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.

Waiting on celebrities.

The other week when one of my academic mentors was in town, we went out to the big tourist trap area to some (new) bars to go get beers, and not only was there the twice-weekly fireworks that night, but the patio bars turned out to be pretty sweet, and we hit three of them up and just hung out and had beers and sat out in the summer night.

At the very last one, a chain restaurant named after a celebrity, I was chit-chatting with the (black) waitress a bit (a taller woman with golden-brown skin and a fro dyed in places to match), and just as my teaching mentor got back from the restroom, she was like, “I would work here anyday, I love it, I’ve been in the high-class restaurants and I’ve been in the low-class restaurants, and the high-class restaurants are the worst, people have money and they think they can do anything.”

“You ever serve anyone famous?”, I was like.

“A few times,” she was like.

The first time was when she was working in Cleveland years ago at a really nice restaurant, and LeBron James comes in.

“Oh, I’ve always kind of liked him,” I was like.

“He is an asshole,” she was like.

As she told it, she comes up to get his order, "And he was like, 'Do you know who I am?'.  And I said to him, ‘Do you know who *I* am?  *I* am a single mother with five children and just this job, and I *still* don’t put up with bullshit like that.’  Then I went to the manager and told him to get a new girl on the floor or I was going to do something, and he did, but he still wanted me as his waitress, even after that.”

“Especially after that,” I was like.  “To show that he had the money and the power and could do that.”

She seemed to agree, though she was a little distracted from re-lived anger.

“Anyone else?”, I was like.

“Beyonce’s mother,” she was like.  “She’s the worst, just picky picky picky, nothing’s ever good enough for her.”

“Where’d you serve her?”, I was like.  “Ohio?”.

“That was when I was in California, a few times.”

                                                                                                                        

I then asked about Beyonce, and she was like, “She was cool, she realized her mom was that way, and she just kept rolling her eyes and trying to calm her down, every time they came in.”

I mentioned that a waitress I know had waited one time on Michelle Obama’s mother and had a decent little conversation, and a year later Michelle Obama's mother had been in the same restaurant and remembered the waitress’s name and everything.

“Oh yeah, they’re cool people,” she was like.  “Their daughter was just at [a music festival the past weekend in the city] just walking around and stuff.”

Workplace Crisis: Legal Documents

The other day my one Greek student who’s a lawyer was apologizing for when I gave him a phone call to confirm a lesson that day, that he was brusque.

As he explained it, a co-worker had come into his office and gone “bananas” not only because of some unexpected legal action by drug companies in their class action case against them for over-marketing opioids, but also because of some reporter for a national publication calling them for documents on top of that, and just as he was thinking, “That Greek lesson is *not* going to happen today,” I called.

“Funny thing is, too,” he was like, “That reporter, we call him about the documents, and he had been in a bike accident and was just out of surgery, and he was on opioids!”

Katy Perry concert (1 of 2): The day after.

My one Czech literature friend insists on calling the “?!” punctuation an “interrobang” (I have no idea where she got that phrase).

The day after I got scalped tickets to the Katy Perry concert, the song “Firework” was running through my head, and I texted a favorite lyric to a couple friends, including her.

She replied –

You’re still at the concert INTERROBANG!!!!!!

. . .

Neighborhood disturbance: Catfight.

The other week I was packing up my re-usable canvas bags to go get groceries and heard these 2 young girls screaming at each other from down the street, and the next thing I know I hear a few sirens and I see from my dining room window an EMS van parked out down the street.

As I step outside to head to the grocery store, I see this young (Mexican-American) guy walking from that direction and asked him what was up, and he said there was some sort of fight, but he walked past on the sidewalk after it happened and really wasn’t sure what happened.

At that point, my one drummer neighbor steps out, and is like, “Dude, what was that?”, and when I said some kind of fight, he was like, “Yeah, sounded like some lowlife shit.”

Then, he turned to the young kid, who had this big black backpack on, and was like, “Dude, is that a violin?!”, and the kid started saying yes, that he plays in his high school orchestra but also a mariachi band started by his 8^th-grade conductor, and he was heading to that rehearsal now.

“No way!”, I was like.  I then told him that that was super cool that he was playing in 2 totally different types of musical ensembles, and that if he enjoyed it, he should keep it up.

(I find the mariachi ensemble particularly cool and impressive.)

“Thanks,” he was like.

My drummer neighbor then began telling him about jam sessions he had, and that he was welcome to come.

“We just sit around and play,” he was like.  “What kind of music you all do?”

. . .

The week before that, I was working from home and went out to get the mail after lunch, and since it was a windy day, I collected some trash that had blown on the patch of grass in front of the house, and I then hear a voice from the first floor window, and it’s my drummer neighbor.

“Good job, dude,” he was like, “I did that last week.”

He was daydrinking.

Saw my old (Croatian) landlady: She had a bad year.

The other week when I was biking up to the beach I saw an older woman walking slowly with a cane, and since she kind of looked like my old (Croatian) landlady from behind, I slowed down to check if it was her and then stopped to talk with her when I found out it was her.

I had heard from a friend in the building that she had been battling cancer the past year, and I had even asked about her a few weeks earlier, since I used to see her all the time walking around the park by the beach where I go…   My friend had said she wasn’t going out walking like that anymore, but she was getting out again, and she would sometimes see her in the very early afternoon just sitting out on a bench by the park entrance.

So, I asked my landlady how she was doing and said I hadn’t seen her for a while, and she told me about her cancer and her chemo and said she had “had a bad year.”

I tried to be realistically positive about how she lived in the same neighborhood as a very good hospital where she could get all her treatments, and she agreed.

I also asked her about her grandkids, to get her to focus on the positive.

As for her walking partners who I always used to see her with, she said that everything changed there very quickly; one walking partner who was 80 died, and the husband of the other was very sick, and she can’t walk anymore since she’s always busy doing things like washing his sheets.

“But that is life,” she was like.  “You live, and then you die.”

She was also saying she worries about her husband, since all he does is get up and “move from chair to another.”

“He is 80, and looks like 65,” she was like “But he needs to walk more, this kind of life is no good.”

She then added that he said he worked 65 years and doesn’t want to work anymore.

“And he leaves his dishes in the sink!”, she was like.  “Fine, you do not want to work, but I also am old and do not want to work, and everything falls on *my* head.”

She also said to say hi to my dad, who she had met when I moved in to my apartment 8 years ago… 

 He had brought up the fact that he was Hungarian, and they bonded.

Right now, I’m planning to get her a gift certificate to a local bakery, so she can use it for whatever they sell, or pastries and coffee with friends or family, or even for their little ice cream counter, to treat her grandkids.  I’m going to get the office address from my friends who still lives in the building and tuck it in a card and ship it out ASAP, I think it will cheer her up a little.

She’s very tough but looks thin and worn.  It’s hard to believe that my friend who saw her 6 months ago said it’s an improvement, that if you saw her then, you thought she wasn’t going to make it.

Neighbors: An older (Mexican) woman.

Two times during 1 week like a few weeks ago or so I saw this older (Mexican) woman in my neighborhood, a shorter wrinkled (brown) woman with short curly hair and sunglasses.

Each time I saw her, she had a red, white, and blue “Tecate” soccer jersey on, and the 2^nd time she was going over to a guy repairing a car in the street and they both spoke Spanish.