CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Brother Johnny's Back!

Twenty-five minutes later, Wim and I arrived at 51 Manson Street, and at the same time so did a police car.  Two #cops emerged and dubiously eyed the dented door of the upstairs #apartment then proceeded to add to the dents by hammering on it with great enthusiasm, demanding entry.

A Puerto Rican-looking youth leaned over the balcony and yelled, "Who's there?  Whaddaya want?"

"Police," one of the cops yelled back.  "Open up."

Blaring music ceased abruptly, and we heard a rumble of conversation.  After a few minutes feet thumped down the stairs, and the door opened to reveal the same Puerto Rican wearing a torn pair of shorts and nothing else.

He looked us over from insolent, heavy-lidded eyes.  Judging by the strong resemblance to Natasha’s mother, this was dear brother Johnny, whom I distinctly remembered telling Natasha was not welcome.

I told the police who Johnny was, described the beating-up incident, and said that I had demanded that Johnny stay away from my property.  I was also worried that he would do more damage to the apartment and told the police as much.

"Let's take a look upstairs," the cops said, shouldering their way past Johnny.

At the top of the stairs we were met by a strong smell of beer.  Upon entering the apartment, we found out why.  The living room was littered with empty beer cans, remnants of incense sticks, and other unidentifiable bits and pieces of junk.  Items of clothing and ancient, dried food added to the mess, and ashtrays overflowed on every surface.

"Look at this place!" I gasped.  "I want Johnny out of here.  Right now!"

"And who's this?" one cop asked, going out onto the balcony where a young girl lounged in a deck chair, a cigarette in one hand.  She couldn’t be more than fourteen years old, but her eyes were going on twenty-one.

"I'm Johnny's girlfriend," she volunteered, looking a little nervous.

"Well, you're too young to hang out with a guy like that," the cop stated.  "Does your mother know where you are?"

"Uh, yeah.  What’s it to you?" 

The girl uncoiled herself from the chair and stood up.  She was just a gawky young teenager, who’d seen – and probably done – more than her years.

"I suggest you go on home," the cop said and shepherded her out the door.

Meanwhile, the other cop had been standing over Johnny while he gathered some things together and shoved his bare feet into some battered, old army boots.

"Before you go, I want the keys," I demanded.

"Don' 'ave ‘em," Johnny answered back.

"Where are theyn?"

"Dunno.  Natty's got 'em.  Door was open."

"Come on, you.  Get going."  The cop pushed Johnny towards the door.  "This lady doesn't want you round here no more, you hear?  Don't make us come again, okay?"

"Whatever." 

Johnny thumped down the stairs and out of the building, not bothering to close the street door behind him.  He whistled as he sauntered nonchalantly down the street.  Gotta keep up the cool, man.  Yeah!

The cops took a last look around and then departed, leaving Wim and I standing amidst the mess.

When we got home, I called Natasha's mother.  Her phone number was on Natasha's #rental #application.  When she answered, I told her about the state of the apartment and asked her if she could exert some authority over her darling son, Johnny.

Mrs. Fluff was very apologetic.  "I just can't do anything with that boy," she said.  "He does his own thing, you know?  I'll tell him not to go there no more, but . . ." she trailed off.

"Okay," I said, "You do that, but where is Natasha?"

"She’s, uh, away," came the vague answer, "but I'll get up there this weekend and clean the place up, I promise you."

That weekend, Allen and I paid the apartment a visit.  Mrs. Fluff had just arrived.  She looked around at the beer bottles and ashtrays and sighed. 

"I'm sorry about this.  Natasha's a good girl, you know. She's had some troubles . . . But, Johnny . . ."  She shook her head mournfully and raised her hands helplessly.

"Well, I'm glad you're here," I said.  "I see you have a key.  Can I have it, please?  You can latch the door when you leave."

 

The next thing I had to deal with was my new #tenant, Miz James, moving in downstairs, a few days after the first of the month.  This would give me some time to paint the apartment.  However, when the threesome left at the end of the month, there proved to be a lot of cleaning required.

The apartment looked different now that it was empty – or, I should say, virtually empty.  The three had very kindly left behind some moldy mattresses for me to dispose of, and all the dirt and damage was starkly revealed in the cruel light of day.  I’d really only ever seen the place in the evenings.  Electric light and twilight evidently do a lot of mellowing.

A score of little repairs awaited Wim's attention, and I gritted my teeth and started to clean.  I found damp cat litter and poop in one of the bedrooms, and the #stove and #refrigerator were filthy.  It took me several hours to scrape off the burnt-on lumps, while Allen gamely attacked the grease-caked oven.  

The bathroom wasn’t much better -- a thicker, blacker, more furry ring around a #bathtub than I had ever seen before, and there was pee and something else in the #toilet.  A final snub?

Anyway, to make a long story short, all this #cleaning, #repairing and #removing was taking time, which I was rapidly running out of.

Miz James kept calling to ask if me I had painted yet, and I kept telling her not yet.  Eventually, when it came to the point where I would have to paint throughout the night in order to get it done, I reluctantly accepted Miz James's offer of painting the place herself.  At least I would provide the paint.  I didn’t really want her doing the painting and maybe asking for a reduction in #rent in return but it seemed I now had no choice.  However, other than Miz James praising the shade of white paint I had chosen, no more was said on the subject.

Three days after she moved in, Miz James phoned me in a tizzy.

"We got #fleas!" she announced dramatically.

CHAPTER THREE: House Hunting Continued - 51 Manson Street

At the next meeting at the Bargain Registry, we were joined by Kirsty the mortgage coordinator. Gershwin's ebullience seemed slightly diminished because he had to sit back and let her do the talking. His dark eyes flickered restlessly back and forth between us, and I could see it was difficult for him to stay mute. His plump body, filling a chair in a corner of the room, constantly twitched and shifted as his seething energy sought release. One minute he was wiping his damp brow, the next minute he was clearing his throat or fidgeting with pencils. The room fairly hummed with the vibrations emanating from his corner.

After taking down all the details of my earnings, assets, and debts, Kirsty performed some calculations and pronounced me fit for a mortgage up to $50,000. A slow hissing came from Gershwin's corner as he literally let off emotional steam. I realized this must have been a tense moment for him. If I wasn’t approved for a mortgage, he would lose a client.

He burst forth from his chair, like a black retriever at a duck shoot, straining against his leash, ready to bolt into action to retrieve a fallen bird. His Cheshire-cat grin shone out in full force. Now I was approved, the search for a house could begin in earnest.

Kirsty got up to leave, and I edged out the door with her before Gershwin could entangle me in another verbal diatribe. I didn’t feel up to it that night.

"I'll be in touch," he called after me as I got into my car.

Sure enough, a few days later, Gershwin's supremely self-confident tones oozed over the phone lines as he told me he had a property that might interest me in the City of Schemmerhorn, twenty-five minutes’ drive away.

"I know, I know," he continued quickly, before I could say a word. "You're not really keen on Schemmerhorn, but this house is in your price range, it already has tenants, and needs hardly any work."

After an endless procession of run-down properties, each with some major defect to be remedied, or requiring significant electrical upgrading, I thought I might as well take a look. We arranged to meet at the house the following evening.

I took Wim along with me, ready to spot any structural defects, damp spots, or upgrading requirements. It was a freezing February night, and the roads were icy. The fifteen-mile journey took us forty minutes of careful driving through suburban neighborhoods. All sensible bodies were inside in the warm, and the streets were deserted. A little snow sprinkled the ground, and with the lights twinkling from the windows of the houses, Manson Street appeared to be a rather pretty, typical American street.

My first impression of the house was a very favorable one. It had aluminum siding on the front, which wouldn’t need repainting every few years, and in the darkness I couldn’t make out the wooden siding on the sides that would need repainting quite soon.

Gershwin had warned the tenants that we were coming. I don’t know whether they had cleaned and tidied especially for the occasion, but the apartments didn’t look too bad. The tenants of the first-floor apartment were three young adults in their early twenties: Melissa, her boyfriend Greg, and his brother Tom. Both men sported big muscles--most likely the result of working out on the variety of weight machines that were gently dripping oil onto the beige carpet of the dining room. Melissa, on the other hand, looked malnourished with a pale complexion and long, fair hair; she could have done with some of her roommates’ bulk. The three of them sat huddled together on a couch in the living room, watching us as we moved through the apartment.

The layout was typical of a great many American two-family houses: large living room at the front, large kitchen at the back, dining room and bathroom in the middle, and three smallish bedrooms down the right-hand side. The first-floor bathroom was extra large and boasted a big whirlpool bath and mirrored wall--quite fancy and a nice feature for attracting future tenants. Lamps bathed everything in a cozy glow and hid any slight defects. Wim prowled around poking into this and that, but came up with no major faults.

Behind the house lay a small square of straggly grass and a large, new, wooden deck--another nice feature. Beyond a wire fence at the end of the yard was a large graveyard; maybe not to everyone’s taste, but at least the neighbors behind were quiet.

We went back through the apartment and said our goodbyes and thank yous to Melissa, Greg, and Tom. They didn’t seem to have moved at all and looked back at us with blank expressions, though Melissa managed a feeble smile.

Out the door and in the next we went, and up the stairs to the second floor. In response to our knock, the door was opened by a young black girl with the biggest Afro hairdo I’d ever seen. She invited us in amiably enough and then retreated to the couch--apparently the place to sit while people looked over ones home. Three young children hung around her knees, ranging in age from about three to six years old.

We followed the girl into the living room to take a look at a little square room that opened off it over the downstairs hallway. A big door led out onto a small balcony over the front porch. Wim went through to check it out.

We headed back through the living room. I assumed the young girl was Natasha Fluff, the tenant, but apparently she was a friend of hers, for at that moment Natasha was fast disappearing into a bedroom leading off of the dining room. As the door closed behind her with a definite click, we looked expectantly to the friend, but she offered no explanation.

The rest of the apartment was nicely furnished and looked clean enough. The layout was basically the same as the first floor, except for the extra room at the front, a smaller bathroom, and a larger dining room. It also had brown-painted wood floors instead of carpet. An expensive-looking flowered rug lay on the living room floor in front of a huge entertainment center that took up a large chunk of wall next to the little square room. The dining room sported an octagonal glass and bamboo dining table, and a tall, octagonal fish tank bubbled away by the window.

At the back of the kitchen was a door with stairs that led down to the basement and up to the attic that stretched the whole length of the house. Natasha used the attic for drying clothes, as evidenced by the washing lines hanging between the rafters. Wim, of course, had to check it out.

I can’t believe I forgot to mention Gershwin throughout our tour of the house. He, of course, led us from room to room, babbling on unceasingly about this and that and assuring us that this was a good buy. The entire house had apparently been recently refurbished by a guy from Long Island, who was in the business of buying old houses, doing them up, and then selling them. I think the reason I forgot to mention Gershwin was that Wim and I just tuned him out. We absorbed ourselves in looking at everything, and Gershwin's chatter was merely background noise. We only needed to grunt the occasional acknowledgment to keep him happy.

After looking over the house, I felt almost as enthusiastic as our chatty realtor. I think Wim experienced a sense of déjà vu as I prattled excitedly all the way home, though he did admit that the house seemed solid and the floors didn’t slope. We’d seen so many older houses where the floors sloped noticeably.

The next day, I called Gershwin. He answered the phone with his usual exuberance.
“Schemmerhorn is quite a bit further than I really wanted, but I think I’m interested in buying the house,” I told him. “After all, the fact that there are tenants already in residence and the good condition of the house will kind of compensate for the extra distance, I hope.”

“You bet! I’ll get right on to the seller and start the ball rolling,” Gershwin promised.

I didn't think to wonder if the fact that the house was on Manson Street might be a bad omen.