Moorpark Palms Letters - 8. Chapter 8

1999

At The Brink

The most exciting thing that happened around the building all year was the bomb scare. (BOMB SCARE!) Unfortunately, I was in Richmond at the time, fending off Hurricane Floyd while overeating with my blood cousins (and doesn’t that sound appetizing?) So I had to piece together the news afterward. Seems around mid-evening Saturday, Chuck – not a building resident, just another armed neighborhood paranoid – noticed a pair of suitcases loitering in the cul-de-sac. (I’d say “on the grassy knoll” which has a certain conspiratorial elegance, but this tiny patch of Valley has been cement since Jimmy Hoffa ruled his turf.) The suitcases lurked in front of the building The Screaming Woman had just – finally – been evicted from. (She’d been two-AM howling all year, stalking her jalousie-windowed cage while battling her – possibly sequential – boyfriends on her cordless phone.) Everyone heard her. I’m surprised you didn’t. Most bouts ended with DON’T YOU FREAKIN’ DARE HANG UP ON ME!! I’M THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN YOU’VE EVER HAD!!! (“Freakin’” and “had” are my words. Now that I’ve resumed teaching in this age of Reign of Terror harassment suits, I’ve ethically cleansed my vocabulary.)
Still, when Chuck saw the mysterious luggage sitting unattended, where anyone else might have figured “I should put that somewhere safe till the owner comes back,” Chuck zoomed BOMB! (Well, he is a member of the National Guard. And he does do voluntary sentry duty outside his building days and evenings – he’s otherwise unemployed after a double hernia operation he once described so graphically to me it could have been on an enemy. And he mainly roils about in camouflage fatigues, military cap, and lace-up reinforced boots.) Despite this GI Joe facade, he also told Franck – now in his 76th year and so bored since he retired he’ll listen to anyone – that had the Guard actually been called up for “That freakin’ Croatian thing” (automatic censor again) he would’ve instantly skipped to Canada. Still, Chuck’s a pretty good watchdog for an ex-pat Texan, and it’s not like he stands outside spying on our neighbors just because that’s what they’ve accused him of. He’s actually only smoking (possibly the main reason the woman he currently lives with refuses to marry him). (Possibly.) “She even made my daughter come out here when she was visiting. Just to light up! And she drove all the way from Dallas!” (Hard time for nicotine fiends.)
Soon after spotting the luggage, Citizen Chuck summoned the cops, no doubt proactively thinking – in his too-many-X-Files way – this set of mismatched Samsonite might just be The Screaming Woman’s Revenge. (We later found out The Noisome Nuisance hadn’t been evicted after all. In a sentimental flourish, she merely named one of her multiple boyfriends sole co-dependant and moved to his lovely home in Woodland Hills.)
Still, Chuck wasn’t the first to spy the potential explosives. That fell to Meg and Quinn – already slightly bombed themselves (‘cause when they go out to dinner and don’t have to drive, they “pre-drink” to save money on booze). And when Quinn’s sober-but-puckish boss picked them up, he hopped from his personalized Snap-On Tools van and pretended to bellhop the bags. Only Meg, afraid this might rile the rightful owner (on this shoot-‘em-up block) scurried their party off to their ritzy dinner – at a place where everybody knew their names and the waitresses wear no tops (I hang out with the creme de la flem).
Despite Meg’s caution, when the officers arrived, another of our watchful neighbors – that’s why everyone knows our names – connected the luggage to Quinn and the Snap-On van (soon to be a retro band). “Were they planning a trip?” a patrolman asked a random passer-by – who just happened to be Meg ‘n’ Quinn’s neighbor, Rob (the architect turned computer technician). Rob knew Quinn ‘n’ Meg were only going out to dinner ‘cause he sometimes gets their leftovers (Meg has a kind heart and a way particular cat). Still, the cops wanted to talk with Quinn, who – of course – they couldn’t find. (And they somehow managed to miss his enormous Snap-On truck – alarmed in our driveway as our first line of riot defense – cleanly lettered with Quinn’s pager.)
So after sniffing around the suitcases like righteous, if timid, hounds, these Enforcers of Law alerted their brother Bomb Squad. And those left-brained chemists, armed with sparkly flares and miles of Do Not Cross! tape, evacuated our building. Heck, (censored) they evacuated the entire neighborhood: Our building. The one next door. Chuck’s. Three across the street. Ninety-eight apartments total, skimpy by other standards, but maybe other people wouldn’t have been frantically stashing bongs as rescue arrived. Still, the Bomb Boys, meticulously sweeping door-to-door, also managed to overlook Franck (it was barely nine, but he was already sleeping). “Well, Edan,” – his Heidi-like granddaughter, only taller – “was visiting her no-good dad. And the Dodgers weren’t playing. And I’d already fed the rabbit.” (That’s not euphemistic – Franck actually house-sits Edan’s new baby bunny.) The dumb thing is the cops should have asked Franck – ‘cause he knew exactly what was in the bags.
See his daughter Annie (the leggy Edan’s mother) collects things – and I don’t just mean ex-husbands. If she spots something on the street – something inert – that she can use (or simply sell) she’ll skarf it up faster than a bat’s tongue and stash it under the tarp-wrapped stack that used to be her parking space. (Often there’s a cat on the stack, too, but it’s never for sale.) (Darn.) And she nearly appropriated the suitcases Saturday on her way to Luke’s (her rock singer/stagehand boyfriend Franck can’t stand). “‘Cause he never even looks at Edan – he’s worse than Ed,” (Annie’s sweet-seeming-but-gambling-prone second ex). Annie boldly popped open the suitcases, cannily calculated their mock-vinyl worth, then shrugged ‘em off like a wedding vow and sped to her latest lover. But not before Franck, smoking on his recently annexed perch – the Mod banana seat of Cole and Summer’s little-used red Kawasaki parked out front – copped a peek.
Which the cops never knew. Instead, they held everyone hostage at block’s end for the length of a TV movie, fruitlessly trying to make the Snap-On connection. Finally, they evacuated the Samsonite in a lead-lined Black Maria, boot-heeled their flares, furled their yellow tape, and vamoosed.
The Snap-On Connection would have paid off, too, ‘cause – waiting to be ferried to dinner – Meg ‘n’ Quinn had seen the luggage being deposited. “It was that heavy, middle-aged woman next door,” Meg confided when I was mini-sleuthin’. “She and her husband were off to Vegas – I think they go a lot. She brought out the bags, and he must’ve forgotten to load ‘em.” Useful – though it still doesn’t explain why one of the suitcases was dead empty (something Franck later divulged). Was the gambling duo hoping to make a jingly slot machine kill, then haul home their booty for a private coin-wrapping fest? (Who can trust Swiss bank accounts these days?) Or were they merely smuggling cut-rate Pall Malls? (Does anyone... still smoke... Pall Malls?)
Either way, it gave our block – ‘cept for the slumbering Franck – a nasty case of saturday night interruptus. Safer than occasional cop chases ending at our front door, rifles high and sirens blaring. Quieter than throbbing traffic ‘copters circling fresh rush hour carnage where the 101 rams the 405 (“Gonna shoot down one of those things some night,” Chuck vowed recently). But not nearly as much fun as The Screaming Woman: “YOU LIPOSUCKED LOSER!” she midnight-screamed just before she decamped. “PUMP IT UP AS BIG AS YOU LIKE! YOU’LL STILL NEVER KNOW WHERE TO STICK IT!”

As for what everyone else has been up to – here’s the annual psychiatric-role call:

Apartment 1: Cole and Summer replaced the Biblical, beige-coated pick-up truck they seemed to service each night by flashlight with a new(er) SUV – the choice of freeway-chasing Angelenos. But they still slam doors hard every six AM as Cole pulls out from behind piggy-back-parked Summer. There’s also rumor they may move to happening Redondo Beach. Only thing stopping them – besides Meg’s bet that they’re too mellow to pack – is sun ‘n’ surf is two hours away from their jobs. Still, they’re both natural blondes.

Apartment 2: Yep, I’m happily back designing and teaching. Writing was and is fun, but it’s never paid the rent. As part of my slightly delayed 50th birthday celebration, I drove the perimeter of the United States for two months this spring to visit friends. Tom went with me, along with the dog whose name I stupidly will not speak. But I still came back. Which is why I fit in so comfortably with these loonies.

Apartment 3: Steve continues to see the Malaysian mistress he swears is “Just a co-worker.” Though they never seem to co-work when his kids are around. After three years, he’s still living in a two-hundred square foot studio, mainly devoid of belongings. When a two-room apartment opened this winter, I asked if he wanted it. He drooled, but after tending to his daughters and his still not quite ex-wife, he’s hard put to buy candy.

Apartment 4: Lindsay is going with an off-shore oil man she sees on a fourteen-day cycle (meaning she mainly smiles alternate Mondays). But she threatened, one more time – as predictably as cats in our crawlspace – to move out of the building this summer. Though her heart didn’t seem in it. And she still drives the slightly-crunched, fading green Toyota that past boyfriend # 3 damaged in a local bang-up. (He was the local bang-up). “It’s been two years, but I can’t afford to fix it,” she sighs. Good thing they didn’t get tattooed.

Apartment 5: JB is inching ever closer to being a full-time, union-paying, high-class film animator. But he’s not there yet. Though he may get work on Toy Story 14.

Apartment 6: Rob and Birgit were together again, briefly (six months, which is several LA lifetimes). But it turns out that though “We really love each other, and we’re great on the phone, and at the beach, and with other, well, you know, ‘stuff,’ we just can’t live together.” So she’s back in blonde Sweden, and he’s painting the red-haired French maids he dreams about. He’s also dating a red-haired beauty Meg ‘n’ Quinn have arbitrarily named Kate. (“‘Cause we’ve never actually been introduced.”) Maybe Rob hesitates ‘cause he was seeing Kate between splinters of his marriage to Birgit. (Though when Birgit came back, Kate took off with another guy.) Now while Kate’s still seeing that guy, she’s also seeing Rob. (Censory overload.)
This may all juggle better in Rob’s new house – with fewer neighbors around to speculate. But his simply buying a house is the start of the end game for many of us here. We all knew the bridge would eventually toll. We just wouldn’t bet who’d flee first.

Apartment 7: Odds were on Meg ‘n’ Quinn, who are becoming Snap-On trillionaires and are already home loan-approved. (As they hoard toward that oh-so-important-interest-saving down payment, they’ve bought a small boat and have taken up fishing.) “Next, golf,” I kidded Quinn one afternoon. He laughed: “I’ve been playing that since I was ten.” (Meaning the suburban re-metamorphosis hasn’t as far to go.) His once shoulder-length Rock tangle continues to be an ever-blonder buzz cut. Lasering his body art will probably coincide with his ‘n’ Meg’s first kid. Though this is California, so there’s always that still small anarchistic hope. (Meg, by the way, is a redhead this year – though hopefully not the one Rob dreams about. Quinn’s not that easy.)

Apartment 8 and New! this year: Samantha’s in school and changes part-time jobs about as often as Meg changes hair color. But Samantha’s boyfriend, Adam, is presently out-of-work, too, so that gives them lots to talk about, when they’re not scanning the Want Ads or she’s studying. Adam’s unfortunately allergic to cats, though Samantha has two, so he tends to vacuum when he visits (he otherwise lives with his parents; did I mention how young these tykes are?) Cleanliness is praiseworthy, though not a roaring Hoover at ten PM, no matter how impatient your libido (as Marie – from just below – tried to point out). After uncharacteristically hammering on Samantha’s door one night, Marie blurted – in her limited, but surprisingly fierce English – “The Boy Sleeps!” Unaware The Boy was Marie’s nine-year-old son Ricardo – and too horny for coherence – Adam simply slammed the door. Now we have a small war going. Which would be far worse if either Adam or Marie were verbal.

Apartment 9: Annie is still seeing Luke-the-stagehand much to her father Franck’s displeasure. Her daughter Edan doesn’t seem to like Luke either, but then a number of people don’t like Edan. (That’ll get me killed if Franck, the doting grandpere, reads this.) Still, Annie, through laudable hard work, has been steadily promoted at Ralph’s (a local supermarket) and has been promised the Night Manager position at her own store come January. To prepare, she seems to be upgrading her life, and Luke – attentive or otherwise – may soon be swapped for a corporate model. Plus, Annie, Franck, and Edan may also join the Moorpark migration as Edan – despite her height (she’s currently taller than I was at ten) – was purposely kept back a grade this year so she wouldn’t have to be bussed to school. Come summer, the trio may go wherever Annie’s career leads.

Apartment 10: Isabelle is still whining. Still. Whining. (Did I mention Whining?) That may be why her roommate and fellow nanny, Marie, so rarely talks. In contrast, Isabelle speaks extremely well: every so often, there’s an articulate message on my machine beginning, “Richard, this is Isabelle from Apartment 10,” (as opposed to the many other Isabelles in my life). The complaint is usually minor – maybe a dripping faucet – but she always manages to merge that with the facts that she’s an immigrant, a woman, underpaid, and unmarried-so-presumably unprotected (this woman is not unprotected). I often wish Madeline Albright were the manager here.

Apartment 11: Korki is now a Full-Fledged Police Academy Trainee and has enough well-oiled guns under her bed to rout the Israeli fleet. She also – still – tends those three little dogs on weekends. (“PEANUT! DID YOU DO THAT?!? BAD, BAD, PEANUT!”) Come the end of her year-long training, Korki will be permanently assigned Somewhere Else – outside LA County is all she’s been cryptically told. So she’ll probably be packing as well. Meanwhile, between her arsenal and the barricade of Quinn’s truck, we all sleep peacefully.

Apartment 12: Kristen has finally – gratefully – finished her two-year slave internship and is now a card-carrying (I actually touched it) member of The Directors Guild of America. (Oooooh.) This also means she now makes lots of money working on stupidity and no longer has to subsist on what she’s reimbursed for gas. The prediction is she’ll also move – to somewhere slicker, with, say, uninterrupted hot water. Though who knows why. Even when she’s outearning Brad Pitt’s taxes, she’ll still have to work sixteen-hour days, five days a week, exhaustedly crashing on weekends. She could easily live in her car.

Apartment 13: Franck just keeps rollin’ along. And smoking, though cigarettes have topped three bucks a pack. He thought about finally quitting, then figured Why? (He’s nearing four score.) Meanwhile, in his millionaire way, he economizes by pulling junk mail fliers from the trash, clipping coupons, then buying Costco TV dinners, two-dozen-to-the-crate. I mean, when I’m not at a restaurant with Tom, I make the same salad every night. But at least it’s not cryogenic.

Apartment 14, and also New!: Anthony had his Merry Widow mom co-sign his lease ‘cause he’d kinda ruined his credit (possibly doing something shady, though we don’t know what – he seems like a nice-enough guy). Still, things must be improving financially ‘cause he just bought a new SUV – red, maybe to compensate for his matching, thinning hair – and he starts filming an independent movie this winter. Hopefully, he won’t follow an earlier, short-staying former resident of this same apartment and make the movie right in his bedroom. As hopefully, his actors will wear clothes.

Finally, once again, the building has new owners – the fifth set in nine years if you count the bank after the ‘94 default. But where others were benign, disorganized, or merely distant, this pair is Absolut Amateurs. “We’re glad to get an old place this time,” said the wife of the owner-couple the first time she materialized. “Our other building’s new and so badly constructed it’s always falling apart.”
I tried – gently – to point out, while sidestepping cracks, holes, and ruptures in the stairwells, that this forty-year-old caddyshack also needs constant repair. But she seems to be a romantic, fond of the swaying palms and the climbing jasmine that’s finally returned to the courtyard railings and down-spouts. Which, ultimately, means the time has come, the Walrus whinnied, to get the hell out of Dodge – that’s “heck out” if I say it in front of a class. (I also find myself muttering “Ish” a lot, an affectation I picked up from a long-ago grad school friend but only lately have realized is an abridged anagram for defecation.) For months now, I’ve had my vaudeville exit plotted. But – like Lindsay – I just don’t seem able to sing it.

Soon.