CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Miz James, if you Please, has Fleas

I stood holding the phone, not sure I had heard my #tenant correctly. 

"Miz James, you've got what!" I asked.  "Fleas?"

"Yes.  The Child Protective women came over to check the place out -- to see if it's okay for the kids, you know? -- and the #fleas bit them."

For some reason, I found this highly amusing, though I didn’t let on to Miz James.  My parents had found fleas when they'd first moved into their #rented house.  The problem had been quite bad but easily solved with an insecticide "bomb" and a few carpet powderings.

Wim and I went over to Manson Street the next day, armed with a bomb and a couple of canisters of flea powder.  Miz James was ready for us and had transformed her #apartment into an alien landscape.  Sheets, blankets, tablecloths, and towels covered every item of furniture, stereo and fish tank.  All closet doors and drawers were firmly shut.

I handed Miz James the powder to apply a few hours later, when it was safe to return to the apartment.  Wim set the bomb down in the hallway at the halfway mark and pulled the tab.  It began to sputter and smoke as we ran for the door.

"Hope that'll do the trick," I said to Miz James, once we were outside.  "Don't go back in until the stated time, will you?  A phone call that you're in the hospital with de-fogging poisoning is the last thing I need."

"Sure," Miz James nodded eagerly.  "I ain't going in there til tonight, long after it's s'posed to be safe.  Don't you worry."

She called again a couple of days later.  The situation had definitely improved but she was still seeing a few fleas hopping around.

I went back to Manson Street that evening with some cans of spray.  The problem was that Miz James had laid carpet on top of the #flea-infested carpet in the children’s room and then put heavy bunk beds on top of that. 

I just had to do the best I could, thoroughly wetting the carpet with the spray cans in the hope that the fumes would penetrate to the carpet beneath.  I also sprayed nooks and crannies and furniture for good measure.  I didn’t want any fleas jumping for safety onto the couch.

Life at Manson Street remained blissfully uneventful for the next couple of weeks.  The end of September was approaching and, with it, the end of Natasha's #lease term.  I didn’t really want to tell her to move out, what with three kids and all.  I had just received a cursory statement from the Department of Social Services stating that Natasha's #rent was henceforth being reduced by $3.10.  Why bother? 

I intended to increase her rent by $25.00, which meant she would need to come up with an additional $28.10 a month.  I figured she could afford it, judging by the imposing entertainment center that graced her living room and the large, tasseled, Persian-type rug that covered a majority of said floor space.

I was about to write to Natasha to ask her if she wanted to renew her lease, when Miz James called to complain about loud music coming from Natasha's apartment.

"She keeps it cranked up 'til about three in the morning," she complained breathlessly into the phone.  "On a Sunday night, too!  My kids have to go to school in the morning and they can't sleep with all that noise going on. 

"Also, Natasha's friends keep coming by and banging on her door, real hard.  I think her doorbell ain't working ’cause they hammer on the door.  And then, if she don' answer, they climb up over the balcony.  You gotta do something, Stacie!"

"I'll be sure to write to Natasha first thing in the morning," I promised when Miz James paused for breath.

"I mean," Miz James carried on, "if she could keep the noise to the weekends, I wouldn't mind so much.  But week days?  Oh, no, we can't have that!"

"No," I agreed.  "As I said, I'll write to Natasha."

I wrote to her the next day.  The noise problem didn’t seem too difficult to fix.  I would just ask her to turn it down, and Wim could fix the doorbell.

Natasha did not respond to my letter. 

I knew she’d been away for a few days but when the neighbors informed me that she was back in town, I paid her a visit.  I was pleased to see that the apartment looked totally different from when I’d last seen it.  It was now clean and tidy.

Natasha was short and stocky, with plump, brown, shiny cheeks, sleepy eyes like her brother, and an insolent mouth that she kept pursed with the corners turned down, giving her a prissy expression.  I didn’t take to her, and she looked the type who didn’t give a hoot about anything or anyone but herself.  No doubt, my written requests to keep her dear brother away from the premises and the music turned down had not endeared her to me any.

I found her about to sit down at her glass dining-room table with a friend.  Boxes of fragrant Chinese food steamed gently before them. 

Natasha grimaced at the rent increase but seemed quite willing to pay the difference.  She signed the new lease, while I admired the octagonal fish tank.

"Thanks," I said when she handed the forms back.  "Where are your kids, by the way?"

"They're not here," Natasha answered rather obviously.  She picked up her fork with an expectant raise of her tweezed eyebrows and volunteered no further information.

I took the hint, told her I admired her tasteful furnishings, and took my leave.

No sooner had Natasha signed her new lease than Miz James began complaining again.  She phoned me several times to moan about the noise and to report that people were coming and going at all hours of the day and night. 

Next-door neighbors, Shirley and Jerry, complained about Natasha, too.

"She's either practicing prostitution or drug dealing," Shirley remarked to me one day when I stopped by.  "Why else would she have such a continual stream of traffic going in and out?  Even when she's not there, it still goes on. Oh, and Johnny's been back again, you know."

"Crap," I groaned.  "He's trouble . . . and speak of the devil!"  For who should suddenly appear from the alley, but Johnny? 

He took one look at us and took off down the street at top speed.

"The cops told you not to come back here again, Johnny!" I screamed after him in my best fishwife shriek.

The shriek produced a flustered Miz James, who had evidently struck up a friendship with Shirley as a fellow victim of Natasha's nonsense.  The two of them were enthusiastically discussing decibels as I drove away.

That night, the partners-in-misfortune both called the cops on Natasha, then called me.  The noise level was so loud, I could hear the music clearly through the phone from where I stood in the open doorway to my parents' bedroom. 

It was two a.m.