Since last night–maybe even yesterday morning–I’ve heard the sound of water being drawn coming from upstairs. After a while I realized this was an incessant sound. There were people upstairs moving around, not sounding excited, and no wet spots appeared on my ceiling, so I figured there wasn’t a leak. So I began to wonder what all the water was being used for, and which drug required a constant supply of hot water for home manufacture. I say hot water because I found, much to my displeasure, that I could get only lukewarm water for my shower this mornining.

When the water was still going this evening, and I couldn’t even get a dishpan full of hot water, I began to wonder what to do. I do not endorse the manufacture of drugs but I try not to mind other people’s buisness. It amazed me that the tenants would even try such a thing, with a nosy building superintendent only temporarily laid up with a bad leg. And the entire water bill is paid by the landlord, who would notice such a spike in the water usage.

I get along pretty well with the landlord, and I was contemplating over my tepid dishwater whether to tell him his water bill was going through the roof and his tenants were probably doing something awful upstairs when it suddenly, finally ocurred to me that the noise of running water could just as easily be coming from downstairs.

Which it was.

The aforementioned superintendent being laid up, I was the one to go down there, see the stream of water trickling down the side of my hot water heater (which I do not share with the upstairs tenants in any case), and shut off the cold water supply.

And to be profoundly grateful I had not turned in my neighbors for making methanphetamine. Talk about hot water. Why did I leap to that conclusion?