Taking Care of Business

It was a pleasant day, if you didn't mind a neighbor sandblasting the shit out of his house. This house, rather, compound for the deranged, is the third house going west on the other side of the alley. Somehow, it is connected to the third house on the other side of the ally going east too. You see, I live in the land of possible terrorists, Encino.

I'm not joking. Across the street to the east one house is a man and woman who only handle big, black cars. The man is big and black and the woman is white with black highlights, her hair and eyes. Not a week into the rental a swat team shows up from another county. Six men, with bullet proof vests and sidearms are in the hood asking questions about the two. And they are waiting for them to show up. My neighbor across the street with four children, has her kids nestled in the furthest room from her neighbor, in case of gunfire.

I'm not sure what came of it, they seem to deal in cars, always black and always with the driver's door so close to the side of the house that no one could open the door. Another black car is parked sideways blocking it, usually a black Benz, sometimes a black convertible mustang.
Next door to me on the west side is a Middle Eastern group of people. I'm not sure what they are, Jewish, Palestinians, Persians, I have no idea except for their language and habits, which don't place them from Jacksonville, Florida. It is always dark next door. Dark and quiet, yet a teenage girl lives there, two men and a rather attractive middle age woman. I've never seen the second man, brother to the other man, only that his brother says he plays the piano. They borrowed my ladder to remove leaves from the gutters when I was putting up Christmas lights and he asked me to look at something in the back. Our gardeners had trimmed the tree and they wanted to know why they didn't trim the foliage spilling over on their side.

Rather than explain that in America, if it is growing on your side you have the right to leave it or cut it at property line, I said I would take care of it and cut it all back from their fence. So now they wave at us when they happen to be parking one of three cars or leaving. One day last summer I left the hose going on the side yard that separates the properties, the water was trickling down their driveway and when I was out to move the hose, the attractive woman drove up with daughter and said, " It's okay, we were going wash the driveway anyway."

The first thing they did moving in was fire the gardener and they have auto sprinklers that they have no idea how to operate. They mow when it looks like a cow pasture and at night. No lights, no lights in the windows, no front porch light, no back porch light ever goes on. The house is as dark as a terrorist cell.

The other two houses, the ones in the alley have Middle Eastern people in them as well. I'm not sure from where, but they fight. They fight a lot. Cops come, people scream for help, "He's trying to kill me!" And in all this, there is building going on. There are additions to both houses clear out to the alley with a fence two feet from it. There is no green. It is house, cement and that's it. Just like you see in Baghdad. In both places. Okay, every fucking day they have a crew working on one of the two places. So much so that a roach coach shows up at lunch in the alley.

Why would you sandblast something that was just painted? Why not paint over it if you don't like the tawdry color of Baghdad sand.

So they're creating Desert Storm, it is in its, I think, tenth year now of creation. The noise of the sandblasting can be heard inside our house. I'm trying to write but, it is that steady noise of sand. Sand that blasts from a firehouse sending clouds of chipped paint into the air. It has to make them feel right at home.

I can't write and so Wally and I go to the feed store and buy a hundred pounds of organic chicken feed and a bail of straw. It all fits into the trunk of the fat-ass Cadillac. That makes me wonder now if my neighborhood terrorists would use the trunk of the fat-ass for Big Bertha. You know, the bomb. It holds a lot of shit.

We bought dog food, cat food, cat litter and most important, shit-stain remover for Betty's constant bowel problem. She shits like toothpaste from a tube anytime after I let her out to crap, or I should put, hoping she'll take the hint and shit her toothpaste on the goddamn lawn. But of course she stands at the door waiting to shit inside. If the terrorists strike, please let the Fates allow it to be Betty.

I called Social Security and asked about the Medicare benefits I was to receive from filing a claim six months ago. I wrote an e-mail to the publisher of my erotic book asking when I was going to get my copies, they should arrive in two weeks or less, he wrote back.

And I'm surrounded by terrorists. Thank the Goddess I have a hundred pounds of chicken feed, dog food, cat food and litter to see me through in case the FBI descend on our little piece of heaven any time soon.

My Job As A Ghetto Baron

Wally has an apartment building in town. It is within walking distance to Paramount Studios, to Larchmont, which use to be trendy until they let in a Koo-A-Roo fast food joint. That started the downhill. There was a little French cafe there that Wally and I would walk to on a warm summer evening. They had a fantastic free range organic roast chicken that we always ended up ordering, even after saying we would try something else, just once. It closed, the hardware store closed where you could get just about anything you needed including kitchenware.

Anyway, the apartments are nice. Six units, hardwood floors, and each apartment has its own layout. Each is different in some way. It is from the early fifties I think, the style is anyway and it is right across King of King's church. A lovely edifice to the Catholic gods with bells that peel out chimes at the hour. It is a school in the day, beastly children roam the asphalt, chain link preventing them access to anything green. But that's Catholicism for you. You have to suffer if you want to go to heaven. That's why they think every sperm is sacred. You get so much more suffering that way and on such massive scale. Think of the future starving saints of the Church, how more delighted god will be with such suffering. Anway...


I digress, Vine becomes, Rossmore at Melrose. It is the dividing line between the rich and the poor. The portal is the church sticking into Melrose like a sword. As if to say, 'Beyond this point live the privileged. Enter at your Peril'. Right away, the highway is brought down to a one lane road. People have to merge to pass by the church and Wally's apartments across the street.

It is a careful place to live. The merging of traffic, people cutting off others, horns honk, rage, it's a city with a lot of very important people converging into a single lane so imagine what it is like for them to be behind someone else. Wally's apartments are amazingly quiet with all this going on, It could be the old type of construction, it could be the vegetation, sycamore trees in the parkway that shade the street and assorted plants in front.

Not a bad place and remember, six units. The good side for the tenant is that there is not a lot of other people. Not too much of a problem to do a load of laundry. There are front and back doors to all the units. The back door at the kitchen or located nearby. All front doors go into a two story small lobby that has only a staircase, no elevator, to the upper three apartments. The mail is located inside so that no one has to go outside for it. Each has a separate, one car garage in back with a large cement area to get to the garages fixed with genie garage doors.

The tenants, those that get along and they usually do on some level--like it there. The rent can't be raised too high, there are no amenities. No security except for security doors on each outside door and bars on windows that can be opened in an emergency from inside. No air-conditioner, and the heaters, except for one, have to be turned on manually. But only on occasion does it get hot enough to really want air-conditioning. For some reason, a cool breeze blows there. It is located in what use to be a swamp in the early days of Los Angeles. A low point that collects the cooler air. The mail carrier always says she loves to get the building on a hot day because going up to the door was like having air-conditioning on your face. And she's right, it is cool right there. A tunnel of sorts is formed by separation of properties and the wind is funneled between, bringing a cool breeze from the North side of the buildings and the foliage along the way, cooling the air further.

Six fucking units and you would think the tenants would be appreciative. The building is worth millions, if sold. Because of the location and what you could build on the piece of land probably an apartment with sixty units like the new one next door. The six units go for about a thousand each, more or less, in rent a month. A real bargain for that area. Some months there is no rent money coming in, the bills to maintain six units, the taxes, and all the rest of what owning an apartment building can and will take a big chunk of change. We get, on average about three rents for ourselves, minus income tax and the other three units go for the bills for the building.

So why the petty bullshit? Why the whining about the goddamn church bells. That's from the fucking Catholic that moved out. Why did he think anyone would want to move into an apartment that he painted green and red on certain walls? He wanted his deposit back, it was just painted he said and yes, it was a nice paint job. But fucking green and red? So he got the security, just wore me down and it is now painted, an off-fucking white.

I use to have empathy for their plight, now I wait for that day when vultures circle the little village.

Manipulation

Pulling the pud is one form, another is when a friend tries to get you, in a variety of ways, to do what they want without asking or talking about it. Last night we went to Dream Girls. It was okay, the musical would have been better if not on Oscar night and if it wasn't so bitchy. A few more songs, completed all the way through would have been nice.

Caryl's boyfriend, the one she just broke up with and then got back together in a kind of sort of way, he won't tell her again when he is suicidal, she told his therapist. But there seeing each other, okay whatever the hell works for these two. But he didn't want to come to the performance when an extra ticket came up. So guess what? Caryl was bummed. Not that he was going until the ticket holder called and said he was sick and could we find someone who would enjoy seeing it. The boyfriend didn't want to drive thirty miles alone.

She wanted to pay for dinner that night, okay fine. Only she wasn't moving her ass to get the damn chicken. So I mentioned that we needed to eat soon, if we were going to be on time. That's when she came up with this lame answer that we never left for dinner before five before. The performance starts at six-thirty. Can't work, I tell her, and after she took her sweet time getting ready and needed to deposit a check in her bank, we ended up at In&Out for a burger. Big spender and then I had to wolf down the burger, get on the freeway and fly to the red line. We made it in time, but I'm getting pissed with all this.

Sunday she wanted to go bike riding, I didn't. Sunday is my day to read the L.A. Times and the New York. I don't like to be disturb. I don't want anyone over before ten in the morning earliest. And if someone does come over, I expect them to read, drink tea or coffee and not bother me until after ten. The rule has been broken now two weeks running. This last Sunday, Caryl and Juan wanted to meet here because they stow their bikes here and ride from our house. Juan wanted to annoy me, ask for things, interrupt me with wanting to be fed and on and on. If I don't answer him, he is like some eight year old and asks louder and more persistent until you get pissed. The last two Sundays have been this way.

I'm not sure if her and Juan think it's funny to annoy me but they are about to find out what a bitch I can really be. Wally and I aren't saying a fucking thing. When Sunday morning comes, we are going to have breakfast out with our paper. Someone can wait on me while I read, how nice that will be for a change.

Yet He Still Lives

Every Saturday the leech comes over, Wally's ex. It use to be Thursday but now Saturday. He's Wally's ex-lover but not dead lover, and I am patiently waiting for him to die. Well I'm not patient, I gave him a stick of butter for his popcorn tonight and added the cheese he wanted in with it. Gladly too and while I was preparing it, offered him another drink to go with his cigarettes he can smoke on the patio. I did buy him cartons of the coffin nails but it got expensive, he does smoke a lot. And that's why you would think he should be suffering from something? He can't climb hills, he can't walk to far yet he still lives. He is still able to whine that he doesn't have enough money, does anyone think they have enough? Yet he thinks his requests are different. The car won't start, I can't pay the property tax and on and on. He does nothing but smoke, stiff creditors and find reasons why he can't pay back a cent he has borrowed from Wally my husband.

I only look forward to Saturdays to see if he will show up, or that perhaps he burnt up in bed and couldn't make it. Yet he still lives to come here on Saturday. I always have beef. Never fish but beef, butter, sugar, booze and ashtrays. The stink of his is awful. Almost as awful as the breath he seems still able to draw.

It rained tonight and the roads are tricky. Perhaps, just perhaps he might not make it through the gang territory and fall prey to their lethal games. I'll have to wait until next Saturday though to see if he still lives.

A curious case

My battle with the chicken that likes to sleep in her nest box and thereby, shit in it at night has been resolved--I think. She stayed out tonight without me pushing her feathered ass from the nest. It has taken a good part of a month to get there earlier enough to find her, before that I used a paper bag to fill the nest.

Evidently her ma didn't tell her, "You don't shit where you sleep.

Why can't some people say what's really going on?

So, I have this friend. I like her, she's nice, but. Right at the moment she wants to loose weight. Always after the last boyfriend dumped her and again when she finally meets someone.

"I'm having stomach problems. I can't eat right now."

"Okay, you wolfed down that Subway earlier pretty good, but hey, it's your stomach. And just because dinner came from the garden and I spent some time digging up the white radish and sun chokes to go with the oak-leaf lettuce salad and culled the Swiss chard for the tenderest greens I could fine for the pasta that's sitting on your plate untouched. And went to the trouble of cooking it when we could be at an In-and-Out with a bad ass double-double with a side of fries, but hey, I'll bag it for you, maybe later, you'll want some."

Why didn't she say, "I am totally stuffed from a twelve inch meatball sandwich. And can't eat anymore or men will hate me for being perfectly healthy."

I had to wash the damn plate too.

Oh, the dinner? Just about as good as you can get, especially with the price I charge. Zip.

Hangovers

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Once we went through the vodka, which was kept in the freezer, to switch to the gin on the counter and thereby requiring ice to dilute and chill it. But we still got drunk and somehow ended up in a sushi bar. I remember being reminded that children were there, I forgot what it was I was talking about and there were two really hot guys with one girl that I was sure were making porn movies. Those kind that involve Russians and bad lighting. We got home, thanks to always making sure to invite someone involved in AA and looking for a free meal to come along.