Moorpark Palms - 16. Chapter 16

Less than a month later, I discovered the UCLA girls – Annette, Teri, and Veronica – were moving out.
“The place is impossible,” Teri told me. “And it keeps getting louder. We thought about staying, now that we’ve finished school, but...”
“We graduated! How about that!” Veronica sounded just a bit surprised.
“We almost have jobs,” Annette added.
“And Mack’s a creep.”
“In what way?” I asked Teri.
“He’s like something out of Stephen King.”
“You’re not being stalked?” I said. That could be serious.
“No,” they conceded.
“Still,” Annette insisted, “We can afford better.”
“And wait till you hear the kids in the pool!” shrieked Veronica. “They keep finding more little friends!”
That was unfortunately true. Lately, our pool seem to breed children. All with the same names and haircuts. They might have been clones.
“They’ve got antsy dads, too,” Annette went on. “Always leering.”
“We don’t have to put up with that.”
“You should move out with us!”
“Did you say anything to the owners?” I asked.
“We tried. They don’t care. They told us, ‘It’s a family building.’”
“Yeah – the Manson family!”
Before moving out, the girls had a raucous party. As if to prove they could make more noise than four-year-olds.
“I can’t hear my TV,” Mack complained.
“TURN IT UP!” everyone chorused.
Apartment 9 quickly rented to other married friends of Joni and Mack. For people nobody liked, they sure had a lot of pals.
“Damn,” said Lonnie.
“What?”
“I wanted fresh meat.”
I grinned. “You sound like Vic. And you’ve no reason to desperate.” Lonnie had been at the UCLA girls farewell party when I stopped by. And he was doing very well..
“They have a kid, too,” Vic soon grouched.
“Who?” I had to ask.
“The New Invaders.”
Sally supplied their names: “Ed and Annie.”
“Kid’s name’s Edan,” Vic went on.
“Sounds religious.”
“He doesn’t get it,” Vic told Sally.
“Either did we, at first,” Sally explained. “I foolishly told Annie how nice it was that someone still reads the Bible. She just looked at me strangely. It seems they made up the name – from the first letters of their own.”
I started to laugh.
“That’s rude,” Sally said.
“I was thinking of something else,” I told her. “On our show, we recently had an actor named ‘Marence’ – for his mother ‘Marsha’ and dad ‘Lawrence.’ He’s married to a woman named ‘Michelle,’ and they’ve named their daughter ‘Marchelle.’”
“That should stop,” Sally agreed. “But it is kind of cute.”
“Better than being named for a state,” I said, backing into the jade as Gini whirled by.
“Gini! GINI!!” Joni screamed. “Kyle! Go get her! KYLE!!”
The music of home.
The new couple – Ed and Annie – seemed nicely ordinary at first, despite their connection to Mack and Joni. Ed was a traveling sales manager, “In videos,” he said, though I hoped not literally. He did resemble a dim porno star. Annie was “Staying at home till Edan’s in school.” Meanwhile, she made money doing “crafts.”
“Beware the hot glue gun,” Claire warned. “My sister goes nuts with them. And rubber stamps She can’t mail a letter without covering it with animals.”
“Bills, too?” I asked.
“Magazine subscriptions!”
“Yikes!”
Still, there were some cracks in Ed and Annie’s normalcy. When they moved in, they brought a small, almost living Christmas tree, growing in a small garbage can. It was immediately “planted” outside their door. And they soon added a new competitive scream to the courtyard: “Edan! EDAN!” It countered the howls of “GINI! KYLE! TARA! TRINA! BORDEAUX!” Several weeks later, everyone also woke to a surprising, new intrusion: Ed yelling at the same stubbornly locked apartment door Bret had once faced.
“Annie! Let me in, goddamnit! I’m your husband!”
During the next fifteen minutes – as Ed and Annie fought through their secured screen door – we all learned that Ed had taken a business trip to Las Vegas. And then delayed coming home. We also found he had a slight gambling problem.
“We thought you were dead!” Annie howled. “We called everywhere! Hospitals! The Police! The Highway Patrol!”
“I would of called...”
“If you were dead!”
“What could of happened...”
“I want you out of here! You’re not coming in! I never want to see you again!”
“It was just three days...”
“And borrowing money from your mother! When you know all she does is smoke and live on credit cards!”
It went on for an hour, ended abruptly, then nothing more was said. Annie simply unlocked the door, Ed went in, and the rest of us started our day.
“What was that about?” I soon asked Donna.
“I don’t know. I duck Joni’s friends as much as possible.”
“You didn’t know them before?”
Donna shook her head. “Joni met Annie at a flea market. She was selling homemade jewelry. And she’s trying to get Edan into acting.”
“Too bad no one makes horror flicks with four-year-olds.”
“Isn’t there something we can do?” Luba asked, a few days later. “Such screeching when I’m trying to think. Right outside my window.”
She had the deluxe pool-view, and the kids had expanded their reign to the area between that and the carport.
“I try not to call the owners too much,” I advised.
“Even my worst son’s worst two-year-old never made sounds like that.”
So I tried to help by making a phone call. But I only got the usual recording. Since I’m normally not due in our office till ten, one morning I stopped on the way to see the owners.
“What are you doing here?” the Golf Pro demanded. “It’s why we have managers.”
I began diplomatically: “Mack has trouble keeping his own kids quiet. He has less luck with the other three.”
“He’s not a nanny.”
An ungainly image.
“It’s you older residents who complain,” the Golf Pro went on, as though I was seventy. “The new ones love Mack.”
“Maybe they’re inbred cousins.”
He wasn’t amused. So I retrenched.
“Are you really going to fill all the apartments with kids?” I asked. “Don’t they usually do more damage?”
That left him silent. His Preppy Partner, clearly eavesdropping nearby, busied himself at a computer.
“This is our first residential building,” the Golf Pro finally admitted. “Mostly we do commercial. So we’re learning.”
“The only bad thing’s the noise,” I assured him. “You guys have been great at maintenance.”
It was mostly true, with just a little flattery. In any case, it worked. The Golf Pro looked toward his partner. Who slowly nodded.
“We’ll see what we can do,” they promised.
“Thanks.”
It turned out to be almost nothing. Mack continued to skulk, at least scaring off field mice. But the kid-noise grew so fierce, Luba finally gave notice.
At least, she tried. “They say I can’t go!” she fumed one evening. “Is that so? That I signed a lease!”
“Did you?” I asked.
She sadly nodded.
“They’ll just keep your deposit,” I explained.
“That’s not fair!”
“It could be worse. They could make you pay rent till they find a new tenant – up to the whole year.”
“That’s not legal!”
“It’s unfortunately how contracts work.”
“How come he can leave?” she asked, angrily pointing upstairs to Vic’s apartment
What could I say? That he actually couldn’t because his mother wouldn’t let him? “It’s why he’s waiting,” I lied.
It wasn’t the answer she wanted.
“Do you really want to go?” I went on. I’d seen her at quiet times, relaxing at the pool with some of the other tenants. So I knew she’d made friends.
“I need peace,” Luba told me. “I’m not a machine. And something else. Why do I pay as much for two bedrooms as four people and a dog?”
I didn’t want to explain free enterprise and wasn’t sure I could.
“What you could do,” I offered, “if you’re really serious about leaving, is give notice on the first then don’t pay your rent. And stay till the end of the month. They can’t evict anyone that quickly. Your deposit will cover what you owe. And you won’t lose anything.”
“Give notice?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t pay rent?”
I nodded.
“Sneak away?”
“Not sneak. You’re doing everything legally, just being late with your rent. That happens all the time.”
It took three times through to make her understand, but, finally, she grinned. “I’ll look for a new place tomorrow!”
As she gave notice, Helen – the nurse – grabbed her old apartment. “Who cares about pool noise? I’ll do what Sally does – let the air conditioner drown it out. I just want to be upstairs, where I can leave windows open.”
August first, Luba moved out, and Helen’s four sturdy sons reappeared and quickly shifted everything she owned across the courtyard and up a flight. That same afternoon, without any kind of warning, Gianpaolo materialized – mainly carrying a sailor’s duffle and a sleeping bag. He slipped noiselessly into Helen’s old place.
“They didn’t even paint,” Sally mentioned.
“We did for the Russian and the nurse,” mumbled Mack.
“They getting stingy,” jabbed Vic.
Gianpaolo spoke no English. He was maybe thirty, a bit stout, and drove a white stretch limo with “Hot Mama” plates. Presumably for a living.
“Mack’s mob connection,” Vic cracked – one of the few times I saw him smile that summer. Mainly, he was in mourning. “It’s so different this year.”
“With all the problems?” I asked.
He wouldn’t elaborate.
“There’s no one to watch,” Claire interpreted.
Vic slunk away, but Claire was right. This summer, there were no pretty women at the pool.