Moorpark Palms - 31. Chapter 31

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 wife, sorry, ex-wife, and I moved here. A hard floor will do me good.”
“Messy divorce?” I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t. Though when I knocked on his door a few weeks later – Halloween morning – to offer a dining table someone had dumped in the next building’s trash, I learned a little more.
Steve answered in cowboy clothes and monster make-up. “Waiting for your kids?” I asked. I knew there were two of them, maybe four and eight. They visited on weekends.
“No, sir,” Steve replied, quickly adding, “I work at Wells Fargo. For the holiday, management decided we should all be cowboys and ghouls.”
So that’s what management does.
While we moved the table, Steve explained his pending divorce.
“We came here because my sister-and-brother-in-law told us there was better work. We were having marriage problems anyway but figured the extra money might help. We sold our house, put everything in storage, and moved – just for the time being – to my in-law’s. We both found great jobs, that was no problem, but our personal stuff kept getting worse – I think we just don’t like each other. So we kept putting off buying a house, and I moved out of her room and started sleeping in the den. And sleeping. And sleeping. Which it turned out kinda pleased my wife – she was all comfy by herself. Finally, I couldn’t take it and walked out.”
“I hope things get better.”
“Well, fortunately, we have money. But this is gonna take years to sort out. And the kids are young – I’ll always have to be in touch with her. Talk about unlucky mistakes.”
“I’ll tell you if I find any other furniture,” I said.
“That would be kind. Thank you, sir.”
It would be great if everyone in the building was as polite. But yesterday afternoon, I got back from riding fifteen miles on my bike and took a long, selfish, almost illegal shower to decompress. As I finally turned off the water, I heard noise – full-out shouting – and absently figured: Tim and Cyndi. Then I realized they didn’t live here anymore. I considered: Ed and Annie?
Then I heard something about, “Get off my balcony!”
Now Ed and Annie live downstairs. Franck lives upstairs -- so there was a chance his daughter and son-in-law were fighting in his apartment. But Franck didn’t have a balcony. If he did, he’d probably sit on it and smoke.
I quickly combed my still-sopping hair, pulled on jeans and a shirt – skipped socks and shoes – and went to see what was happening. On the balcony were Rob, Birgit, Claire, a middle-aged woman I didn’t know, Quinn, and Meg. All screaming like the last act of an opera.
“What’s going on?” I mouthed to Meg, who seemed the calmest. She waved me away, though looked disgusted.
Meanwhile, Lindsay, Sally, and Annie stood peering from their doorways. Then Korki – watching behind her own screen door – gestured me over.
“If you need a witness, the woman – she pointed at Claire – hit the guy – Quinn – first.”
“They were hitting each other!”
She nodded as the howling increased, and Vic appeared behind her, half-grinning and pulling on his T-shirt.
“I want the police!” Claire shrieked from above.
Rob whipped out his cell phone and called.
That assured – and maybe because I was now standing by – Claire swept down the center stairs, across the courtyard, and up to her own apartment. The older woman, mumbling apologies to all, followed.
“What happened?” I soon asked Rob and Birgit. Then Meg and Quinn. Finally, Claire -- the unknown woman turned out to be her mother.
“Someone took my pillows out of the drier!” Claire accused. “They stole my cycle!”
She was still excited, though was counting out sedatives.
“Her stuff had been in there for hours,” Quinn rebutted. “Trying to dry, but it wasn’t happening -- those pillows were just getting lumpier. Meanwhile, our things were dripping on the counter. And Birgit had two wet loads in the washers.”
“I was ready to hang it all on the fence,” Birgit confessed.
“My shorts!” Rob panicked.
As though he wore more in the pool.
“Finally, the pillows were just sitting there,” Quinn went on. “We checked the machines, like, two or three times before moving anything.”
“The driers had stopped,” Meg insisted. “And you know the rules.”
Unwritten: If someone’s laundry is just waiting -- in a washer or drier -- and you want to use it, you neatly move their things to the counter. Established by Churchill at Yalta.
“We were careful,” Quinn warrantied.
“We were,” Meg vouched.
“Even tried to fluff the dead pillows.”
“We did.”
“Not knowing whose they were.”
“Now that we do, we should’ve run them over.”
One reason the “rules” exist is so you don’t have to go knocking on every apartment door, seeking owners.
“Anyhow, we put our wash in, popped in quarters, and came back to watch TV.”
“There’s racing on.”
“Then: Bam! Slam! The bitch is at our door!”
“Quinn...”
“Well, she scared the cats!”
“Still...”
“Okay... the possible bitch.”
He grinned. Meg took over.
“She announced to the whole world that we’d stolen her drier!”
“No way!”
“We swore otherwise. But she still went ballistic.”
“I did go a little nuts,” Claire admitted. “All the pressure from moving. And I just got my cat’s ashes from the vet.”
I’d known Claire was moving -- to Hawaii, where it turned out her mother lived. Franck’s predictions had been true. But I didn’t know the details.
“I’ve been waiting and waiting,” she explained. “I’ve been wanting to go for months -- even before the mess with Tim and Cyndi -- almost since summer. But my cat was so old, and so sick, and it seemed so unfair of me to move, making the end of his life so miserable. So I held off.”
“He died Wednesday,” her mother said softly.
“I could’ve buried him here -- but just couldn’t convince myself. Not when he could sleep on the beach. In almost paradise.”
“I flew in,” Mom went on.
“To help pack.”
“She’d done most of it already.”
“And I wanted to take everything clean -- or give it away. We were just finishing up, doing my bed things.”
“We put in enough change for three hours. You know how stubborn pillows can be.”
“Then the ashes arrived and we got distracted. Still, when we went to the laundry room, someone else’s clothes were in our driers!”
“And everything we’d carefully washed was on that counter.”
“Like trash!”
“You can’t give dirty things to charity. What would they think?”
Not quite what Quinn had testified
“I tried to find who did it,” Claire finished.
But what she left out was -- first -- her wanton pummeling of Isabelle’s door -- because Annie, mistakenly, told Claire that Isabelle had probably needed the driers, so had moved Claire’s things.
Fortunately, Isabelle wasn’t home, or we would have had nuclear war.
And during that initial pounding, Rob had yelled down from the balcony that Claire was making so much noise, he couldn’t hear himself on the phone.
Prompting her tense reply, “Shut up, and mind your own business!”
Which brought out Birgit.
“I mean, she was so rude!” Birgit complained. “We have every right to use the courtyard!”
Claire thought otherwise: “I constantly hear their calls -- no matter how personal! At every hour! Even with my windows locked!”
“She probably plants microphones!”
When the fight got too loud to ignore, Meg came out. By then, Claire was up the stairs, and she quickly managed to insult Meg -- whose bedroom once shared a wall with her own.
“Let’s not even start on what kind of noise those two made!”
Quinn stepped in to defend his betrothed.
Which was when -- somehow -- Claire discovered who’d actually moved her pillows.
“She started screeching just about every swear word I’ve ever heard!” Meg exclaimed.
Luring her mother into the fiasco.
Now Claire’s mother seemed a completely sensible person somehow unthreatened by her daughter’s manic depression. She’d tried to calm Claire. But once she saw Quinn’s savagely tattooed arms -- which seem to stimulate the most benign hormones -- things got shaky.
“I thought he was going to hit her!” Claire exploded.
“I thought she was gonna smack Meg!” Quinn sniped.
What everyone agreed -- and Korki and Vic collaborated -- was: Claire slightly shoved Quinn. Then he lightly slapped her.
Then I came in, with my junior detective kit
Still, by the time the squad car arrived, everyone had the chance to back off. Quinn put on a long-sleeved shirt -- which turned him back into choir boy. Claire’s pills had grabbed hold -- while the sun dried her pillows. Rob and Birgit finished their own laundry and were readying the barbeque for dinner. Everyone else had gone inside.
The police mainly laughed, relieved they didn’t actually have to do anything.
“I’m moving out tomorrow,” Claire assured them. “I’ve lived here longer than I’ve stayed anywhere else. I’ve never caused problems. And my cat just died. I just want some quiet.”
“Your cat died?” cooed Meg. “Oh... how sad.”
The cops packed off. Meg took Claire some flowers. Quinn tossed me a beer. Eventually, he, Meg, and I drifted to the pool, where Rob and Birgit were grilling.
Lindsay soon followed, carting Sally and overly sweet dessert. Bobby turned up after his weekly family visit, darting upstairs only to stash his clean laundry. Vic and Korki brought something that looked like tufu hot dogs. Annie fed Ed and Edan and Franck from their own, separate grill, which the rest of us weren’t allowed to touch. Later, even Ben and Jonathan came back – celebrating. After greedily competitive bids from Georgetown and Columbia, Ben had chosen Tulane.
“I’m the first Israeli they’ve accepted! They’re so excited, they’re paying for everything!” He grinned, enormously. “I love this country!”
We all laughed and gave the boy a beer.
“Is every building like this?” I asked our group, just a little exhausted.
“No,” they agreed. “Isn’t ours great?”