Moorpark Palms Letters - 9. Chapter 9

2000

Exodus

Actually, I had the new owner completely wrong. Her husband may have put up the money, but Megan’s the Queen. And from the moment, the sale went through, Megan’s gotten exponentially cheaper.
Even as she took down the SOLD sign, she stood on the front lawn with her black-suited realtor discussing how much less than market value “all of you” – I was the only “you” present – were paying. Only slightly defensive, I pointed out that the previous owners had tried to raise the rents as apartments came available. But they couldn’t find any takers.
Actually, none of “us” would’ve been shocked by a raise. Rents had been almost stable for ten years, and I was still paying $550 a month for my one-bedroom apartment – which included my (rarely-used) heat and (overly abused – long showers) hot water. Even electricity only cost me twenty bucks a month, mainly to support an ancient refrigerator. (Anyone else remember Hotpoint?)
First, Megan fired the pool guy and the Israeli brothers who mowed our lawn. You couldn’t really call them gardeners as they did nothing to the raging flower beds, and our plot of grass is so small it could be trimmed with crochet scissors. (Those are the small, pointy ones, sharp enough to poke out a Barbie doll eyes. You can blind G.I. Joe, too, but there’s no point maiming Ken. He’s put up with enough crap after forty years as eunuch-consort.)
The pool guy – who made like fifty bucks a month – was replaced by an even cheaper kid who did even crummier work. (Okay, it’s really boring to clean a pool, even with neat, Sharper Image vacuum toys.) Our guy used to come once a week off-season, when only idiots would jump in a near-frigid pool on a New Year’s Day bet (Who me?) and two-or-three times weekly when we were all steadily contaminating the water (June to September). The goofball who replaced him comes once-a-week some of the time, often far less, meaning the pool was a mess for all seasons. Our gardeners were succeeded – an ironic word – by a solo faulty grass-cutter who also didn’t do flower beds. Those fell to the quasi-manager (non-resident variety, as we again, no longer rated full-time baby sitting). She spoke little English, which matters not at all when it comes to weeds, and quickly delegated the policing to her semi-disabled husband, Orrie, and his unfortunately not imaginary childhood friend. Orrie was nice-enough, but useless as that Ken doll just mentioned. Well, almost: despite his wrecked back, twisted shoulder, and faulty knees – and the guy’s only in his late 20's – he has managed to help produce a seemingly healthy daughter – unless that’s also the work of the childhood pal. Anyway, they came, lackadaisically thinned spider plants, and were supposed to replace burned-out light bulbs – the dim replacing the dead. But Orrie so terrified of Megan, he wouldn’t ask her for maintenance petty cash, so nothing new was bought. When we finally ran out of my private stock of spare floodlights, I simply bought more, sending the receipts in with my rent check and deducting the cost.
Bad Rich. “That’s Orrie’s job,” Megan reprimanded me by letter. We weren’t allowed to contact her directly, nor – probably – to look directly into her eyes if we ever happened into her rare presence. When I explained – by return letter sent to her blind PO box – that Orrie only came ‘round by day (the best time for plant plucking) when he came ‘round at all, so he never knew what lights had burned out, Megan simply didn’t reply. I also mentioned, in a follow-up note trying for her empathy, that it was dark and dangerous in the carport when the lights were out, and that over half the people living in the building were single women.
She didn’t care. Instead, Orrie showed up at my door too early one Saturday morning – because it was the only time he could catch a ride – and said, “You got me in big trouble.” Now since Orrie wasn’t evil, just irritating, like Regis Philbin, I groggily worked out a way for me to buy and replace the burned-out light bulbs then secretly pass the receipts to him. (Under Masonic oath, I can’t spill the details, though it didn’t involve hollowed-out pumpkins.) Only one night, I got home from a late tech rehearsal to find the building black as the blitzed East End. I knew exactly what had happened: an odd synchronicity of both washers and driers hitting a certain cycle at the same moment would both open a Stargate in the Crab Nebula and blow the utility circuit controlling the laundry room, carport, and courtyard lights. I could fix it with the flick of a breaker but was too tired to hunt down a flashlight. So I simply Helen-Kellered my way to my apartment and dropped to sleep.
Though the next night the lights were still out. Without underestimating the sloth of my fellow residents – who’d rather get high while cursing the darkness – I did grumble a bit groping for my flash. Only to discover the circuit wasn’t blown at all: the timer had been reset to kill the lights at midnight.
“That’s illegal,” I barked at Orrie’s answering machine the next morning. (Orrie rarely picked-up, and I sensed his manager-wife used the device – which was cutely, if unprofessionally, answered in their four-year-old daughter’s voice – to screen tenant callers.) As usual, Orrie turned up at sunrise the following Saturday. Maybe he just figured – not exactly wrong – that I was easier to deal with half-asleep, half-dressed, and half-blind without my glasses.
“She’s trying to save money,” he apologized, I’d say sheepishly. But when a sheep is acting like a sheep it’s only normal.
“I’ve reset the timer, Orr,” I tried to say evenly. “At least four people in the building get home after twelve or leave before dawn. If any of us fall – and sue – Megan’ll lose the two-bits she’s scraping to save.” I doubted Orrie cared what two-bits might be worth, but it hardly mattered. He didn’t like being growled at by a shirtless blind man, so he rapidly retreated.
Megan briskly retaliated by pulling out our washers and driers. One day, they were just gone. “What gives?” I asked Orrie’s machine that night. (Like talking to one of those kids’ toy eight-balls, it most often replied, “The answer is in doubt.”) But there had been six messages on my own machine, from tenants used to going to me with complaints. One was from the lovely Isabelle. “Richard,” she whined, “Marie and I do laundry for three people, and you know we can’t afford a car. Also, I have no idea where there’s even a laundromat in this area, and if there is one, I’m sure it’s too far to walk to while we’re carrying heavy baskets of dirty clothes. Besides, we get home too late because we work very hard, and we don’t have enough money to send our wash out like rich people.”
Fortunately, I rarely saw Isabelle anymore, because I was back to late theater hours, and she did – indeed – work too hard. So I didn’t have to explain that, among other things, I was no longer even the pretend manager. And Orrie soon assured us all – by Xeroxed notes taped haphazardly to our vulnerably-painted doors – that Megan was getting new machines, this time her own. It seems she couldn’t stomach the idea that some other small business person was siphoning off the pennies we paid each month for clean undies. Megan did get new machines: one washer and one drier to replace the Noah’s Ark pair of each we’d had previously. And hers cost twice as much to use for half the capacity.
“To the barricades!” the tenants screamed, assembling a petition. Okay, it wasn’t Tom Paine, and no one was gonna die for his right to spin dry, but it was a nice gesture. Of course, all they could threaten was to move out, which probably would’ve made Megan dance. ‘Cause then she could instantly jump all the rents several hundred bucks – to her idea of “market value” – rather than inch them legally a mere 3% per annum. But she must’ve been momentarily cash-short or simply couldn’t face a mass move-out ‘cause the next day the single washer and drier were again replaced by twins. Though still over-priced and under-sized.
“We won!” Lindsay gloated that Sunday, baking her fair Irish skin by our stagnant pool. “But how come it feels like we’re still being screwed?”
It would be cruel to question if she really knew how that felt, ‘specially since she had been seeing the same guy for over a year. And he wasn’t even married. Or a Rocker. Or a thief. Anyway, the rents finally also went up – somehow 5%. Everyone moaned, particularly Isabelle who seemed to feel the evils of civilization had been visited solely on her. “Doesn’t that woman know how much twelve dollars a month means to me?” she wailed. (The math: although Isabelle’s rent increased $22.50, since she shared an apartment with Marie and Richardo – Marie’s still-stumpy-if-now-ten-year-old-son – she only had to pay half. Though she did have the single bedroom, while Marie and Richardo shared a living room trundle, so I guess she paid slightly more.) And I’d feel sorrier for Isabelle, who after all was probably getting by on less than ten grand a year after taxes. But the woman could whine.
Meanwhile, some of us had been looking for other ways out. First, Meg and Quinn, who’d been loan approved before Megan materialized and were steadily house hunting. Next, Rob, who was making more as a computer tech and occasional coder than he could possibly deduct. Then Annie, Franck, and Edan, mainly so Edan could go to a magnet school. Annie’s night manager job had, fortunately, kept her at a local Ralph’s. Lindsay was always giving notice so didn’t even count, though one day I felt she was going to surprise us all and actually not be there. Kristen wanted fresh paint, recent appliances, and a new rug, but not so much she’d really start circling apartment ads again. Summer and Cole coveted the beach but had a rough time finding their john, let alone new digs. Korki was being transferred once she completed Police training, but that seemed to drag endlessly onward, as unchecked as corruption. Steve, his co-worker, and his daughters needed more space just breathe, though after four years he’d gotten used to living in miniature. Finally, I wanted to move, mainly because I was now in love with Tom and Fluffy – the dog – but also because, after nine-and-a-half years of chronicling the passing dysfunction, I was simply too tired to break in another owner.
Rob declared first, then had to rescind, and not snippily, when the foundation of his intended new home proved permanently earthquake-cracked. “I could level the house and just buy the lot,” he told us. “But I don’t really have enough cash to start building.” Meg and Quinn actually got out first, to a nice three-bedroom fixer-upper with a backyard fence high enough to hide the Snap-On truck. “Don’t want to piss off the new neighbors too fast,” Quinn said, grinning. I followed, to Tom’s at the end of May, after a year of spending three nights a week there anyhow, and in early fall Rob finally slipped under the fence. Though he probably should’ve stayed an extra month, he admitted. Instead, he jammed everything into his new garage while stripping, sanding, and refinishing the floors and then carefully repainting the rest of the house. No denyin’ the boy’s meticulous.
Franck and his daughter Annie were also separately packed. And packed. And packed. First, because she owns a lot (like long-moved Sally, eight great tomatoes in those little tiny rooms). More, because the guy she’d been seeing – a second generation real estate millionaire, who wooed her over the manager’s counter at Ralph’s – made several unsuccessful bids on houses.
“They never come through,” Franck grumbled, sitting – as ever – on the steps leading to his apartment, smoking. “I don’t know what to think about the guy,” he puffed. “He claims to know real estate, then can’t even buy a house. And he doesn’t really like Edan – not that she likes him any more than she has any of her other fathers. And he doesn’t trust Annie – didn’t even want her having lunch with Luke, though they’ve known each other from high school and he was best man at her first wedding – I think it was the first. And something about the guy just doesn’t ring true.” He exhaled, wearily wise. “Still, Annie seems to tolerate him.”
Maybe on your third husband – fourth, if you count Annie’s long involvement with stagehand/Rock guitarist/high school buddy Luke – love is less important. In any case, though they wanted to be out when Edan went back to school, they’re not. Though I notice her apartment this yuletide isn’t quite as over-decorated as Christmases past.
And Cole and Summer keep buying newer used cars ‘stead of moving. And Steve absolutely can’t afford nothin’ sides supportin’ and spoilin’ his daughters. And Lindsay would spontaneously move in with her guy, but he keeps putting her off – maybe ‘cause she seems to have no use for his six-year-old son (short-sighted on her part and quick thinking on his). Korki abandoned police training – because, although she’d graduated best in her class, the force was never going to come through with an appointment. “There’s a lawsuit here,” she mentioned. “But I’m so sick of dealing with those people.”
Police work was always an unlikely career for her anyway, and she’s presently hunting down fellowships to fund a more logical Ph.D. in psychology. Still, she’d like to stay in LA, near the tiny yapping troika, and probably won’t find any cheaper kennel despite Megan’s rent increases.
Kristen’s series, Grosse Point, is a cult hit – meaning the Nielsen numbers ain’t high enough to fund more episodes, even on the needy WB. But as she’s been working eighty-hour weeks since August, her own apartment will seem alien enough to stop her from moving.
“Mostly, I crave sleep,” she woozily admitted when I finally tracked her down by cell phone near Thanksgiving.
JB – now comfortably busy with his own long-hour animation jobs – occasionally spots Kristen late at night. “Mostly, though, when I come in at midnight, her car still isn’t here. And if it is, it’s gone when I leave again at eight.”
JB would easily move if he got an animation offer near San Francisco. Otherwise, he’s planted, along with his brewing supplies and still. That leaves Anthony, once friendly, now gruff. With his red hair rapidly depleting, he took action and got rid of the rest of it himself. But something there is that doesn’t love a shaved head.
Of course, getting out and getting our deposits back were two different things. Meg and Quinn held their last month’s rent hostage, only handing over the check when Orrie personally promised to give them their deposit as they turned in their keys. Megan – oddly – was sure we’d all trash our apartments (the other, more recently built though shoddier building she owns is in a rougher part of town). When my turn came, I was told there was no deposit in my name, which made sense, since I’d never paid one. Still, it made me fondly remember the evening I’d arrived, with Gabe and his wife and Crazy Vic. Then Rob – who’d moved in only two owners back, the same as Meg ‘n’ Quinn – was given a similar run-around, and even his old paperwork proved useless.
“I’ll write it off as a bad debt,” he said.
“I can’t let Megan get away with that,” I told him, digging through my stored boxes in Tom’s garage to find the phone number of Bart, the previous landlord, to try and document the five grand floating escrow account. Bart quickly returned Rob’s deposit without even trying to unsnarl Megan’s high jinks. He’s simply always been a nice guy.
Strangers have since replaced Meg, Quinn, Rob, and me – surprisingly fast and at far higher rents, though let’s see how long that lasts with markets sinking everywhere. One pair, Alex and Torrie, initially moved into Meg and Quinn’s old place with a menagerie of dogs, cats, snakes, white mice, and spiders, then swapped for Rob’s even larger two-bedroom when he managed his escape. (Torrie – not quite Alex’s wife – is also about to have Rosemary’s baby.)
Another young couple, with different last names and an already-born, rather pleasant seeming small daughter, moved into my old apartment, a tight fit for three, even without a trundle. And a couple still-to-be-identified – Kristen’s been too busy to snoop, and JB’s lousy at gossip – moved into Meg and Quinn’s replacing Alex and Torrie. That’s just as well, ‘cause they were already jousting with Samantha – their then immediate neighbor – over ambient animal smells.
“They were making, Adam,” – still her boyfriend – “almost crazy.” Samantha’s also still battling her downstairs neighbors, Isabelle and Marie – Richardo seems neutral – over rude nocturnal noises involving that vacuum.
I’ve been back a couple of times, to pick up JB for movies. The building continues to corrode, and Megan’s had all the spider plants stripped from the courtyard beds. That leaves just what Pete, our ex-manager from six years back – which seems an eternity – always preferred: nice, raked dirt. (He was a minimalist engineer.)
Do I miss the place? Nah – Bush and Gore easily proved more distracting. Would I go back? Sure – the same day you see my name again on Wheel Of Fortune.