Moorpark Palms - 17. Chapter 17

It’s a good thing I spent most of my time indoors, because August was crappily hot. At home, the air conditioner was in my dining room. With the bedroom ceiling fan and a small portable in the hall, if it didn’t pass ninety all day, I could usually cool the place down enough to sleep. Not in August. I finally unrolled my narrow futon from the storage closet where it waited for visiting friends – I’d long replaced the futon with a wider, supportive mattress – and slept beside the dining table.
Not that anyone else was doing better. In desperation, Lonnie spent one night on a stringy beach chair by the pool. “That sucked,” he reported. “I had lines all over my chest.”
Ed initially taped aluminum foil to his west-facing windows to deflect the sun, then gave up and bought a second air conditioner for his and Annie’s bedroom. “Edan’s sleeping between us,” he griped. “The heat better break soon.”
Donna laughed. “He ain’t getting laid till Labor Day.”
Of course, the longer days let the kids scream later in the pool. To be fair, they didn’t have much else to do. And every last one of them knew how to swim.
“Watch me dive, Daddy!” shouted Kyle.
“I can do better!” screeched Edan.
“Look at me!”
“Bellyflop! Bellyflop!”
“Trina! Stay out of the deep end!”
“Bordeaux! Out of the water! Now!”
“Let her stay, Mommy, please!” pleaded Gini, hugging the dripping white hound. “She’s better than a raft!”
Mid-August, Sheila and Wendi – the business women – came home to twin eviction notices taped on their doors. They didn’t even blush.
“We stopped paying rent, too,” Sheila cheerily informed us. “Our leases run through September, but we can’t wait.”
“We found a great apartment to share.”
“Neither of us really wanted a roommate. But anything beats this.”
“And there’s central air!”
The rest of us had gotten so use to the steady defections, we began to call the place “Merry-Go-Round Palms.”
“Do you really think they’ll evict us?” Sheila and Wendi asked.
“Probably not,” I predicted. “As long as they know you’re leaving, they’ll just wait you out.”
“I’ll change your locks,” volunteered Vic.
They let him – making sure they got all the extra keys.
But before they moved, something kind of unnerving happened. Sally got robbed. This was huge. I’d always joked about living on a seedy block in a good neighborhood. But I thought it was a safe, seedy block.
“It was Mack!” Sally insisted, though the more she explained, the more this seemed like paranoia. It turned out that “A man who looked a lot like one of Mack’s friends” had come to her apartment offering “Discount Window-Washing for Seniors.”
“I didn’t want to let him in,” she told us, “but my windows were so dirty. And I thought if I watched him all the time, nothing could go wrong.”
“What did he take?” I asked.
“All my money!”
“How much was that?”
“Well, I never keep more than fifty dollars in my purse.”
“How did he get it?” Vic wanted to know. “If you were always with him?”
“The phone rang. While he was in the bedroom. I went to the kitchen to answer, and that’s when he got into my purse!”
“What’s Mack have to do with that?” Claire questioned.
“He’s a window-washer! They must all know each other! And I’m sure he was spying somewhere!”
“He always is,” seconded Vic.
“The man must have signaled,” Sally went on, “then Mack called to distract me. No one was there when I picked up.”
“You weren’t hurt?” I said.
“I didn’t even know I was robbed. Not till after he left.”
“How’d you pay him?” Claire wondered.
“In advance. He insisted on that. He said too many people cheated him!”
“Seniors?” That seemed hard to believe.
“He obviously planned this out,” Vic deduced. “He didn’t want her looking in her purse.”
“Did he do a good job with the windows?” Claire inquired.
“Enough so I told him to come back! You don’t think he will?”
“Would you recognize him?” I asked.
“I told you. He looked like one of Mack’s friends.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“Like a fat Devil!”
Claire, Vic, and I had to laugh
“How much did he charge?” Claire continued. It seemed she was trying to back Sally off a bit.
“One-fifty a window. He claimed it was ‘a Special Retirement Rate.’”
“Less than dry-cleaning a blouse,” Claire said laughing. “Even getting robbed, you got a good deal.”
When I ran into Mack later in the carport, I casually asked if he’d seen the man in Sally’s apartment.
“I wasn’t here,” Mack snapped. “I was taking Kyle to Karate.”
“He’s lying,” Sally quickly insisted. “Kyle was in the pool. With all my windows open, don’t you think I could hear?”
“You’re sure?” Vic wondered. “My place is closer than yours, and I can’t tell the kids apart.”
“My ears are better.”
The police came and took a description. “They asked if I’d press charges,” Sally told us, and I said, ‘Of course!’ Why would I waste their time! But you know what the saddest thing is? This building has never been robbed. And it had to happen to me!”
As soon as Sheila and Wendi moved, Sally settled one of her great-granddaughters into the studio next to her apartment. “I feel so much better, having Lindsay there,” she told us. “I know you’re all home at night, but Lindsay is here almost every day. She mainly goes to classes in the evening.”
“The Irish Virgin,” Vic quickly pronounced, simultaneously showing interest in Lindsay while admitting defeat.
“Is she good with Sally?” I asked him.
“How would I know? Sally mostly stays inside now. She’s blames Mack for everything.”
“Like what?” As far as I knew, nothing else had happened.
“Like letting the air out of her tires,” Vic went on.
I had to laugh. “They’ve been flat ever since I moved here.”
“I know. But now she has me fill them every day.”
“Slow leaks?”
He nodded. “Which I told her – not that I want to be defending Mack. Jesus!”
Vic was losing his own small war with our crude manager. I came home one night to find an extension cord snaked under Vic’s door and plugged into the wall light on our landing. Vic opened his door before I could knock.
“Your power out?” I asked.
“Nah. Mack padlocked the utility box.”
I couldn’t make the connection.
“I had my electric shut off in March,” Vic explained. “When I planned to move out. Then things changed.”
“You’ve lived without power for six months?” I was amazed.
He sloughed this off. “ Not really. I flicked the breaker whenever I needed something. Till Mack caught me.”
“Have it turned it back on,” I suggested, sure his mother would pay.
“No, it only bothers me when the Dodgers play. Or if the lottery’s high.”
Which explained the cord.
“Who’s winning?” I asked.
He frowned. Clearly not LA.
“Let me know if you need anything,” I offered.
“I’ll be out of here soon.”
Before he closed the door, I saw all the stacked boxes again. And wondered how anyone could live that way.
Apartment 8 – on the balcony next to Harv and Lorelle – was quickly taken by Lorelle’s kid brother and his girlfriend. “It’s Jimmy’s first place,” Harv confided. “Just next door, so we can keep watch.”
“Aren’t you a bit late?”
“What? Oh! You mean living with the girlfriend!” He laughed.
“How long have they been together?”
“Who’s together? Her parents don’t even know!” He put his finger to his lips.
I knew that would prevent babies.
Jimmy looked like a lanky farmer. His girlfriend, Kalea, was Hawaiian and tattooed – a large black star graced the side of her neck. I hoped it wasn’t from a cult. As I passed beneath their part of the balcony, odd odors drifted down, a mixture of incense and sweat. And there was late-night screaming. For weeks, I didn’t connect it to them. I thought it was their TV. Then one night, their bedroom window smashed out.
“She really lets him have it,” Harv soon apologized.
“She hits him?” I was stunned.
Harv was non-committal. “It’s more like rough sex. Very rough. We’ve all been there.”
No, actually...
“She’s smart,” he went on. “All women are. There’s so much they can teach us. And Jimmy’s got a lot to learn.”
It’s still abuse, I wanted to say. But I kept my mouth shut.
In any case, it didn’t last. After a morning I spotted Jimmy with two black eyes, he moved out. “Back home,” Harv acknowledged. “Where he thinks he’s safe. But he got a taste of this, so who knows?”
With no reason to stay, Kalea also left.
“It’s the hooker’s ghost,” Vic decided. It was the same apartment Melissa and Silvio had their sex in. “No woman should live in that place.”
“Wendi was quiet,” I reminded him.
“Wendy was repressed. She lived here a whole year without going near the pool. And all she wore was those business suits.”
“She looked great in them.”
“Yeah.” I think he was savoring her high heels. “But it wouldn’t have killed her to let us see what was underneath.”
Vic’s own repression, maybe triggered by being surrounded by useless kids, seemed to be loosening up. Or else he trusted me enough to talk.