that someone would ring this doorbell which is the only thing working in this house..........."
I left the man who was still talking and went my way to the Myrtle Street asking myself; how many people waiting doorbell to ring in this city?...