RichEisbrouch
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1997 The Ballad Of Cyndi And Tim Cyndi and Tim went out in a racket of bullets. Well, not exactly. But they coulda. Cyndi kicked Tim out again shortly after New Year’s. She was working at yet one more of the seemingly infinite reception jobs available in LA, land of the temp, home of the slave. Tim hadn’t worked since he quit delivering Humvees, possibly soon aft
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Mid-1997 Update Yesterday afternoon, I got back from riding 15 miles on my bike and took a long shower to decompress. As I finally turned off the water, I heard yelling – full-out hollering – and I figured, “Cyndi and Tim.” Then I realized it wasn’t Tim’s voice, and I figured “Cyndi and Justin” (Lindsay’s current musician/boyfriend who irritates Cyn
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1996 At Liberty Even in conception, this building was never classy. But lately people are right: it’s become an immobile home. If I did more than sleep here, I’d move out. But what would I write about? Apartment 1: Cyndi threw Tim out in August. Of course, Tim insisted the police arrived to escort him to safety. “Can you believe she threw a 400 dollar
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1995 All’s Quiet on Moorpark I actually have an interesting life. But everyone wants to know what’s happening with my neighbors. I get postcards begging for updates. So here goes: Apartment 1: Cyndi and Tim have moved up – down, actually. They’d originally taken over the studio apartment just across my landing. Now – with Sally gone – they have the one-bedroom directly unde
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1994 What Was That? Actually, it’s been a quiet year. Except for the earthquake. “The room began to jolt, the bugs to bolt, A whim of Spielberg’s aliens? Or the occult?” It was 4 a.m.
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1993 Just Off the Camino Real I love living in this place: Moorpark Palms. U-shaped. Stucco and stone. Fourteen apartments on two floors. Out back: a kidney-shaped pool. When I moved in, the trim was orange, the courtyard overgrown. New owners painted the doors aqua, razed the jungle and planted petunias. There are now two palms; there may have been more. There's never been more excitement. My favorite neighbors are Mack, whose name may really be Tommy, and Joni, w
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These are the original, annual, New Year's letters that I sent to my friends from 1993 to 2001. That was from two years after I moved into the building to a year-and-a-half after I left. As mentioned, the letters were the basis for the book, and they often overlap the same material. But they cover more time and more characters, and are sometimes funnier because they're more compressed and somewhat more rude.
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Glad you both liked the story. As I said, there's a bit more to come, mostly in a different form.
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Jake's adventures continue in this funny book about the small Los Angeles apartment building he lives in. It's full of hot young people who spend a lot of time nearly naked around the pool. But they're often bonkers.
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Steve soon moved into Tim and Cyndi’s old apartment. It fortunately didn’t need a lot of work. And like other tenants before him, besides the clothes he was wearing, Steve brought almost nothing. But he was wearing a very nice suit. And Bart assured me, he was a good risk I offered him my futon. “I mainly use it for guests,” I said. “It has sheets.” “No, sir,” he declined, in his politest Savannah drawl. “I’ve been sleeping on a bad couch for most of a year – since my wi
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Cyndi and Tim didn’t go out in a racket of bullets. But they might have. Soon after New Year’s, she kicked him out again, claiming that, since November, he hadn’t done his share of “the money stuff.” “This time, I hope they lock him up and let him scream off the drugs,” she told me. “The only good thing I can say is he really loved me when he really loved me.” Listening to Cyndi was educational in a scary sort of talk show way. She looked like a talk show host, too, all that empty sin
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Despite everything else, almost the most exciting thing that happened around the building all year was the bomb scare. BOMB SCARE! I was on location, on a day-long shoot in nearby Ojai, fending off studio politics and Craft Services – neither very appetizing. So I had to piece together the news late that evening when I dragged home. Sally was the first to tell me. She’d been waiting up. It seems that mid-afternoon, Chuck – who wasn’t our tenant but who lived in the building
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Cyndi suddenly threw Tim out in early November. Though Tim insisted the police arrived to escort him to safety. “She threw a 400 buck sub-woofer at me! Can you believe that?” “You don’t work!” Cyndi wailed. “You lie! I paid off your car! I buy you movies! I order take-out! You use more drugs than the whole Olympics team! My cats have better sex!” By that point, at least, the cats were having more frequent sex. The inhabitants of Cyndi’s apartment – excluding Tim – had
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In mid-September, Ben and Jonathan moved into the one bed-room apartment 8. “It’ll be great,” Jonathan said. “We’ve had a studio for the last two years, and it was always too small.” “Like when his girlfriend was there,” Ben pretended to grumble, “I had to scram.” “What about me? All those nights I couldn’t study.” “One night! One night I had to see Diana.” “If I saw Elise, as much as you see Diana, you’d be an uncle by now.” Ben and Jonathan were brothers,
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The first sign Denny was leaving was his abruptly swapping apartments with Meg and Quinn. “My brother’s gone, and I don’t need the space,” he claimed. “And we can always use it,” Meg told me. “Quinn likes to spread out.” The extra hundred bucks a month wasn’t a problem, and telling the Bank Rep didn’t seem to bug Denny. So I figured he was still getting free rent. As Denny hauled a clutch of tennis rackets into his latest digs, I looked around apartment 8. The broken w
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Fortunately, there was paperwork before the bank took over. Meanwhile, there were other distractions. Tim and Cyndi had bought Sense Surround. BOOM!!! “What was that?” screamed Holly, tearing from her apartment. Her husband, Kaz the painter, and Kelso, their dog, streamed behind her. “Quake!” gulped Kaz. Vic and I had scrambled, too. “If that’s a foreshock,” Vic ventured, “We’re all dead.” I’d come outside less in panic than to explore. “Is everyone all
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As it happened, something even bigger saved The Hardy Boys. Not that they needed excuses, but it seemed Pete and Denny had been balancing even trickier stuff at work. “You hear what happened?” Lindsay asked that Sunday at the pool. She and Birgit were tending their tans. Birgit, I must add, was mind-meldingly beautiful when dressed. In a bikini, she could stop wars. Vic was close to heaven. “What now?” I asked Lindsay, never knowing what adventures lurked in our immobile home.
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The new problems started as soon as Denny and Pete began stacking Donna’s furniture in the courtyard. “That’s Mine!” Mack huffed like the Wolf. “Where you taking it?” “The dump,” said Pete. “The dump,” echoed Denny. “The Dump!” shouted Mack. “I can get cash for that shit.” Pete and Denny didn’t have an answer. They were doing what Donna asked. And she never said, “Don’t let Mack have my stuff.” Pete and Denny didn’t mind. It would be easier, and they lik
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In early March, Donna came back from Tahiti to find her apartment trashed. “Everything’s wrecked!” she raged, nearly banging through my door. It was one AM, and she’d just gotten off the plane. “There’s no food! No phone! There aren’t even light bulbs – I was tryin’ to dial the cops by the fuckin’ refrigerator!” “Someone broke in?” I asked. I hadn’t heard of any problems. “Well, I gave Joni my keys...” Not burglary. Inbreeding. “Good thing Garth went straight
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One Sunday morning, as I was pulling weeds in the courtyard, Claire came down her steps. “What are you doing?” she asked. “The yard’s a mess. Denny and Pete do nothing.” “Maybe,” she admitted. “But they have other assets.” I lived in a community of stalkers. Still, whatever Denny and Pete’s strengths, they didn’t get the grass mowed. When the building owners replaced the old gardeners with a sprinkler system, the manager became responsible for the two small lawns. Mack
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After the earthquake, everything changed. As it turned out, Helen – the nurse – wasn’t headed altruistically for the hospital. She never came back, driving straight through to her sister’s in Colorado. Her strongmen sons trucked her things there the following week. “Mom’s always made snap decisions,” one of them explained. Harv and Lorelle zipped back from Hawaii. “For the twins and the small stuff,” Harv shot at me, while packing like a madman. “He found a job in Honolulu,
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It was 4 AM. I was sleeping. What else would I be doing? Then I was up. Whomps. Car alarms. Quivering. I was quivering, but I knew exactly what had happened. Earthquake. You’re told to stay in bed. Blankets mask the sound of walls shattering. I huddled. Nothing heavy hangs over my bed. I was earthquake-ready. Still, the mattress bucked. Wind chimes clanged. Finally, it stopped. What seemed ten years later. Then: Sirens. Shouting. Darkness. It was dark before, but
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Vic finally gave up in early October, but not the way I thought. He unpacked his boxes, had his power turned back on, and admitted he couldn’t leave. “I like it here. I’ve got a great view. And it’s easy to ride my bike to almost anywhere. Besides, I’ve never wanted to live above the second floor. Not since Towering Inferno.” “That’s been a long time,” I pointed out. He shrugged. “Other people got scared by Jaws.” “How much of that is his mother speaking?” I later asked
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It’s a good thing I spent most of my time indoors, because August was crappily hot. At home, the air conditioner was in my dining room. With the bedroom ceiling fan and a small portable in the hall, if it didn’t pass ninety all day, I could usually cool the place down enough to sleep. Not in August. I finally unrolled my narrow futon from the storage closet where it waited for visiting friends – I’d long replaced the futon with a wider, supportive mattress – and slept beside the dining table
