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Carl’s fourth roommate within a year vacates without warning in the middle of the night, leaving nothing except some gross sneakers and a note saying, you’re a cool dude Carl but sorry I can’t handle it anymore.
Carl isn’t surprised. He throws both the note and the decomposing sneakers away. Good riddance — roommate number four had been getting on his nerves anyway.
He decides to put an ad on Craigslist for the availability. He worries about crazies that he’ll get, but he has no other choice — rent is due in two weeks and there’s no way he can cover it all himself.
He types up the advertisement on his phone as he eats his breakfast of a gluten-free bagel:
Looking for one roommate to share a 3 bedroom/2 bath apartment. Fully furnished. No pets. Very fair price for the Manhattan area. Must love jazz.
It’s a good ad, but what he doesn’t expect is for someone to contact him quickly as they do. From the emails and phone calls, Carl is pretty certain this guy isn’t an ax murder, and things get settled quickly.
The next day the new roommate moves in.
“Hey, I’m Andrew Neiman,” the new guy excitedly says when Carl opens the door. Carl takes in his appearance: he’s tall and his hair is a dark wavy mess, faded scars line the left side of his face, all complete with a dopey smile. He holds a single box that’s obviously heavy and is struggling to hold but is too apprehensive to ask to come in and set it down.
Carl responds dryly, “I know, we’ve talked on the phone.”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” Andrew smiles only falters a bit at Carl’s retort. Carl momentarily feels bad — he’s only just met him — but he also feels the need to not set a precedent for over-friendliness.
Andrew comes in when Carl gestures for him to and finally sets his box on the floor, saying, “My dad is bringing the rest of my stuff later,” as an explanation for Carl’s unanswered question of is that all you fucking own?
“Can I ask,” Andrew begins and Carl inwardly sighs — he hates when people start a question with that question when they’re going to ask another question anyway. Oblivious to Carl’s irritation Andrew continues, “What did you mean in the ad, ‘must love jazz’? It’s kind of a weird stipulation.”
Carl shrugs. “Exactly what it sounds like.” Andrew stares at him blankly, so he elaborates, “I listen to jazz a lot and I know not everyone likes it, so anybody who lives with me should like it so I don’t have to hear them complain.” He pauses. “Do you like jazz?”
“Dude,” Andrew says, and he starts rummaging through his box until he finds what he’s looking for and shows it so Carl can see it: a very battered CD copy of Buddy Rich’s Birdland.
“Nice,” Carl says. Maybe Andrew won’t be so bad after all. Dead-of-the-night sneaker leaver bitched about his Miles Davis all the time.
Andrew seems okay, that is, until he beats Carl’s high score on Rock Band.
Carl tries to not be so petty about it, but it took him two years to get that score. He spent hours with that fucking fake drum set playing that stupid game, and Andrew beats it on his first try.
Andrew holds the drumsticks in one hand and wipes at his sweaty hair with his other hand. “I’m sorry?”
“It’s fine,” Carl snaps, sinking into the couch with his arms folded. It’s a stupid game anyway.
“You don’t seem fine…”
“Leave it be!”
Andrew is about to say something else because he just can’t do as he’s told, but a knock on the door interrupts them. Carl sits up straight at the noise and his heart starts beating a little faster. It’s after 10 PM and there’s only one person who it could be at this hour—
He’s willing to pretend that he’s out, sleeping, dead for that matter, and he’s about to whisper the plan to Andrew but the dumbass has already walked across the room and is opening the door.
“Hi, can I help you?” Andrew cheerfully says, and Carl hangs behind just enough so he has eyesight to the door. Who Carl feared it would be is there: Fletcher, in his bald, black-clothed, sinister glory, looming in the doorway.
If anything, it will be fun seeing him rip Andrew a new one. Because it will happen, it always happens — the frightening of new tenants.
“You must be Carl’s new gal-pal,” Fletcher says, giving Andrew a once-over. Andrew is left speechless as Fletcher continues, “You boys were being kind of loud.”
An apology is already forming on Carl’s tongue, but Andrew speaks first. “We weren’t really, you probably only heard us because you were walking by.”
Carl groans. Definitely not the best way to be approaching this. What a dumbass.
“Oh really?” Fletcher says. “That’s what you think?”
“Yes…” Of course, now is when Andrew is catching on, and starting to not sound so sure of himself, the idiot.
Fletcher bristles, and leans on the doorframe. Carl takes an instinctive step closer to Andrew, while Andrew helplessly looks over his shoulder to Carl before turning back to Fletcher. Fletcher lets the moment of silence linger uncomfortably — its purpose is effective.
“Well, if you queers would keep it down,” Fletcher says. He’s about to turn to go before he adds, “Oh, I meant to tell you, your rent now is a hundred dollars more a month.”
“But — you can’t do that!” Andrew protests, his voice hitching up on the end and oh god, Carl knows that Fletcher is going to have a field day.
Fletcher rounds on Andrew, his face inches away, and Carl is just thankful that he isn’t in Andrew’s place right now. “Can’t?!” Fletcher yells. “This is my building — if you live here, it’s with my rules!”
“But…I…the lease contract…”
“So either you can live here, or live on the streets using those perfectly faggot lips of yours to trade blowjobs for leftover food. Comprende?”
Andrew’s still sputtering when Fletcher storms off. He slowly closes the door, and gestures pathetically in the air. “Who the fuck was that?”
“The landlord, you idiot.” Carl runs a hand through his hair. “Why did you do that for? Why did you talk to him?”
“Don’t you answer when someone knocks on the door, or…?”
“You dumb fuck! You dumb fuck!” Carl yells. Andrew blinks at Carl’s sudden outburst, his mouth hanging agape. The guy looks like he might cry — he already got a verbal thrashing from Fletcher, and he isn’t making it any better. It isn’t Andrew’s fault that he didn’t know about the monster of a landlord that Fletcher is.
Carl sighs and massages his forehead. “Sit down and I’ll get us a beer,” he says, deescalating from defcon 3 and walking to the kitchen. “I’ll tell you all about Fletcher.”
Two fancy gluten-free beers each later, Carl’s recounting the story of the incident with Mr. D6 that happened in the summer.
“Are you serious? Fletcher threw that guy’s air conditioner out the window?” Andrew asks, incredulously.
“Yep,” Carl says, popping the P. “It was non-regulation,” complete with air quotes around the word. “Used too much voltage, or something.”
“What a creep.” Andrew leans forward, elbows on the table, twirling his empty bottle. Carl agrees with him — it’s not so much the awful things that he does, it’s just the general air of assholeness that Fletcher radiates. He’s the reason why Carl has gone through roommates like he goes through computer software updates. It’s difficult living somewhere when a vulture watches your every move.
“Well, you’re basically the reason why our rent increased,” Carl says. “So find us another roommate.”
Andrew pulls out his phone. “No worries, I know a guy. And don’t worry — he likes jazz too.”
“I’m so stoked that you asked me to join you!” Ryan high fives Andrew, and then the other guy who he supposes is Carl. Carl’s high five is lacking in oomph but Andrew swore over the phone that he was a cool dude, and he trusts Andrew’s opinion.
Later, Ryan is putting away his clothes (there’s a legit oak dresser, awesome) when Carl and Andrew appear in his doorway looking very troubled.
“There’s one thing you should know,” Andrew says. “The landlord, he’s kinda…”
“Evil,” Carl supplies.
“Exactly,” Andrew says, nodding.
Ryan scoffs. “He can’t be that bad.”
“I take it back,” Ryan whispers to his roomies at the tenant’s meeting nine days later, and Carl and Andrew give him both their best I told you so glare (Ryan is finding that Andrew and Carl are alike in a lot of ways, but they’d kill each other if he told them so (after they killed him first, that is)). They just witnessed Fletcher humiliate Metz (who lives — lived on the third floor) to the point that he ran crying from the room.
“I don’t really like saying mean things about people,” Ryan says as they climb the stairs to their apartment on the fifth floor, and it’s honest — everyone has their faults and shit they have to overcome. “But Fletcher, the guy is crazy!”
Andrew can’t contain it anymore. “I told you so.”
“Like, for real, psychopath. I think we need to watch out while we shower because,” and Ryan makes stabbing motions, doing his best Norman Bates impression — which he only knows about because Andrew made them watch Psycho over the weekend.
“I don’t think he’d stab us,” Carl says, grabbing the handrail. “Too messy of a murder.”
“Yeah, he’s kind of a dandy. He’d probably suffocate us all in our sleep,” Andrew says, and they all snicker. Until—
“Poison’s more my style.”
They all whip around to see Fletcher standing a few steps behind them, arms crossed, the lighting in the stairwell casting an eerie shadow over his face that makes him look almost demonic. Ryan’s never been closer to pissing himself out of fear. Someone will find their bodies in the morning, a triple homicide. They’ll have to send in specialists to parse through torn limbs and organs to place them with the correct body.
The three of them falter for words — Ryan doesn’t know how to recover from a fuck-up this huge. Maybe they can pretend they weren’t talking about him. He wonders how long Fletcher had been listening, however by the smirking grin, he knows that he heard everything.
Yeah, they’re gonna die.
“Good night, boys,” Fletcher says, and even though he’s lacking in words, no more are needed — the point is made as he turns and walks back down the stairs. He knows that they were talking shit about him. They know that he knows. He knows that they know that he knows. They know that he knows that they know that he knows.
Ryan’s brain is short circuiting, and Andrew and Carl seem to be in a similar state; Andrew is biting his lip and has his arms crossed almost like he’s trying to burrow into himself, and Carl has his hand splayed against the wall and has that wide-eyed panic look that he gets when the dishwasher is loaded incorrectly.
All three stand rooted to the spot until they hear the door at the bottom slam shut.
“Well, that happened,” Ryan says.
They don’t get murdered in their sleep, but they do wake up to a surprise. Their entire apartment is trashed — clothes strewn everywhere, the refrigerator open and food smashed on the floor, shelves knocked over, personal belongings tossed here there and everywhere.
It’s a complete mess. Carl, the neat freak, is having a meltdown. It’s silently agreed upon on who’s the cause.
“But…how?” Andrew asks, kicking at a mound of clothes that have yet to be sorted.
“He’s like a ninja,” Ryan says. It must be what makes the most sense, because the others don't aruge.
They all skip their classes for the day so they can clean, and it’s a good thing they do because it takes until after six in the evening to finish.
“You know what we need?” Ryan asks, sitting on the floor. “Roommate bonding time.”
“We just had an entire day of bonding while cleaning up our shit,” Carl says angrily. He’s still wiping the counters even though he’s done it two times before. The guy needs to chill. It’s a good thing Ryan has the perfect plan.
“No but, I don’t know much about you all, except that you’re in pre-med, Carl. And Andrew, all I know is that you’re a film studies major.” Ryan stands up and shoves his hands in his pockets. “We need to do something fun.”
Ryan shares a glance with Carl. They both know what the other is thinking: suggest something before they’re stuck watching another one of Andrew’s movies again. There’s only so much he can take of watching movies older than his grandma and that he has to read the dialogue by subtitles.
“There’s this jazz club around the corner,” Carl says, and because in another life the three of them could have maybe been professional jazz musicians, that’s where they go.
The place is swanky that’s for sure, and there’s jazz music lightly playing in the background as Ryan, Andrew, and Carl crowd around a table. They have a few moments of peace before Andrew blanches, staring in the distance.
Ryan follows his line of sight, and sees what Andrew sees — Fletcher on the stage, playing the piano. Quite well, actually. But still, evil guy is in the room.
“Shit, he’s here,” Ryan says as the three of them slouch down into their seats.
“It was your idea to come here,” Andrew says, throwing the accusation to Carl.
“How the fuck would I know that Fletcher would be here?” Carl snaps back, and beyond his friends’ bickering Ryan’s vaguely aware of the music ending. “And besides, it was Ryan who wanted roommate bonding.”
“Shut up you two, he’s right fucking—,” Ryan tries silencing them, but they’re not as inconspicuous as they had set out to be, and Fletcher is fast approaching their table — he spotted them. Somewhere the Jaws theme plays.
Fletcher stops in front of their table. “Well if it isn't Larry Leprechaun, Mr. Monica Geller, and Hodor," Fletcher says looking to Ryan, Carl, and Andrew, respectively. He tilts his head to the side. “Didn’t know you three were jazz fans.”
“You didn’t figure that out when you ransacked our apartment?” Andrew asks, full of indignation. Ryan puts his face in his hands. It’s too awful, he can’t watch. Okay, he’s lying — he horrifyingly watches though his fingers.
But Fletcher just makes a hmm noise and then shrugs his shoulder and saunters off.
It’s pretty awesome. Carl claps Andrew on the back, and Ryan buys Andrew his first drink of the night (and he’s grateful that nobody cards Andrew, because it isn’t until they’re already pretty buzzed when Andrew reminds them, “You guys do know I’m only nineteen, right?”)
It’s a good thing the club is not far from their apartment, because they’re too drunk to exert much effort.
Which proves to be hindrance for Ryan when he goes into his room and finds that his mattress is gone. Vanished. Poof. Begone.
He peeks his head in Andrew’s room, and Andrew’s mattress is gone too. As is Andrew. Drunkenly, Ryan starts to panic that everything has fallen into a parallel universe and he’s left alone.
Ryan checks in Carl’s room, and thank goodness, he finds Andrew and Carl lying in Carl’s bed. Thankfully, one mattress had been spared from the thief.
Three guesses who the thief is.
“Yours too?” Carl softly asks. Ryan nods, and is about to start a drunken rant but Carl puts a finger to his lips and gestures to Andrew. Ryan looks down and for the first time really notices how they’re arranged — Andrew is curled up against Carl’s side, fast asleep. It’s adorable. Normally it might seem weird, but in these circumstances where their beds are missing and they’re wasted and their landlord is a psychopath, it’s okay.
Carl motions for Ryan to join them. Yeah. Bro-sleeps are cool. He would say no-homo but that's disrepectful and rude.
Ryan lies on the other side of Carl and feels sleep quickly approaching. His final thought is that it had been considerate of Fletcher that he at least left them the biggest bed.
Andrew wakes up with a pounding headache, but very comfy. He nuzzles into the warmth next to him, desperate to fall back to sleep — that is, until he realizes it’s not the norm to have the rhythmic breathing from somebody in his ear.
He slides his eyes open and sees a plaid shirt up close, and realizes he’s got his head on Carl’s chest and Carl has his arm wrapped him, snoring slightly. His first instinct is to bolt out of bed, but he really wants to avoid the situation where he would wake up Carl in this position.
It takes a moment for Andrew to remember the previous night’s events. He remembers the jazz club and him talking back to Fletcher, he remembers getting out his mind drunk. Another memory that follows is Carl sighing and scooting over in his bed once Andrew had came in to whine that his bed was missing. He definitely likes Carl better when he’s drunk — he stops pretending like he has to prove something, or whatever, and he doesn’t yell at Andrew.
He gingerly sits up, Carl’s arm falling on the pillow, and he sees Ryan on the other side the bed lying on his back and fast asleep, and supposes that at some point Ryan joined them as well.
On the way to the bathroom, he peers in Ryan’s room and sees that he had his mattress stolen by Fletcher, too.
Andrew decides he’s had enough — he won’t allow this megalomaniac control his life. He deserves better.
Time for a game plan.
Andrew draws the short straw. He wouldn’t have insisted on fixing their Fletcher Problem if he knew he would be the one sent to fix it.
“You’ll be fine,” Ryan reassures him. It would almost be convincing if his voice didn’t hitch up at the end.
True to his self, Carl is less kind. “By some miracle, try to not fuck it up.”
Andrew can’t make any promises.
The three of them ride the elevator down to the first floor to act as “moral support” but Andrew knows that the others come along only out of curiosity. Carl and Ryan stand at the end of the hallway where Fletcher lives, while Andrew is left to his doom. Andrew tentatively walks forward, throwing a look behind his shoulder when he reaches Fletcher’s apartment door. Ryan gives him an animated thumbs up, while Carl face palms.
It’s now or never, Andrew decides, and he musters up all his courage and knocks on the door, right next to where B16 is marked in peeling stickers.
Fletcher opens the door almost immediately. Andrew expects Fletcher to yell at him, attack him with homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs, but he doesn’t — instead, Fletcher’s mouth upturns into a grin and says, “What brings you to my doormat on this fine sunny morning?”
It’s worse than being yelled at. At least with that he knows what he’s getting, but this — this is conundrum.
Andrew gets right to the point. “Give us back our stuff.” He tries not to choke on his words. “I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to be breaking into people’s apartments anyway and stealing things, so…”
Fletcher’s put-on grin forms into a firm line. “You know what, Andrew? You’re a self-righteous little shit.” He pauses, taking in Andrew’s flabbergasted expression before continuing. “I could tell right from the start. You think you’re entitled, like you deserve all the goddamn attention in the world. But guess what? You aren’t a special snowflake.”
Andrew feels the need to retaliate back with actually, I do think I’m pretty fucking awesome but he figures it would it would be a bad idea because Fletcher would find a way to use it to make it prove his point. Andrew wonders how could this guy who he barely knows somehow seems to be controlling is life. “What do you know?” he asks, “You’re just some landlord.”
Hearing this, something passes over Fletcher’s face that resembles nostalgia. “I wasn’t always a landlord,” he says. “I used to teach at a music conservatory. I dealt with smug shitheads like you all the time.” He pauses, and crosses his arms. “I was the conductor for the jazz studio band. The best fucking one in the country.”
It makes sense to Andrew — it explains him playing in the jazz club, and Andrew can imagine Fletcher being a severe conductor, waving his arms and using his finely tuned intimidation tactics to frighten musicians shitless.
“Why aren’t you teaching anymore?” Andrew asks, his voice slightly above a hoarse whisper. For some reason, he’s afraid to find out.
“I couldn’t find who I—,” Fletcher says, catching himself before continuing, “I couldn’t find what I was looking for.”
Stepping forward, eagerly, Andrew asks, “What were you looking for?” A pause, then, “Or who?”
They stare at each other for way too long, and he’s now glad that Ryan and Carl didn’t come with him. The unspoken tension creeps, and even though Andrew’s natural state of being is to avoid eye contact at all costs, he can’t look away from Fletcher. It’s something — an interest, a query unfathomed.
Eventually, Fletcher hums and shrugs. He never answers Andrew’s question.
“So you like jazz, huh?” Fletcher asks, and Andrew nods. “Alright, I’ll release your mattresses from their hostage situation if you can answer one question.”
“Anything,” Andrew breathes, desperate to prove himself.
Fletcher crosses his arms. “What time is Duke Ellington’s Caravan in?”
He obviously expects Andrew to fail. However, he also obviously underestimates Andrew’s dedication to an obsession.
“Double-time swing.” Andrew knows this because of endless hours of looking over music related things, because when he does something he does not do it halfway (he sometimes wonders what would be of him if his dad had got him a drum kit instead of a video camera for his sixth birthday). Andrew’s confidence emanates and he can’t help the grin that takes residence on his face. There’s also the reaction from Fletcher — before his usual disgruntled scowl settles on his face, Andrew swears that there’s a flicker of approval, and for some damn reason Andrew knows he’ll be working to try and recreate it.
Fletcher leans out into the hallway and shouts in the direction where Ryan and Carl are hiding, “Come get your shit!” After a few moments of silence he shares an exasperated look with Andrew, “I know you’re there, but Andrew here was the only one brave enough to face me.” Then, as an afterthought, he mutters so only Andrew could hear, “Pansies.”
Carl’s curse echoes down the hallway as he and Ryan trudge towards them. Ryan high fives Andrew and Carl mumbles a barely audible, “Thanks,” as they pass him as they go into Fletcher’s apartment.
Andrew shares a glance with Fletcher — Fletcher tilts his head and narrows his eyes, as if to say, what’s next? and Andrew realizes he was stupid to think this would solve all their Fletcher Problems.
They really should just move out.
A month later, after a series of incidents — finding a herd of cats in their apartment, all of Carl’s gluten-free food switched out for wheat-filled food (Carl was sick for a week), the smoke detectors mysteriously going off in the middle of the night, their mailbox shoved to the max with junk mail, the wifi password getting changed multiple times — all suspected to be caused by you-know-who, Andrew still shares an apartment with Ryan and Carl, for better or worse.
“How’s your landlord situation?” Andrew’s dad asks.
“Good,” Andrew says, shifting the phone to his other ear while looking at music charts that Fletcher had gave him. “I think he likes me more now.”