Empty Apartment Goosebumps & SpeakEasy The Bird PART I

MY FRIEND MARTIE

So the other day, my friend Martie came over during the day and asked for a glass of wine.
I poured Martie her glass, and we proceeded outside to a little café table on the side of my townhouse.
Just as Martie sat down to drink her wine, Joe, the maintenance man, who sometimes wears his teeth & sometimes does not (none the less he's a very nice man with or without teeth...who wasn't wearing any teeth on this particular occasion), called me over and asked me tell him if I thought the townhouse next door to me smelled any better. -- The place next door smelled liked vomit and the fridge-full of maggots that the previous tenants had left behind & it has been a bitch and a half for Joe and his associates to get the freakin' smell out.
Since I have some strange fascination with stepping inside empty apartments and getting some weird rush that tingles through me causing goosebumps on my arm, I told him, "Heck yeah I'll give it a sniff!".
So I enlisted Martie's help, and we wandered through the place sniffing every corner we could get our schnozes into.
We identified numerous cleaning solutions, water-based paint, freshly laid carpets, ... and vomit/maggots.
The smell was still there.
Not wanting to give up on my goosebumps that quickly, I thought it best if Martie and I head upstairs and do some investi-sniffing there.
Oh yeah!
Well after our ascension, we were both quite sure that the smell was most definitely wafting from from the upstairs lavatory.
Now that my goosebumps had reached their peak in the darkened walk-in closet, I thought that I had struck gold.
Lying on a wire shelf in the closet was what appeared to be a baby crib liner, bag, or changing pad.
"Ooooh, I bet that's what it is!", I told Martie.
So she grabbed it and shoved her nose in it, smelling away.
"Nope.", she said confidently, "It's comin' from tha' bathroom. He needs to keep tha' drain closed."
Alright.
We went downstairs and Martie told Joe all about Lamp Bergers, and how they actually absorb odor from the environment without leaving any smoke, that they would only take 20 minutes to suck all the odors out, and that he needed to keep the drain closed.
Joe smiled a toothless smile, and my goosebumps subsided.
I walked outside, leaving Martie and Joe talking Lamp Bergers, drains, and maggot-filled fridges.
I have a feeling that what happened next has triggered a new obsession that I could definitely live without.

STAY TUNED FOR PART II OF:
Empty Apartment Goosebumps & SpeakEasy The Bird