Welcome To Our Home – Instructions From Your Airbnb Hosts
Dear Mr. Brody ,
WELCOME! We are delighted to have you staying in our apartment while you are in New York and are thrilled that of all the options available to you, you chose our home for your visit.
Please use the space as if it were your own while you are here. We want you to feel entirely at home!
Naturally, we do have a few small instructions that we share with anyone who rents our apartment and we hope you will follow these instructions TO THE LETTER to ensure not only that you make the best possible use of our home but also to ensure that we can return to a home that remains in the same condition as when we left. We thank you in advance for your cooperation in this regard.
1) HARDWOOD FLOORS – With the exceptions of the bathroom and kitchen, this apartment has hardwood floors. They scuff and damage easily so we ask that you not wear shoes beyond the small mat just inside the entryway. You will find a shoe rack to your left as you enter. Do not use it. It is decorative only and cannot support the weight of even a single pair of slippers. Rather, take off your shoes when you enter and carry them with you to the bedroom closet where you will find an area on the floor marked with tape that has been set aside for your footwear. Also, the floors have been finished with a fine imported varnish, so we request that you not go barefoot as the sweat and oils from human skin can, over time, cause it to deteriorate. Remove your shoes upon entry, but keep your socks on at all times.
2) TOWELS AND LINENS are folded neatly and awaiting your arrival, linens at the foot of the bed, towels in the bathroom. Before you depart, it would be most helpful if you would take them to the laundry service at the corner and request rush service. Then, later in the day, pick them up (they will be returned to you folded) and place them EXACTLY as they were when you arrived. Many of our guests have found it helpful to take digital photographs using their phones’ camera function to retain record of the positioning and orientation of these items. At the laundry, Mr. Shen knows us quite well. We advise you not to tell him that the items are ours.
3) THE HALL CLOSET must not be opened for any reason. You may hear sounds.
4) CLEANING INSTRUCTIONS are as follows. Before departure please sweep the hardwood floors using the broom in the tall kitchen cabinet with the soft bristles exclusively executing northwest to southeast strokes (i.e. following the grain of the floorboards from the rear of the unit toward the entry) and then go over it again with the other broom. Should you stray from this pattern, touch up varnish can be found in the cabinet under the sink. Trash should be double-bagged and taken out to the curb where it should be placed at the far westward end of the trash that is always there so that it appears to be from the next building over. The super intendant at that building knows us quite well so we urge you to wait until he has gone around the corner for a smoke before you put out the trash. Do not engage him in conversation. He doesn’t stop. The sink and shower should be thoroughly wiped down with Tilex and then scrubbed with a forty/sixty solution of water and a liquid product called Farber 7 X52. This is an industrial strength cleanser that is the only one my husband says doesn’t make his feet all scrunchy (whatever that means). It can be purchased in single-use small bottles just a few blocks down Broadway at the hardware store, but if you’d prefer not to spend the money, feel free to take the six-ounce plastic container from below the kitchen sink and pour enough for your purposes from the larger jug we keep in storage. Our storage space is in Brooklyn, located conveniently off the M Train’s Chauncy Street station. The address and security code to get into that storage space can be found on an index card held to our refrigerator by a magnet shaped like an oversized blueberry. If you choose this option, please rinse out the six-ounce container and return it to the cabinet under the sink.
5) KEY RETURN will happen through our lovely downstairs neighbor Jack who will also be your point of contact if there’s anything you need while you stay here. His number is on an index card held to our refrigerator by a magnet shaped like a drastically undersized rhinoceros. He suffers from severe hearing loss, so you will need to call him using the TTY service for the hearing impaired and may have to speak slowly as someone will be typing your words so that he can read them and respond. Also, he is severely germophobic, so it is important that before you bring him the keys, you clean them thoroughly with rubbing alcohol. Don’t just dip them. Really get into the grooves using the specially designed tool that you will find in the drawer under the coffee maker. (Please don’t use or touch the coffee maker. It is decorative only and can be damaged by water or heat.) After you clean the keys, please also clean the specially designed tool. And the drawer under the coffee maker.
That’s it! We really hope you thoroughly enjoy your Two Day stay in New York!
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Humorist/story-teller Dylan Brody has released five albums with StandUp! Records, an overlong digital album through Rooftop Comedy as well as a five-dollar downloadable video special. Two other specials currently stream at Revry.com and NextUpComedy.com. His play Mother May I won the Stanley Drama Award and in addition to his novels and novellas, he has been published in American Bystander, Annals of Improbable Research, Exquisite Corpse, Chicken Soup For The Soul: Very Good/Very Bad Cat, Intermountain Jewish News, The Comedians Magazine, and Dragon Magazine. He has toured internationally with his solo show Dylan Brody’s Driving Hollywood and has opened for his hero in the world of literary humor, David Sedaris. Would someone please explain to us why he still feels he has no career?
