Moorpark Palms Letters - 3. Chapter 3

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 under me. This makes it much easier for their cats to crap in the courtyard.
(Technically, one of their four cats recently “Wan away fwom home” as Cyndi put it – she of the ever-expanding Snoopy collection. The “missing” kitty – dark, vile, and hairy – now rules that vast litter box in the crawlspace under our building.)
Meanwhile, Tim still doesn’t have a job, and Cyndi is working on her fourth receptionist position since January. (Is there a receptionists’ Kama Sutra?) One of Tim’s former army pals (He’s a Vet! We trusted him with weapons!) came for a weekend this summer – from Waterloo, Iowa, where he assembles surveillance systems – and stayed for three months (“Eighty-seven days,” Cyndi moaned.) He didn’t pay rent, either. Cyndi’s father does that. (“He almost bought this building,” Cyndi beamed – it was recently for sale. “Then I would have been manager.”) (And I would have been ex-tenant.)
The high point of Cyndi and Tim’s year (non-chemical variety) was not appearing on Wheel of Fortune. By rights, they were ineligible, since no one who knows anyone on the staff can appear on the show. But Cyndi answered an ad for “Best Friends Week,” and I didn’t want to spoil her hopes. She and Tim practiced for weeks in their free time – which is considerable. They dutifully watched every night and played their computer version during the day. Then Tim wimped out. “He’s shy,” Cyndi admitted, trying to hide her disappointment. This, about a man who once auditioned for a porno flick.

Apartment 2: That’s me. Almost nothing has changed this year: I’m at peace with Merv and Mammon. I did get a new car. Had the old one for fourteen years. Half my adult life.

Apartment 3: Eran and Gali. (err-ron and golleee – Eran being the guy) They’re Israeli, as is the building’s new owner, Amon (possibly a descendant of the historical Meshullemeth) Eran is fierce and surly and arrived with his arm – and his tentative sense of humor – in a cast. Gali is learning English from TV, and she couldn’t understand how her apartment’s former tenants had lived without cable. When I mentioned that one of the renters – Paranoid Vic, now in the Scientology Home – lived without electricity for several years, I’d say she was speechless, but that’s her normal state. (I’m counting pets, and they have none.)

Apartment 4. Lindsay. A petite colleen from Boston. Works with Rockers in the Music Biz. Occasionally brings home a hulking, tangle-haired, pierced one (“When I’m lucky,” she says, grinning). Also, prone to spray painting knick-knacks in the apartment courtyard without newspaper. (“Did I leave that?” she cooed, trying to smile away a stain unconnected to cats. She also harbors two of the slithy beasts.)

Apartment 5: JB’s a friend of mine who reads these letters. If I say anything nasty about him, my tires’ll disappear. But he’ll confirm that I don’t make these people up. No one in California needs an imagination. After the earthquake, he inherited the apartment that had once been MackTommy and JoniJean’s, after it was retrieved from the damage done by their kids. (No pets.)

Apartment 6: Bobby and Rob. (“Just don’t call Rob ‘Bobby,’” Bobby quickly advised. “He gets pissed.”) That’s because Rob’s the good-looking one, former lover of the Scandinavian beauty who use to lie by our pool, raising hormone levels of the insecure. She’s gone back to Sweden now, and the rest of us to pornography. Bobby’s a teacher. Rob may be an architect, once he learns to wear a shirt. He has a cat named “Butch,” and a boa constrictor who lives in the walk-in closet. (What is it, besides the obvious, about guys and snakes?) Still, neither pet solves the roach problem – memories of snack food past. And Bobby wondered – when he stopped by my apartment one night to talk about bugs (I have none, by the way, if you’re thinking to visit) – Bobby glanced around my apartment and asked,” How come you have adult furniture and we don’t?” (It goes with the chest hair, kid.)

Apartment 7: Ben and Jonathan. Israeli Brothers, fellow students of Eran and Gali at the nearby University of Judaism. Ben’s shorter, older, and more ambitious. He’s trying for Columbia Law in the fall. Eventually, he’d like to run Israel. (I should be nicer to him.) Jonathan’s more easy-going, but oddly possessive about small things – like his parking rights. (“How come Eran and Gali have two spaces,” he asks, “and Ben and I only have one?” He asks this a lot. “They moved in after we did. They don’t have a bedroom, and we have two. Her name isn’t even on the lease.” When I tactfully explain that the management company made the deal, he walks away muttering, “It’s unAmerican.”) (No cats, but they’re considering a dog.)

Apartment 8: Meg and Quinn. (Quinn’s a guy.) Meg is a friend of Lindsay’s – that’s how she found the place. Quinn’s a former scene painter with a jail-bait face and the tattoos of an arc-welder. He’s currently a Motorcycle Messenger. (“I hated my old job,” he says. “Too many bosses. Now I just have one.” When his 24-hour pager beeps as we speak, Quinn’s lip curls.) Meg has two cats. One was recently sealed under the bathtub after the plumber made repairs. When the tub mewed, Meg panicked. (Rest easy – the cat was rescued.) Quinn, by the way, continues the Moorpark tradition of guys cannonballing off the laundry room roof. It doesn’t need to be taught. Guys see the roof and the pool, they tear off their clothes, climb, and plunge.)

Apartment 9: Annie, Ed, and the screeching Edan. (Ed just reappeared, after being gone for a couple of months. He may have been doing time. Remember, he has a wee gambling problem.) He also has one with grammar. “Ain’t the pool never gonna get cleaned regular?” I’ve heard him ask. With Ed gone, Annie got a job, though it didn’t seem to improve her personality. She can still defang coyotes with a sneer. “My bathroom needs painting,” she recently whined. “But if I tell the new owner, he’ll do it that dirty white.” (It’s called “Irish Linen,” Annie, and it’s a favorite of the Kennedys.) (Tres gatos. That’s “three cats” to you monoculturalists.)

Apartment 10: Isabelle, Marie, and the kid. The kid’s three, a boy – Marie’s son. Few living things take to Isabelle. She complains. Frequently. “No one cleans the laundry room.” “Someone’s always in my parking space.” “Those people,”– she points across the narrow courtyard to Cyndi and Tim’s apartment – “play their TV too late.” (Admittedly, Isabelle goes to work early. But nine PM is not “late.”) When her garbage disposal jammed as she made dinner, as a good neighbor, I looked at it, first warning her I knew almost nothing about plumbing. As Isabelle mashed potatoes, I yanked fistfulls of peels from the disposal. Below them were onion skins. I gave Isabelle a short history of disposal etiquette, but I’m not sure it registered.
Another night, I nearly sliced the side of my car pulling into the parking lot. A huge tow truck was crammed in Isabelle’s compact-only space. The truck’s been parked there before, but because I knew how unreasonable Isabelle can be, I wasn’t about to get involved. Still, three other tenants had left messages on my answering machine, so I quietly tapped on Isabelle’s door – very quietly; it was nearly ten. Marie, who never speaks but seems to understand English, answered. “Is that your tow truck?” I asked.
Marie’s boyfriend, flopped on the taco chip littered carpet watching gangster flicks with the kid, grunted, “Yeah.”
“Could you move it?” I asked politely, explaining the complaints.
Quote the boyfriend: “Nah.”
“The management company could have it towed,” I warned. “But this building’s too small for people not to get along.”
The boyfriend chugged beer. By this time Rob, Bobby, and Meg – my fellow complainers – were standing behind me hissing: “Tow the truck! Tow the truck!” Lately – accidentally – I’ve become the default resident manager.
“You don’t even live here,” I counseled the boyfriend. “Why risk someone else’s good reputation?” I pointed toward Marie, unsure whether Isabelle had any kind of favorable rep. Faced with the hissing choir, the boyfriend finally abandoned the TV and moved his truck.
The next morning the real management company rep – another Israeli, named Nehori (Are these names Biblical?) – called to say that I should have had the tow truck towed. Nehori (“Call me ‘Bart’”) had already spoken with Isabelle – who’d slept through everything the night before, but loudly fought with Marie that morning. (“Marie!,” she reportedly yowled, “Take not my good name!”) (It loses something in translation.) Still, Isabelle insisted the whole thing wouldn’t have happened if she and Marie weren’t being picked on for being immigrants. (“And what am I?” Bart asked, laughing.)
(Isabelle, Marie, and the kid share one cat, presumably bilingual. For those counting, the cat total’s now passed a dozen.)

Apartment 11: Holly and Kaz. Kaz paints houses, when he’s not watching videos with Tim from apartment 1. Holly’s an office manager, who pays the rent, occasionally on time. For a while, they got monthly eviction notices, and Eran and Gali were poised to sweep into their spacious one-bedroom. But Holly always finds the money, and Kaz sweet-talks the management company. “Everyone owes me money,” he explained one afternoon, “No one cares about housepainters. Someday I’ll get mine.” (This has a certain historic resonance. I should be nicer to Kaz, too.)
Kaz also complains about Claire in the apartment above. “You ever been in that place?” he asks. “Cat food everywhere! On the floor! On the bed! In the tub! No wonder roaches come crawing out of our answering machine!”
(Kaz and Holly have a cat of their own. They also have a beautiful, Springer Spaniel. I wish it would do its natural job.)

Apartment 12: Claire and friends (presently her mother, who’s been sleeping in the bedroom for a month while Claire sleeps on the living room couch; more typically, Claire’s serial boyfriends.) Claire reminds me of Molly Goldberg – I mainly see her from the waist up, leaning out the window, watching as I weed the courtyard garden.
“You should be manager,” she repeatedly insists. “You do more work around here than anyone.”
“I’m just bored,” I tells her. “I won’t do this for money.”
Besides, we have a gardener, a pool boy, and a handyman – the last, another Israeli, named Urine. (Okay, it’s spelled differently.) I feel like landed gentry. (Claire has 3 cats, and Kaz is right – there is cat food in the tub.)

Apartment 13: Franck (Fronk) father of Annie in apartment 9. When his wife died, Franck – a semi-retired voice-over artist, who speaks five languages – began sleeping, almost obsessively, on Annie’s couch. (Ed had run off – perhaps with a coke spoon.) Annie is Franck’s closest child. He’s a really nice guy, which makes you wonder what kind of demon genes Annie inherited from her mother. When an apartment became available here, Franck quickly sold his huge, unused house (“To be near the women I love,” – a princely ambition if your main descendant isn’t Annie’s daughter, the obnoxious Edan). Franck sits daily on Annie’s low cement stoop – or by the pool with an empty peanut butter jar – chain-smoking and watching. Watching what? The cats at play? Maybe he’s counting annuities. “It’s all in trust for Edan,” he tells me – either because we’re in the same business, or because he tells everyone – a hazardous hobby. “She’ll have a million bucks by the time she’s ten.” (Doesn’t that make you want to throw yourself into the pool?) “If she doesn’t go to college,” he continues, “she’ll get half her money at twenty-five, and the other half ten years later.” (Think Annie would adopt an aging set decorator?) Thanksgiving, Franck worked sixteen-hour days, Thursday through Sunday, dubbing a Japanese cartoon into Danish. (Hail, our Global Village.) “I normally get three thousand an episode,” he told me Sunday night – when I’d merely wished him ‘Happy Holiday’ – “but since I missed spending Thanksgiving with my family, I billed them four grand each.” (For twenty-six episodes, that’s $104,000 for four days’ work. “There’s no business like show business.” (No cats – they’re poor investments.)

Apartment 14: Marla and Lefty. (Lefty’s a guy.) (Yes, indeed: a Kaz, a Lefty, a Quinn, and a Fronk. Clearly the punchline of some joke you can write yourself.) Lefty knows Lindsay and Meg through music. I’m not sure what Marla does, but when I was in their apartment last summer, checking their sputtering air conditioner, the dining room wall was stacked three-foot high with medical newspapers. (They weren’t guidebooks: I doubt she’s Jeffrey Dahmer.) Lefty, who stands maybe five-six, works out occasionally in the carport. (I keep waiting for his weights to slip in the oil slick.) In the summer, Marla bakes scantily by the pool – pleasing, but hardly replacing our Scandinavian Lost Lenore. They just got a “cute little puppy”with enormous paws. They’ll be riding the damn thing come August. “I hope Jeri (the dog) will be all right,” Marla told me one night in the parking lot. “It was so hot in our apartment last summer, the ferrets died.” (Ferrets? Right here in River City! You think they eat cats?)

The main thing is – now that we have both a good owner and management company – I think these people may stick around for a while. Become friends. Family.

Time to move back east.