Re-appeared: Disappeared neighbor.

Back at my last apartment, there was this nice (Mexican) guy who lived across the hall.

The apartment building was pretty big but you never saw anyone in the hallways, and the walls were pretty thick so you never heard anyone either, except maybe sometimes in the hallway if they were loud, you could hear them through your door.

So, a few times when I came home late at night, I could hear him drunkenly singing to the TV on, and it sounded like just him in his room.

Anyways, 2 years before I moved out – that’s like 3 years ago – this fatter (blonde) woman was waiting outside the main apartment building door when I came out, and she asked if I could let her in since she was trying to contact her friend, and when I asked questions to try to make sure it was a true story she was telling me, it turns out that she was the restaurant manager at the place where the (Mexican) guy worked, and he hadn’t shown up 2 days running without calling in or anything, and she was coming to check on him since it was totally unlike him.

He wasn’t there, she left a note, and I never saw him again.   One day the door to the apartment was open, and the (Bosnian) building manager was there, and all the (Mexican) guy’s stuff was just there, he had left it all behind a TV and a nice radio and clothes and everything, and the building manager said in so many words that he had no idea what was going on, that  my neighbor had just left and moved.

So, the other weekend, I had gone to see a movie and caught up with a friend over a beer and was going home, and I see this late night pizza place open and I decide to go in and get some pizza, and there’s 3 guys standing out front, and I ask if it’s open, and it’s the employees smoking and 2 go to hustle back in to get me some pizza, and gradually me and the 3^rd guy recognize each other, and it’s the (Mexican) guy who used to live across the hall from me in my old building.

The conversation was odd since I had to ask around why he left so suddenly, and all he said was that he went to California for what he thought was a short visit and it turned out that he had to stay there and couldn’t make it back.

“I lost everything,” he himself brought up, and he said that he had less than a month left on his lease and he didn’t want to re-sign, but the landlord wouldn’t give him a month-to-month extension, and he didn’t even begin to want to ask about his stuff since he was worried they’d store it and charge him, so he just left it.

I then said it was too bad that we didn’t have each other’s cell numbers, since I could have helped him out.

(I do wonder why other friends of his didn’t help him out, or if he was just giving me a line.)

I told him about the fat blonde woman who stopped by from where he worked, and he was like, “That’s [lady’s name],” and he said that she was his manager and was also an EMT, and she had said she was worried about him from the appearance of the situation and so went to check on him.

He then said he had been back like a year and had a new apartment in a much less central, much cheaper neighborhood, and he said he felt like he was starting all over again.

He also brought up that he had thought of me when he was on the campus of Stanford with his sister, since that’s near where his mom lives, and he saw an alumni magazine and thought of me, since a few times for whatever reason my college alumni magazine had been left in his mailbox, and he had left it by my mailbox or by my door or whatever.

He said that, but I didn’t remember it at all, and I was suddenly struck by how it’s funny how people perceive and remember us.

After I ate the pizza and was leaving he was heading out the door with some take-out (to deliver?), and I said bye to him and said it was good to see he was back and know he was safe, since it was so odd when he left.

He said, “Thanks, thanks,” like he was trying to shut me down and keep me off of that topic, since the 2 other employees were near now, almost like he didn’t want them overhearing.

The guy also seems like the nicest, most straightforward guy in the world, not "dodgy" at all, to use a word that some Irish people I know often use.  That makes the whole thing even stranger.