I have no proof of this, of course, but I do know that he "trained as plumber" somewhere in Yugoslavia until he moved here "in early 90s." All I know is that he has hands like ham hocks and a rogue air and the one time he and I were alone together--when he was trying to connect my gas stove to the main, without reading the instructions--I tried to persuade him to follow the manual so as not to make "whole house asplode." He looked at me with his sparkling blue eyes and said, "Where I come from, is man say, and woman listen, you know?" (How does one say "piehole" in Serbian?)

Fair enough. He brought his astonishingly hot child bride over here from the old country for exactly that reason. I only see her when she's been charged with dragging all the garbage to the curb.

Although Jeff is trained as plumber, getting him to come up to the third floor to fix our toilet, which flushes nonstop throughout the summer, is like trying to get Milosevic to recognize the authority of the Hague. When I asked Jeff to fix it, he explained that this would be impossible because "if I hev to turn off wouter for you, I hev to go down to besement, and then come beck up here to fix, you know?"

Indeed.