Verklempt

Steven Feinman was verklempt, it was true, but only owing to the strange behaviour of his landlord. Not even withstanding the rear half of a sixteen wheeler truck embedded into his exterior apartment wall, which admitted a constant freezing wind and served as home to a boisterous family of pigeons, there were a number of shenanigans Feinman simply couldn't abide. A recent modification to the bathroom meant that flushing caused the room to seal off and fill with the recent effluent and water, which only after a few agonizing moments at maximum capacity, would drain via powerful suction through the ceiling. For the duration of this procedure Feinman was forced to strap himself to the bathtub and don a breathing apparatus, for sometimes the pressure was sluggish and it could take several minutes for the room to fill. Needless to say, all soap, towels, and dental apparatus had to be kept in tightly sealed containers.

Even more bizarre was the kitchen, whose changes, unlike the truck, could not be dismissed as the whims of post-modern artistic fancy, or like the toilet to the aesthetic intentions of a crazed phenomenologist. They were not only baffling, but extremely dangerous. The toaster, for example, was inverted: the grills were on the outside, and required sticking one's hand through a complex latticework of metal to activate the switch, and very carefully extricate it before the coils grew too hot. The toast likewise had to be held to the grills, which required gloves and great patience.

The stove consisted of an open horizontal flame, like a blowtorch, and Feinman had to wear a welder's mask to avoid burning his face whenever he cooked. The kitchen was on the whole quite small, and had only one drawer for all the utensils. The landlord designed a Damocletian magnetized knife rack on the ceiling, so the larger knives hung downwards from their metal handles. Though only two had yet fallen, Feinman was still loathe to walk underneath them. And then the fridge! This was perhaps Feinman's greatest anguish: the entire contents were arranged on long flat shelves sticking out of the door, that swiveled out like a lazy susan. This might have been fine, if only the fridge didn't close with the most infuriating suction. To get it open Feinman had to brace one leg against the wall and pull with all his strength. Invariably, all the fridge's contents would hurtle off the shelves and crash to the floor.

Frustration was not entirely the right word to describe Feinman's response to these changes. He was verklempt. He would lie in his bed (the only thing in the house not significantly altered, other than the convex angle of its surface), trembling with rage. Twice a week he called the landlord and left silent messages on his machine, during which he would focus all his hatred into the phone's receiver. He paced frequently around the room with his hands twisted inside each other, his lips trembling and his teeth chattering with inexpressible emotion. Every evening, on his way home from work, he would stop at the foot of the building and stare up into the window he knew belonged to the landlord; there he would wait for five, sometimes ten minutes, his eyes squinting with potent fury. He was in all things, at all times, verklempt. Others looked at him strangely when he broke into gibbering sobs on the subway; his manager at work tried on one occasion to comfort him by placing a hand on Feinman's shoulder, but the beleaguered man jumped a half-foot out of his chair and almost shrieked, his eyes as wide as blisters and his skin pale and clammy. The manager never tried to comfort Feinman again, and in fact began searching for a replacement.

On the day that Feinman was fired from work, he said nothing. He went home and tried to unlock his door, but discovered that the lock had been changed and now required placing a hand into a long cylinder with clearly visible metal serration along the rim, before the key could be turned. Feinman stared at the lock for an hour in silence. He was so verklempt.