Moorpark Palms - 27. Chapter 27

In mid-September, Ben and Jonathan moved into the one bed-room apartment 8.
“It’ll be great,” Jonathan said. “We’ve had a studio for the last two years, and it was always too small.”
“Like when his girlfriend was there,” Ben pretended to grumble, “I had to scram.”
“What about me? All those nights I couldn’t study.”
“One night! One night I had to see Diana.”
“If I saw Elise, as much as you see Diana, you’d be an uncle by now.”
Ben and Jonathan were brothers, Israeli, in their twenties – Ben being slightly older. Jonathan studied business. Ben, pre-law. Even as they moved in, he was applying to law schools.
“Where do you want to go?” I asked.
“It’s not up to me.”
“First, he’s got to get accepted,” Jonathan said.
“That’s not a problem. Not at all.”
“What is?”
Ben hesitated. “Finding work afterward. So I’ll go wherever looks best on my resume.”
Eventually, they wanted to go back to Israel. But for two years, they’d enjoyed the calm of southern California.
“Even during the riots? Were you here then?”
“That was nothing,” Jonathan insisted. “We grew up with far worse.”
“Every day.”
“You’re kidding? Is it that bad?” I asked.
“The news doesn’t tell you everything.”
“LA news is kind of weak,” I admitted. “It mainly tells you who’s been shot on the next block.”
“And maybe it wasn’t that scary,” Ben allowed. “It only seemed that way.”
His brother agreed.
Ben also mentioned that – unless he happened to choose an LA law school, which he felt was unlikely – they’d only be sharing the apartment for less than a year. Jonathan planned to stay longer.
“I’ve got a couple more semesters of undergrad school, then my MBA. And this is a great place to live – good location. It’s a straight shot to LAX.”
In addition to taking classes full-time, Ben also worked sixty hours a week as a security manager for El-Al.
“That army training always feeds us,” Jonathan joked.
“The money’s great,” Ben admitted, “but I never get to see Elise.
The rest of us always knew when she visited – her white Audi played musical cars with our parking spots. When you got hit, you knocked on the door to number 8, Jonathan came out – often covered only by a towel – moved her car, then sped back to bed. Despite the inconvenience, Lindsay decided, “They’re very nice guys.”
“The short one’s hot,” Claire appended.
Lindsay wouldn’t take sides.
Soon after Ben and Jonathan arrived, Holly and Kaz left, though their moves were unconnected. “I’ll be closer to work this way,” Kaz explained, as he packed their van. “I’ve got a three-year contract on a new apartment site in Brentwood. Three years that I won’t have to look for work. That’s awesome.”
“And I’ll drive Sepulveda,” Holly added. “Anything to avoid the freeway.”
“Miss you guys,” Kaz told Rob, who had gathered with the group. Though Kaz was eyeing Birgit.
Holly reminded everyone that she worked just down the block, so she’d stop by.
“Good,” Bobby told her, adding, “I always thought she was something,” as their van pulled away.
“Bobby-boy, she’s over thirty,” Rob razzed.
The week before, Bobby had come home frustrated because a department store saleswoman he’d been trying to date had proved too old.
“Twenty-nine,” he’d guessed. “And the first time we talked, I didn’t see a wedding ring.”
“Her husband would have killed you,” Rob had laughed. “And I’d have to break it to your mom.”
Bobby was a dutiful son who went home for dinner every Sunday evening.
“Family,” he shrugged.
“And they do your laundry,” Birgit teased.
“And who does Rob’s?” Bobby shot.
After Holly and Kaz left, Apartment 11 started a new tradition – “Will the guest tenant please sign in?”
First, there was Eran and Gali, our second Israeli renters – Eran being the guy. Fierce and surly, he arrived with his arm – and maybe his sense of humor – in a cast, though the plaster soon came off. Eran was a student with Ben and Jonathan at the nearby University of Judaism. Gali mostly stayed home, where she seemed to be learning English from TV.
“I cannot think... how anyone can live... without cable,” she soon told me, very slowly. When I as slowly tried to explain that Vic had once lived eight months without electricity, I’d say she was speechless. But, in English, that sometimes seemed her normal state.
Vic, meanwhile, was delighted Gali had arrived. Since she didn’t work, when she wasn’t studying TV, she sunned by the pool – wearing barely a trace of a bikini.
“I thought American girls were wild,” he told me on the stairs. “I need to travel.”
Unfortunately, Eran and Gali lasted less than a month. One night we all got to listen – through open ground-floor windows – to their coupling.
“Should we let them know?” Meg whispered on the balcony.
“What are we gonna do?” Quinn whispered. “All stand in the courtyard and cough?”
Meg swatted him.
We got through the evening and tried not to smirk the next time we saw either of them. But that’s not why Gali soon flew back to Tel Aviv.
“She’s angry because Eran wouldn’t come home with her and get married,” Lindsay reported. “He left a good career as electrician.”
“I’m on her side,” Quinn admitted. Electricians make seventy bucks-an-hour. I’m humping to make fifteen.”
“I wouldn’t trust that guy with my fuse box,” Vic commented. “Talk about attitude.”
“You get it, too?” Quinn asked.
“I try to be nice,” Vic said. “You know... friendly. I asked his name and how he liked living here. I asked his girlfriend’s name...”
“There was your mistake,” Quinn said laughing. “He knew what you wanted.”
Vic seemed less defensive about that than he used to be. Instead of stomping off, he grinned.
“Eran’s quiet at school, too,” Jonathan told us. “Always very guarded.”
“Because he’s older than we are,” Jonathan offered. “He has more at stake.”
“I didn’t move here just to become a cab driver!” we’d heard Eran explode to Gali one night. But that’s exactly what happened.
“To pay tuition,” he groused one Sunday, as he parked his cab.
The following week, his four-year-old son arrived, and Eran began working even harder. The boy was American, Eran having an ex-wife who’d also given him citizenship. But staying so much in their small apartment made the boy nuts.
“It’s like he’s playing stick ball off the walls,” Claire complained. She lived above them. “Then they wrestle, and it sounds like break dancing.”
And pieces of violently-trashed military toys littered the courtyard.
Before I could say anything, they left. Watching them go, Vic whispered, “Deja vu,” then hummed The Twilight Zone theme. I couldn’t make a connection.
“He went back to his wife,” Ben told us. “She’s also a student. She said they had more in common when she was in Israel. But she loves the guy.”
I went to inspect the apartment. It was spotless. The only thing he left was a pastoral painting signed by the artist Gali.
“She told me painted,” Cyndi said, already fitting the appropriated art into one of her shell-decked frames.
The next day, another Israeli pair, Asaf and Maya – two more U of J students – slipped into 11. Bart had called me at work to confirm this. “I didn’t want you to think they’re squatters.”
“That was fast. Do you have a waiting list?” I joked.
“Not a list – a congregation. They’re all friends of ours.”
Asaf – the guy – had long dark hair. Maya was blonde and spent some of her free time by the pool. That buffeted Vic from his loss of Gali. But as the days grew short, and sunlight ebbed, Asaf and Maya must have decided that five-fifty a month was too high for rent. And they skipped by the light of the moon.
“They don’t owe us anything,” Bart assured me. “They couldn’t be that rude. We see them every week.”
“A little notice would be nice.”
“I’m not worried.”
Asaf and Maya were quickly replaced by Lefty and Marla, a rock musician and his business manager girlfriend.
“We’re not staying long,” Marla said as introduction. “Bart’s doing us a favor.”
They’d been scheduled for a year-long, European tour, had given up their apartment, and put everything in storage. Then plans got delayed.
“That was two months ago,” Lefty explained. “This is the second time it’s happened. The first snag was money. Now, it’s visas.”
“I think they’re making it up,” Marla complained. “I think the whole tour’s fiction.”
“We gotta be patient.”
“They’re holding up eight people.”
“Patience.”
“We want our lives back. I’ve been turning down gigs for him, and he’s been doing pick-ups.”
As promised, they didn’t stay long. After a couple of weeks, they happily left for Europe. Everyone was happy for them, until I saw their apartment.
“I could’ve told you that,” Tim acknowledged. “I’ve been watching videos with them.”
They didn’t have a lot of furniture – mainly an old Goodwill mattress, which they abandoned. Lacking more sophisticated surfaces, they threw everything on the floor.
With the piles of pizza boxes, take-out cartons, and soda and beer cans came bugs. “How did they get in so quickly?” I asked. Even Vic didn’t know.
It took two cleaning women a couple of days to scrub the place, and Sally said they kept coming outside, brushing crawling things off themselves. Bart said he hadn’t planned to replace the carpet – “It’s still fairly new,” – but he changed his mind. He didn’t get angry, though. After all, these were his friends.
“I wonder how he knew them,” I asked Tim, since he’d known them best.
“Marla was his middle son’s high school girlfriend.” He hesitated. “Is it still high school if it’s private?”
“Absolutely,” said Claire. “You just get soaked in a different way.”
“Are you gonna wait a few weeks to rent the place?” I asked Bart. “Let it air out?”
“Nah, it’s rented already. Got to pay for my good intentions.”
Unlike everyone who’d lived in the apartment recently, Korki wasn’t Israeli. She was just a lapsed Mormon gymnast, escaped from Brigham Young U. Her relation to Bart – because there had to be one – was she trained his daughter at a local gym. Korki also owned a huge, well-fed rottweiler named Edge, and they wore matching bandanas.
“This one’s not gonna wear a bikini,” Vic predicted. But he was wrong. Korki soon spread a yoga mat by the pool every morning and did an hour’s workout. And she wasn’t overdressed.
“Did you see Vic this morning?” Quinn asked me some weeks later when I came home from work. “Or do you leave too early?”
“What’s he up to now?” I was almost afraid to ask.
“Well, I had no calls till almost noon, so I was just hanging out. “And Vic was down there by the pool, with his own little yoga mat, doing stretches with what’s her name? The new one.”
“Korki didn’t mind?” I asked, reminding Quinn of her name.
“No... she was helping him out. Correcting his moves. Her hands were all over him, and he didn’t even flinch. At one point, he took off his shirt.”
“Holy, shit! I hope they don’t have sex by the pool.”
“There’s something I’d like to see.”
I didn’t pursue that but took it as a warning. But nothing bad happened. Korki and Vic just worked out.
“Is he paying her?” Cyndi soon asked.
“Not that I know of,” Lindsay told us.
“He doesn’t have money anyway,” Sally put in.
“She’s just being friendly.”
Meanwhile, Cyndi was thrilled because The Wandering Iowan had finally gone home. “A hundred-and-twenty-seven days,” she counted. “And he never paid for anything, not even pizza.”
“Some people,” Annie griped.
“Why did he leave?” I asked.
“He said it was getting cold. And if he was going to be unhappy, he’d rather be home, among friends. I hope he freezes.”
Tim missed his ex-army buddy a little more. “I could come home and wake him up at 3 AM, and he’d watch any flick with me. You don’t get a lot of friends like that .”
Ben and Jonathan also had a guest, though, initially, I didn’t know where they put Lavi. Jonathan already slept on the fold-out couch. Lavi was another Israeli student, and he looked so much like Asaf – long dark hair, ubiquitous soldier’s build – that for the few weeks both were in the building, I couldn’t tell them apart. Neither spoke very much. Both drove raggedy cars and favored ripped jeans and worn T-shirts. I mainly nodded at them, only risking conversation when one clearly had his arm around Maya.
As it happened, Ben didn’t like Lavi, and he and Jonathan fought over him permanently moving in the following year.
“I’m gonna come visit. You know that. And I don’t want him sleeping in my bed.”
“You won’t be paying rent,” Jonathan argued.
“You know I can’t do that. It’s impossible.”
“Then I need a roommate.”
“Move in Elise. At least, she wouldn’t take up more space.”
Jonathan laughed. “She’d never live in a place like this. I’m lucky she visits.”
“Well, figure it out.”
If anyone, Ben favored Mookie, another student, who was Jewish though not Israeli.
“He can’t pay anything,” Jonathan scoffed. “He’s your charity case. You’re always giving him money.”
“Lending,” Ben insisted.
“Giving. He’ll be broke till he passes the Bar.”
There was the catch – Mookie was Ben’s study partner and was helping him prep for the law boards. Ben couldn’t give that up. Meanwhile, Lavi slept – four nights out of seven – on their living room floor. No sleeping bag. No mattress. Just stretched out on the carpet. He was seemingly out cold one Saturday morning when I had to check something with Ben.
“I have a futon I could lend you,” I said. “None of my East coast friends really visit.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Ben whispered. Then he signaled me outside.
“Does he help with rent?” I asked.
“Does he need to be on the lease?” Ben replied, defensive.
“Only if he’s here full-time.”
Ben relaxed. “He lives in Saugus with his cousins. But that’s a long drive, so he sometimes crashes here.”
“That’s fine.”
“Good. ‘ Cause I can’t hurt my legal reputation.”
After Denny had moved, I’d poked around his apartment for anything that might belong to the building. On that level, Denny had been honest. Other than discarded furniture – which Quinn and Bobby helped him cart to the curb – all he’d left was a trash bag of empty beer cans. As I’d toted them towards the dumpster, Annie had stopped me.
“What about the rest of them?” she’d asked.
“The rest? What are you talking about?”
“There are bags of them in the carport.”
“Where?” I’d seen no piles.
Annie had showed me. At the back of Denny’s former parking space was an inconspicuous door, painted to match the stucco. It had been padlocked all the time I’d been in the building, but Bart’s painters must have cut the lock when they couldn’t find a key. They didn’t know Lindsay had it. Once the padlock was gone, curious Annie had explored.
“It’s dark inside,” she’d warned, as I’d opened the door myself. “If you go in a couple of feet, there’s a light switch on the left. But be careful – there’s no cover.
“How did you figure that out?” I’d asked.
“I went back with a flashlight.”
The room was dark, wet, and noisy. It held the leaky recirculating pump for the pool. And mounds of black garbage bags, full of crushed empties.
“I guess he planned to recycle,” I’d joked.
“There’s a couple of bucks here,” Annie had said, airily.
I really didn’t know.
“Edan’s collecting cans for pre-school,” she went on. “You could donate them. It’s a good cause.”
I’d glanced in one of the bags, wondering what else might be hiding in them. They’d seemed uninfected.
“You’re welcome to them,” I said.
“Yay! Yay! I’m gonna win!” Edan shouted when Annie told her, and three months later, Edan came home with her prize.
“A Barnes & Noble gift card,” Franck informed me. “For 100 dollars. That’s great because Edan loves to read.”
“And I get a gold star!” she whooped.
All from Denny’s trash.