Moorpark Palms - 28. Chapter 28

Cyndi suddenly threw Tim out in early November. Though Tim insisted the police arrived to escort him to safety.
“She threw a 400 buck sub-woofer at me! Can you believe that?”
“You don’t work!” Cyndi wailed. “You lie! I paid off your car! I buy you movies! I order take-out! You use more drugs than the whole Olympics team! My cats have better sex!”
By that point, at least, the cats were having more frequent sex. The inhabitants of Cyndi’s apartment – excluding Tim – had reached eleven.
After Tim was banished, Cyndi had Bart change the locks and add bolts to the windows and front door. When Tim tried to retrieve his clothes, pleading through the unresponsive door, “I’ve been wearing these jeans for three days,” Cyndi howled, “I don’t care if they bury you in them!”
Though by Thanksgiving, Tim was back – which pissed off Franck, who’d become something of Cyndi’s protector. One day, Cyndi was complaining about Tim to Franck. The next, she and Tim were in the courtyard together decopauging frames.
She gave no explanation for Tim’s return. They still yelled at each other, but Tim seemed to be working. Actually, he’d never left his job with the film composer. He just worked – as we all knew – odd hours. And Cyndi’s drug accusation vaporized.
“It’s mostly pain killers,” Franck admitted. “Tim gets headaches.”
“I’m so bored,” he told me one night. He was sitting on the same step Franck favored, next to a stack of tapes. One reason Cyndi was friendly with Franck is she and Tim lived under his apartment.
“I rented Frankenstein,” Tim went on. The Karloff version – only decent one as far as I’m concerned. It usually cheers me up. Tonight, I can’t watch. I know how it ends.”
“Maybe you need a second job. Something to keep you more occupied.”
“Are you joking? Do you know how much I make as a personal assistant? My boss keeps throwing wads of cash at me. And almost new clothes. He doesn’t even use me very often.”
For some reason, I suddenly thought of Claire and her visiting men. Maybe it was the word “cash.” Maybe “use.”
I looked at Tim. He wasn’t bad looking. He and Cyndi made a cute couple. But I wondered if – in addition to errands – the composer was paying Tim for sex.
He tossed a tape at me. “You seen this?” he wanted to know. “Malkovich is great, but I don’t get the plot.”
I slowly explained what I understood of the movie. Tim listened and asked perceptive questions – though maybe not the kind Cyndi would appreciate. Possibly Tim’s job had more to do with keeping his busy boss relaxed.
Around the same time Tim came back, Lindsay had a small crisis. As she sadly explained, “I had to put my cat to sleep.”
I’d almost forgotten she had a cat. I’d never seen it.
“She was barely a year-old,” Lindsay said, but I’d already spent, like, three hundred dollars on her. And the doctors still weren’t sure what was wrong. They thought maybe cat cancer.” Lindsay sighed. “Not that I mind the money. Mostly, Grandma gave it to me. But Sophie was my best friend. She knew exactly what I meant when I’d say, ‘Don’t sit on the counter.’ She’d just scoot right off. I didn’t even have to point. And when I’d say, ‘I’ll be home at eight,’ she’d be right there, waiting by the door.”
I was less impressed – Lindsay lived in a studio apartment. But I listened.
“And when I needed to wake up,” she went on, “Sophie nuzzled me. Or she’d lick my nose, right on time. That’s so much nicer than a clock.”
“You could get another cat,” I suggested. “You could just pick one.” At that moment, three were grazing in the courtyard.
“I could never replace Sophie!”
Fortunately, that week, two of Cyndi’s coven simultaneously calved, and we were instantly in kittens.
“They’re so cute,” Lindsay squealed. “I just want to eat them.”
“Good thought,” I said. But she didn’t take me seriously.
Lindsay took two of the kittens as soon as they were ready to leave their mother, while Annie took another pair. “You know,” I told Cyndi soon after, “you might have just a few too many cats for one apartment.”
She giggled, but admitted, “I should get them fixed.” Of course, she never did.
So I began walking forcefully in the cats’ direction, never actually touching them, just kind of passive-aggressive crowd control. Soon, they scattered the moment I appeared.
Just after Thanksgiving, Birgit’s near-twin sister arrived. Despite Vic’s friendship with Korki, it made him want to ship out to Sweden.
“Unbelievable,” he about stuttered.
“My name’s Britt,” she laughed on the balcony, adding, “Our parents like ‘B’ names.”
She hadn’t just come to visit. That weekend Rob and Birgit got married.
“I’m now Mrs. Robert Mitchell Kimball III,” the new bride announced one twilit evening. “Isn’t that a great name?”
“We would have told people,” Rob added. “But it was really small – mostly family. And we don’t want you all buying presents.
Still, Bobby gave them a pup, a kind of Little Rascals Pit Bull soon named Stony. For two weeks, Birgit and Rob and Bobby and Britt and Stony and the boa constrictor and Butch the cat all cramped in the two-bedroom apartment. Then Butch ran away.
“He isn’t actually gone,” Rob explained. “He’s on the other side of the fence – in those expensive condos.”
“He likes their food better,” Bobby added.
“He likes the fact they have food,” Birgit confessed. “We were always forgetting to feed him. Cats are so self-sufficient.”
“Let ‘em eat cigarette butts, I say,” Bobby laughed, tossing his latest reject over the rail.
Everyone in their apartment smoked, but not inside.
“It stinks up the place,” they’d chorus.
Instead, they stood on the balcony, whispering on their shared cell phone and flicking butts on us lesser folk. Quinn did the same thing. “I can’t smoke in the apartment,” he told. “It annoys the cats.” Though maybe challenged by the marriage just next door, he and Meg got engaged.
“I’m really nervous about this,” Quinn admitted. “We’ve been together for years, but I’ve never met her family.”
“They’re nice,” Meg defended.
“They hate my ink.”
“They’re just happy I’m getting married. I’m almost twenty-nine.”
“Oh, yeah – past them peak fertility years.”
“Your little buggers better be good swimmers,” Meg joked back.
“Why do they hate your tattoos,” I asked Quinn. “They’re reasonably discreet.”
“Yeah – they’re only my arms.”
“And they’re beautiful,” Meg said. “They’re called ‘sleeves.’”
“I hate that full-body look..”
“You’re just vain,” she teased. “You really like your little pink chest. That way, he can leave his shirt open,” she told me
“And pick up chicks.”
“You try.”
“Are you having a big wedding?” I asked, though I didn’t need to head off a fight. I’d never seen either of them angry.
“We’re not running off to Vegas, if that’s what you mean.” Meg nodded discretely across the balcony.
“I want to,” Quinn fake-pouted. “I want Total Elvis.”
“My parents would kill you.”
“That’s just a matter of time.”
“We’re doing the Serious Church Thing,” Meg continued. “I hope we don’t embarrass ourselves.”
“How soon do you want kids?” I asked.
They both stared.
“Give us a break!”
Perhaps encouraged by the calmer community, Ed and Annie had stayed strangely quiet. Ed had no unexplained “sales” trips. Annie made no accusations about Franck. Even Edan had stopped torturing Barbies and turned sullenly pretty. I hoped she wasn’t heading to an early Lolita phase.
Isabelle, Marie, the kid, and Marie’s occasional boyfriend had been nearly as invisible. The boy’s name was Jacobo, but the boyfriend called him Jake, at least once, turning my head because I thought he was addressing me. Then he’d continue in Spanish. Jake, though still properly short for a maybe five-year-old, was steadily growing stout. He looked a lot like the boyfriend, who I figured might be his father.
Franck went to Las Vegas for Christmas, evidently not suffering from his son-in-law Ed’s lack of restraint. “I don’t go often,” he started to tell me, with the leisure of a man who might be long-retired though still wasn’t. “And I don’t honestly approve of gambling. But there is one game I’m not bad at. And they have a Blackjack tournament once-a-year.”
I glanced somewhat obviously at my watch, but maybe he didn’t see.
“I always set a reasonable limit,” Franck ambled on. “Either something I’ve gotten as a bonus or picked up in overtime. I either win or lose, but I never go past that amount. And I always bank what I win. That’s my system.”
It seems he was also very good. That weekend, he won twenty-five grand.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” he repeated – more than once. “It was a nice trip.”
“Sure was,” I said, still edging toward my car.
“I took it as a check,” he went on. “Only fools carry that much cash. I put the check in my wallet, and, then – since I had an hour before my plane – I tried the airport slots.”
I waited. He shrugged.
“Not so hot,” he admitted. “But what the hell! I’d just won twenty-five grand.”
I rattled my car keys.
“It went straight to Edan’s trust fund, of course,” he continued. “My only problem was I’d lost the money I’d set aside for a cab. So it took forty-five minutes to fly, and four hours to get home from the airport by public bus. With a check for twenty-five thousand dollars in my wallet! Four hours! Longer than it took me to reach Vegas, win all that money, and fly home!”
And almost as long as it took him to tell the story.