CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: The Flimsy Fence

YEAR TWO

House Account:  $1,338.00

#Mortgage:  $513.48 - $547.29

The letter had little effect on Ray's children's behavior, but Miz James was somewhat mollified when Wim erected a fence so that only she, Princess and Desmond could use the back yard.  She grumbled a bit when Ray asked her if he could host a barbecue in the back yard for visiting friends and family on Memorial Day, but as she wasn't going to be home that day, she grudgingly agreed.

The fence wasn’t anything special: just wire chain-link with posts every few feet.  In no time, it was drooping tiredly between its supports as the neighboring children on the right side of the house – with whom Ray's kids seemed to be very friendly – yanked and leaned on it with a vengeance.

The owner of the next-door house, where said children resided on the second floor, was in the process of gutting the first-floor #apartment in order to #renovate it.  As a result, an alarming heap of trash and rubble was fast accumulating in the alleyway between the two #properties.  Miz James gleefully reported that "them kids" were playing in it and strewing garbage left, right and center.  This fact was borne out when I received a violation notice from the #Code #Enforcement #Bureau ordering me to clean up the mess in 72 hours, or else.  It wasn't even my mess! 

Indignantly, Wim and I went up to Manson Street and piled the mess onto the #renovating #landlord's side of the alley.  Then I wrote a stern letter to Ray, telling him to stop his children strewing trash all over the place.

The rumblings of discontent kept sounding from Miz James until they finally came to a head.  Ray had been living upstairs for five months when Miz James called one night to report that "them kids" had stolen her son's bicycle from her side of the basement, and that she had called the police.  The bike was found a little while later but, nonetheless, the fact remained that Ray and co. had violated their shared access to the basement. 

Thanking my lucky stars that I had only given him a six-month #lease, I wrote to Ray to tell him I would not be extending it and that I wanted him out of the apartment by the end of the month.  I heard not one word of argument from him.  Maybe he was used to being #evicted.

No sooner had I given Ray a month's notice, than Shirley telephoned from next door.  Her buddy Miz James had informed her that Ray was moving out, for which she was undeniably very grateful.  Shirley told me that her friend Bryan was once again interested in renting the place.  Apparently, his job was going well, and he could now afford the #rent; especially since the Department of Social Services had approved his girlfriend Mamie for partial rental assistance.

"Have Bryan call me," I told Shirley.  "It would be nice not to have to advertise and try to find a decent tenant.  He's a friend of yours, so I guess that's a pretty good reference, right?"

"Right," Shirley agreed.  "It'll be him and Mamie and their two young children.  I'll tell him to call you."

Bryan telephoned that afternoon.  "So, I hear you're looking for an upstairs #tenant again.  I'm still interested."

"Yes, I heard,” I said.  “By the way, why do you want to move, and when?"

"Soon as possible.  We’re living underneath Mamie's sister at her mom's right now.  Too close to family is like, you know . . ."

"I get the picture.  How about rent and #security?  The rent is four-seventy-five, as you know . . ."

"Social Services will pay most of it," Bryan told me,  "but we want to pay the security deposit ourselves, rather than do it through D.S.S."

"Okay," I agreed – stupidly, as it later turned out.  "When can we meet to sign the lease?"

We arranged that I would go over to their apartment in Schemmerhorn that evening. I found it quite easily.  Mamie, the girlfriend, turned out to be a pale, thin slip of a girl with a shy smile.  Whilst they perused lease, I looked around.  The room was neat and tidy and looked clean.  The two toddlers were nicely dressed.  All in all, it seemed as if Bryan and Mamie would be good tenants.

The next day I called the building inspector to inspect the upstairs apartment for the rental certificate.  Then I called Mr. Catcher to come and determine how much D.S.S. would pay for any repairs that needed doing.  Unfortunately, his next available appointment was not until the middle of August.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Miz James's lease was due to expire at the end of August.  Always diligent, she called me towards the end of July.

“Can I stay a little longer?” she asked, “I’m planning on buying a house within the next few months.”

I would be sorry to lose her – she wasn’t a bad #tenant – but I had to tell her I really didn’t want to look for a new tenant in the winter.   I knew from experience that not many people moved at that time of year.  Of course, the Jacuzzi was a good selling point, but I figured it would be easier to find a tenant in the late summer or fall.    I determined to place an advertisement in the Schemmerhorn Gazette, listing the apartment’s features and keeping the rent at four seventy-five per month.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: A Carpet of Cockroaches

I arranged to show the #apartment to the man and his wife on Saturday afternoon.  I was going to be there anyhow, cleaning and tidying, ready for painting.

As I opened the front door of 51 Manson Street, the familiar smell of rotting garbage wafted out.  Clearly, the first order of the day was to open all of the windows, which I did.  When I reached the halfway mark between the dining room and the kitchen, I stopped short in disgust.  The entire floor of the hallway, bathroom and kitchen was covered by a veritable carpet of dead #cockroaches.  The sinks and counter tops were similarly covered. 

I’d never seen anything like it!

The #pest control people had obviously come again after Natasha moved out.  I’d given Miz James a key to let them in.  The first time they were there, Natasha must have swept up the result.  Surely, even she couldn’t have lived with a solid carpet of dead cockroaches.

The odd ceiling panel had been moved aside in the kitchen and bathroom, and it looked as if the roaches had dropped through the holes in the ceilings, en masse, once the smoke of the bomb reached them.

I checked my watch.  Half an hour before the couple was due to arrive to look at the apartment.  I was just plugging in the vacuum cleaner to vacuum up the bugs, when the doorbell rang. 

Oh no!  They were early!

I went downstairs to let the couple in.  They had a little boy with them, about eight or nine years old.  As we walked up the stairs, I tried to warn them about the carpet of bugs, but no amount of forewarning could  prepare anyone for such a revolting sight.

When the wife saw the beginnings of the cockroach carpet, she recoiled somewhat forcibly and hastily backed away. 

"Um, I think I'll leave you to it," she told her husband in a faint voice.  With an embarrassed half-smile at me, she retreated down the stairs.

Her husband – who was not in possession of such delicate sensibilities as his wife – scratched at his sandy beard and looked around.  The little boy carefully tiptoed into the kitchen, trying unsuccessfully to step between the bugs, bent double as he peered at the cockroaches in morbid fascination.

As I showed Sandy Beard around the apartment, we sounded as if we were walking on Cornflakes.  Cockroaches crunched underfoot, every step we took.

"It's pretty awful, isn't it?" I admitted ruefully.  "This is why I evicted my tenant.  The pest control company have come twice, and they're due to come once more to finish up.  The cockroaches are all dead, though . . ."

"Hey, this one's still alive!" shouted the little boy at that moment.  He pointed to where a cockroach lay on its back, feebly waving its legs.

". . . or dying," I quickly added. 

“Hey, here's another one!" yelled the darling child with glee.  "It's walking!"

Sure enough it was, albeit very slowly. 

I hastily stepped on it.  Scrunch! 

"Now it's not.  Come.  I'll show you the rest of the apartment."

I quickly took Sandy Beard through the back bedrooms and didn’t linger for more than a moment at the doorway to the bathroom.  The bathtub had a furry, black ring around it, and the disgusting toilet, its bowl spattered with brown spots and reeking of urine, was a sight best left unseen by a potential tenant. 

I hustled the two into the front half of the apartment where only a few cockroaches were in evidence. 

Sandy Beard looked around the dining room and living room with a non-committal expression on his face, perking up slightly when he spied the small room leading off of the living room. 

"This would be good for an office," he said.  "I work at G.P.  You know . . . General Power?   I often bring instruments home to work on, so it would be nice to have an apartment closer to work.  This seems like a nice neighborhood."

I said nothing to disillusion him of this notion. 

"They're very delicate, though . . . the instruments, I mean," Sandy Beard continued.  "I couldn't take the risk of any #bugs getting into them."

"Oh, that wouldn't be a worry," I assured him airily.  "You can see the problem's been taken care of . . . especially after the pest control people have come a third time."  I fervently hoped the little boy would keep quiet.

Sandy Beard scratched his chin again.

"I was just about to vacuum," I told him.  "Why don't I do that, and maybe your wife would like to come up again when all the bugs are gone?  It'll just take me a moment."

"Okay," he said.  "I'll ask her."

He went downstairs with his son, and I quickly vacuumed up thousands of cockroaches.  Yuck!  I probably filled a whole vacuum-cleaner bag full of them.   By the time Sandy Beard came back, minus small boy, I had just about finished.

"My wife says she doesn’t need to come up, but we'll talk about it and be in touch," he promised.  "Thank you."

"Okay," I said.  "Call me either way, won't you?"

"Oh, sure," the man said, but I knew he wouldn't.  

I cleaned and scrubbed the rest of that afternoon and the next.  Allen came by and performed his oven-cleaning routine.  He was getting very practiced at it. 

I bought some paint, and Wim showed me how to use a roller.  I actually quite enjoyed it, especially filling in with the roller after doing all the edges with a brush.  Being a novice at painting, I was very painstaking and finicky about it, and it took me hours to complete the job.  A couple of years later, I would be slapping on the paint in half the time, but for now it was still all new to me – an entire, empty apartment, all mine, to do with whatever I liked.  I still had visions of renting the house to happy, decent, Leave-it-to-Beaver kinds of families.  Sure, I'd had a couple of bad breaks so far, but hope springs eternal, right?

Over the next few weeks, Wim, Allen, and I got the place looking pretty decent. Unfortunately, however, no one seemed interested in viewing it.  Apparently people didn’t usually move house in December.

Actually, one person did show some interest.  He was a friend of the next door neighbors, Shirley and Jerry, and his name was Bryan.  He’d been helping Jerry install some windows, and he came upstairs when Wim and I were in the midst of painting and repairing.

"Heard this was vacant," he said, looking around.  He was a tall-ish, slim young man with a pretty face and a shock of long, chestnut curls any girl would die for.  Quite a sexy dude. 

"My girlfriend and me, we need a new place,” he went on.  “Don't know if I can afford one yet, though.  How much you chargin'?"

"Four twenty-five," Wim told him.  He didn’t know I’d decided to try renting the apartment for four seventy-five.

I gave Wim a surreptitious nudge in the ribs.  "No, I'm asking four seventy-five," I whispered.  "Same as downstairs."

"Hm."  Bryan shook his head.  "Nope.  Don't think I can afford fourt twenty-five.  Nice place, though.  Maybe next time, if I get this job I'm goin' for.  See ya."  

He thumped off down the stairs.

Having the house to herself, with no tenants living overhead to irritate her, Miz James remained silent for a couple of months, except for calling to complain that the City had declared Manson Street a snow-disaster area. She just needed an opportunity to moan about something. 

Luckily for me, as well as stating in the #lease that the first-floor #tenant was responsible for mowing the lawn, I had included a clause that the tenant was also responsible for clearing the sidewalk of snow.  Otherwise, Miz James would no doubt be calling Wim every other minute to make a trip out to Schemmerhorn for a few shovels' full of snow.

With only one #rent coming in each month, and more going out in #mortgage payments, I was beginning to feel slightly desperate.  I kept the advertisement in the paper every week and even dropped the rent to $450.00, but there was still no interest.

Finally, during the last week in January, someone did call.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: . . . and Garbage Galore

There was no sign of impending removal from the #apartment. 

Wim was right; the place was an absolute mess, and there was food everywhere.

I gingerly picked up a paper plate that was lying upside-down on top of the fish tank.  Lots of disgusting #cockroaches scattered in all directions. 

Ugh! 

The paper plate had dried macaroni stuck to it.  I dropped it in a hurry.

The kitchen looked terrible.  The sink was full of dirty dishes encrusted with unidentifiable lumps; probably dried food, though it was difficult to tell because the lumps were hidden beneath a furry layer of whitish-turquoise mold. 

The stove was caked with its own crusty, burnt-on lumps and a layer of thick, brown grease. 

I didn't dare open the fridge or oven. 

An assortment of garments had been yanked half out of the washing machine and dryer.  More items of clothing were scattered all over the filthy floor or draped across the backs of chairs. 

The garbage bags on the back landing had increased in number and were now encroaching on the kitchen. Their suppurating contents were leaking out, so that each bag stood in its own little puddle of stinking liquid. 

The stench was palpable. 

 Cockroaches ambled about on every surface and wall, as if they had all the time in the world. 

I shivered in revulsion, suddenly experiencing a horrid, creepy sensation, as if the bugs were crawling all over me. 

Yuck!  I couldn’t wait to get out of there! 

"C'mon, Wim.  Let's leave," I said. 

He needed no encouragement.  Without further ado, we hot-footed it down the stairs.

Miz James was lying in wait on the front porch. 

"Found out something," she fussed importantly. 

"When Natasha weren't here, she were in jail.  Thas right.  J-A-I-L.  An' her kids have been taken away from her because she went to New York City one day and left them here alone.  Someone saw ’em wanderin’ the streets and called the cops."

I’d never met a real live jailbird before! 

"What was she in jail for?" I asked.

"Dunno," said Miz James, looking crestfallen that she hadn’t been able to discover this fact. 

However, she soon perked up again. 

"Apparently Natasha been inside a few times in the past coupla months.  Most likely for prostitution or drugs, I’d say.  That business still all goin' on.  People comin' an' goin'.  The guy working on the house next door told me he even saw some men comin’ in heah wit guns!"

"Ooh," I said.  "That's scary."

"Darn right, Stace.  You know there's a drug house down the street?  They found syringes.  I heard Natasha often took her kids there. 

"An’ that motel at the end of the street?  Well, most a their clee-on-tell are prostitutes and johns.  Don’t know if they got no air-conditioning there, or they don’ ’ave no more vacancies, but quite a few a those prostitutes bring their johns past here to the graveyard.  I bet you a lotta kinky sex goes on behind those gravestones, whoo-eey!”

Miz James blew a gusty sigh of disgust. 

“What kinda place is this to bring kids up in, you know?  This neighborhood . . . I tell you!”

Shaking her head, she went back into her apartment and slammed the door.

The next day, I was sitting in my office, chewing over the wording of a #City #Court #petition for #eviction, when Miz James phoned.

"Natasha returned a few minutes after you left yesterday," she panted.  "Think you'd better get over here."

"Why?"

"Got a notice for you from the #Code #Enforcement Office.  They giving you seventy-two hours to #fumigate the house and exterminate these 'roaches.  Natasha must a reported you to the authorities."

"Great," I sighed.  "She's retaliating because of the three-day notice I gave her.  She should be responsible for paying for the #exterminators.  Not me."

I called Schemmerhorn’s #building #inspector and explained the situation to him. 

He could see where I was coming from.  After all, he probably saw this kind of thing every day. 

I told him I was in the process of evicting my upstairs tenant and asked if the extermination could wait until after Natasha had vacated the premises.

"After all, what's the point in doing it now if she's still living there, making the same mess and inviting more infestation?" I suggested. 

A reasonable request, I thought.

 A young, go-ahead-sounding Mr. Bray sounded sympathetic.

“I agree," he said. "If it wasn’t so bad, I could let it wait until your tenant moved out.  However, I inspected the place myself, and it's one of the worst cockroach infestations I've ever seen.  I mean, I’ve seen a lot of them, and this?  This . . . is . . . bad!  You really have to deal with it immediately."

 I had been growing steadily more upset as I listened to Mr. Bray.  It just wasn’t fair!

"According to the lease, Natasha's supposed to keep the apartment clean and pay for any pest control herself if the #infestation is her fault," I tried.

Mr. Bray laughed incredulously. 

"Good luck with that!  I doubt you'll ever get the money from her.  No, really, you gotta get this done now, within three days, and show us proof that a reputable company has performed the extermination.  Otherwise, we'll appoint a company on your behalf and send you the bill. 

“And as far as your tenant continuing to create the filthy conditions that brought the cockroaches in in the first place?  Well, she's probably gonna keep right on doing that til she moves.  You'll just have to keep exterminating every month until she's gone.  Probably long afterwards, too.  'Roaches are very hard to get rid of." 

By this time I was practically sobbing.  I felt an intense hatred toward Natasha at that moment.

After we said goodbye, I sniffed hard and tried to compose myself enough to return to my desk. 

One of the law partners, a portly gentleman named Larry, tried to comfort me and offered to call the building inspector himself. 

I declined.  It wouldn’t be any use.  His hands were tied.

I looked in the Yellow Pages and called some #pest #control companies.  Apparently the whole #house would have to be #fumigated, and it would require three or more follow-up visits to get a good handle on the #extermination process. 

The least expensive company I could find was an outfit called Greatest Pest Control.  They charged $96.30 for the initial visit and $42.80 for each follow-up. 

Wincing at the cost, I arranged with Greatest Pest Control to provide the service and faxed proof of their hiring to the Schemmerhorn Code Enforcement Bureau.

Then I phoned Miz James and Natasha to let them know that the exterminators were scheduled for the twenty-ninth of that month. 

While I had Miz James on the phone, I asked her to write a letter "To Whom it May Concern," stating that I was a good #landlord and Natasha was a bad #tenant. 

I wanted to gather as much ammunition as I could to take with me to Court.

CHAPTER SEVEN: The Belligerent Brother

YEAR ONE

 

House Bank Account: $600.00

Mortgage:  $507.00 - $513.48

 ***********************

 

I was sitting at home one evening, contemplating snuggling down in my soft bed, when the phone rang.

"Um . . . this is Greg . . . from Manson Street," a voice stammered.  It sounded as if the owner of the voice was having difficulty enunciating around a mouthful of mashed potato.

"Yes?" I ventured after a silence.

Interspersed with hems and haws and long pauses, Greg finally managed to choke out the information that he had just been beaten up by Natasha's brother, Johnny.  Johnny had then apparently proceeded to kick dents in both street doors.

At this early stage of the landlord game, the news alarmed me.  Later on, when I had grown  more wise as to the quirks and foibles of some inner city Schemmerhornians, I realized that beating up on people and property was not an unusual pastime in that neighborhood.

Resigning myself to the thought of the twenty-five minute journey to Schemmerhorn, and a delayed bedtime, I promised Greg I would be over soon.  Then I telephoned Wim. 

"Come on over.  We'll go together," he sighed in a tired voice. 

I went to uproot the girls from their sleep.  Fifteen minutes later, Mummy gathered her sleepy granddaughters inside, and Wim and I took off for Schemmerhorn.

Upon our arrival at 5 l Manson Street, we were greeted by the sight of two badly-dented front doors.  The dents added some character to the house.  The left-hand door opened, and a shadowy figure beckoned us into the murky hall.  Judging by the bulky form, it wasn’t Melissa.

We followed the bulk into the apartment and emerged into the somewhat brighter light of the dining room.  The bulk turned out to be Greg.  Otherwise, I experienced a sense of déjà vu;  although the exercise machines were missing, the oil marks on the beige carpet remained, and Melissa and Tom were still sitting on the couch.  Come to find out, the exercise machines were now gently dripping onto the pale blue carpet in the back bedroom.

After a few moments of silence, during which we took stock of one another, I said, "Well?  What happened?"

"Mm, y'see," Greg began, "those people upstairs have been making trouble for a while now, right?"  And between gulps and stutters, the story eventually came out.

It appeared that Natasha had a penchant for frequent, large, noisy parties.  Groups of her friends would sit on the balcony and drop cans and papers and such over the railing onto the heads of the unwary beneath.

"Yeah, we clean up all the time out front," Melissa piped up in a breathy whisper.  "We'll just have finished clearing up, and they'll drop a candy wrapper over just to bug us."

"Yeah!"  Tom came to life with a husky baritone.  "And their garbage stinks!  It's strewn everywhere."

Sure enough, when we went outside we could see and smell the garbage which littered the alley between number 51 and the next-door neighbor.

"We've even cleaned up their garbage for them," Melissa breathed, "but they just keep throwing their bags over the side, and they split open like that.  We’re tired of it."

We stood and looked at the rubbish - but not for long.  The stench was overpowering. 

“I’m sorry this happened,” I told Melissa, Tom and Greg.  “If you want, you can report Johnny to the police.  Meanwhile, I’ll speak to Natasha and advise her that her brother is no longer welcome on the property.  I don’t see what else I can do at this point.”

"Yeah, well, mmm, okaaay . . ." the threesome murmured in disconsolate tones.

I left them standing there in the dining room, hands in pockets, staring at one another.

The following day, I wrote to Natasha to inform her that her brother was not permitted on the premises, and that this landlord would not tolerate that kind of conduct.  I also told her about her downstairs neighbors' complaints about the garbage littering the alley and suggested she buy herself a garbage can. 

Was I naive, or what?