Chapter 15 – A Wonderfully Terrible Idea
Thursday morning June 5, 2008 – 8:15 AM
Saeed Kahn’s meditation came to an abrupt halt when a group of six elderly women who used the condo’s indoor pool three to four times a week made their way off the elevator and spotted him in the middle of a sedate prayer.
The women, who weren’t as hospitable as Newlan was when it came to Kahn’s unorthodox rituals, promptly accosted the pensive doorman, and they were ruthless in their disdain.
“Turn off that music and get to work, you no good Arab. You should be ashamed of yourself, you disgusting mongrel. I’m reporting you to the management, you lazy fraud,” were just a few of the many complaints which the grouchy old ladies showered down on the limpid concierge.
“I’m very sorry, very sorry,” softly replied Kahn, although he was anything but sorry.
The glare that Kahn gave the women was a look of pure hatred. But the old hags never even noticed his evil-eye salute as they limped away towards the pool with their assorted walkers and canes.
Saeed Kahn had been in America for over ten years so why should he care what these paupers thought of him. And on top of that, he was now officially a citizen of these United States so he had every right to practice his religion, regardless of the vile insults these pompous old ladies threw his way.
One would think that Kahn would be grateful for the gains that he had made in this, the land of the free, but one would be wrong. On the contrary, for many reasons both big and small, he still held a deep and resentful contempt for his adopted homeland, and the scorn he received on a daily basis from the obnoxious tenants who more-or-less employed him didn’t help matters either.
You see, Kahn was forced to leave his native Pakistan on short notice, and if he had any say in the matter, the secretive details regarding his sudden departure would never be known to anyone here in the US. He would just assume be tortured to death and take his secrets to the grave with him rather than reveal the shameful circumstances surrounding the deportation that somehow landed him in the home of the brave.
And yet, although Kahn despised our customs, he slowly became integrated into the American way of life anyway; putting himself in credit card debt, buying fancy cars, drinking beer and whiskey, eyeballing sultry women, and basically living the life of your average middle-class American.
More than a few residents of the condo complex wondered where Kahn got the money to afford his lifestyle, but once again this was a secret that he was required to keep to himself or one way or another face the ultimate penalty.
“And now here I am taking orders from these peasant American scumbags for slaves’ wages. But one day they’ll pay. May God be my witness…one day they’ll pay,” growled Kahn as he glared at the decrepit women wading in the shallow end of the pool.
A small minority of the tenants, such as Frank Newlan for instance, were tolerable, perhaps even decent folk, reflected Kahn. They treated him with respect and gave him a generous bonus around the holidays (Newlan always made sure that his card didn’t include any Christmas references and that it contained only a generic “Happy Holidays” greeting inside). But the rest of them deserved nothing short of a painful lingering death as far as Kahn was concerned.
And as much as Kahn hated most of the tenants, they hated him twofold. However, since he worked long hours and for little pay, no complaint up to this point in his tenure as head concierge, no matter how vociferously it was raised, had ever been serious enough for the condo association management team to justify firing him. And regardless of what the tenants thought of him, if they were being totally honest, they had to admit that he worked hard to keep the condo complex safe and running smoothly.
Kahn’s job duties consisted of coordinating all moves and deliveries in and out of the building, screening visitors (he would routinely come close to fistfights with visitors who refused to fill out the sign-in sheet), delivering misplaced mail, organizing electric, phone, and cable utility visits for busy professionals who had to work during the day, and countless other thankless tasks, and all he’d ever get in return for his troubles were complaints.
When it came to deliveries and moves, a strict set of procedures had to be followed. The rules required scheduling the move in advance with the professional management company that was in charge of the building’s day-to-day operations. All moves necessitated a $300 deposit and could only be scheduled Mondays through Fridays between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM, with no exceptions. And Kahn enforced the condo complex’s rules to a “T”…when it suited his needs, that is. But if you slipped him a few bucks then maybe he just might bend those rules a smidge for you.
On this particular morning, a large truck which was delivering a refrigerator, a washer/dryer, and a range, arrived well before the 9 AM starting time as specified in the Medford River Park Condo Rules and Regulations handbook, and Kahn wasted no time in telling the driver to come back in forty five minutes. And not surprisingly, the busy delivery driver responded in kind with threats of violence towards him.
Numerous calls were made by both Kahn and the delivery driver to the new tenants, Joanne and Miles Reilly, who had just moved into unit 205 and were excitedly anticipating their new appliances. But after repeated unsuccessful attempts at negotiating a comprise solution, an agitated Mr. Reilly came storming down to the lobby and he was livid with Kahn.
“I just paid three hundred grand to live here, and you’re telling me that I can’t have my appliances delivered?” complained Reilly who naturally had never bothered to read the Condo Rules and Regulations handbook.
Kahn patiently explained the situation to Reilly, but no read-between-the-lines commentary was necessary in this case. Reilly knew full well how the game was played. Out of the blue, he reached into his wallet and slipped Kahn a fifty dollar bill…and as was typical of the shameless doorman, this covert exchange turned out to be the deal-maker. And so with money in hand, Kahn motioned the driver to back up his truck past the upper level garage doors which led to the freight elevator.
Of course, not to be outdone, when the old lady swimmers caught wind of a delivery taking place before 9 AM, they raced, soaking wet, in Kahn’s direction as fast as their walkers could carry them, and they proceeded to read him the riot act.
By the time the women made their way over to where Kahn was standing, he was already holding the elevator door open for the delivery men who were carefully rolling a refrigerator, strapped onto a two-wheeler, into the building.
The senior citizens’ complaints meant absolutely nothing to Kahn. He tuned them out completely, and like white-noise, their protests fell on deaf ears. All he cared about was the fact that he just made a quick fifty bucks, their derision notwithstanding.
Meanwhile as the elderly ladies were ranting in one ear and the delivery men were asking questions in the other ear, Kahn’s cell phone rang, and despite his disdain for the whole lot of them, he politely excused himself, and stepped outside by the garage entrance to take the call.
“Next meeting 7:30 Sunday morning…plans are in motion…zero hour coming soon,” rasped the voice on the other end.
“All praise to God,” replied Kahn in a tone that was a shady mixture of utter joy and sheer terror. And as he switched off the phone and turned to reenter the lobby of the condo complex by way of the garage, out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the trailer of the delivery truck was able to pull more than halfway into the garage.
The garage doors needed to be extra wide in order to accommodate moving vehicles which were meant to carry sofas, large screen TV’s, and other appliances, and if it weren’t for the protracted side-view mirrors, the entire delivery truck probably could have fit all the way inside the garage.
While the truck sat there in the garage, thunderously idling, Saeed Kahn curiously inspected the enormous open trailer, half-filled with boxes of every size, and he wondered why, after all the deliv
eries he had supervised, he had never been cognizant of this configuration up until now.
Something suddenly registered in Saeed Kahn’s mind, and like the proverbial light dawning on Marblehead he had an idea…a brilliant idea…a horrible idea…a wonderfully terrible idea.