Green vines decorate the front gate between the two four-story wings of the white 1920s building on the corner of Sunset and Fairfax. Palm trees sway around the front fountain in nostalgia of John Barrymore who lived on the first floor and James Dean who visited his Spanish lover. Fire escapes zigzag down the columns of tall windows, bespeaking the decades of cigarette conversations over billboards and double-decker stargazers.
I was the building manager. After graduating from college, I wanted to write a novel, and decided to forgo the typical 9-5 jobs, but I still needed to support myself in the process. Turns out that every apartment building of 16 units or more in California requires a residential manager. So that was me, opening the manager’s box in the lobby, while straddling a bicycle– I was going to bike to the bank, and then ask my supervisor for gas mileage reimbursement so I could make 56.5 cents for pedaling each mile and pretend I got a salary.
#
What impressed me about all the residents in the building was, first of all, that they were artists but they could afford their rent without doing property management, or any kind of work, for that matter. They were around, late mornings, walking their dogs. The only time I saw them hurrying was to meet friends for drinks or out for dates. They drove BMWs, pick-up trucks, and sports cars. And they each turned in a couple thousand a month on rents- that I collected for the landlord.
There was Dave (305, rent $1875 for a studio), the comedian. I knew he was passing my door when I heard the smack of his flip-flops down the hallway. Then, the chime of a little bell followed him. Finding the best dog ophthalmologist for his poodle’s cataracts seemed to be his main occupation. I had him sign his lease in the hallway while I left the door ajar and went looking for a pen. “You know, professional boundaries.” Whenever I’d run into him thereafter, he’d draw an imaginary line between us with his hand, and smiling, say, “Boundaries.”
There was Tom (110, rent $2300 for a large studio), the lanky, tattooed Scottish music video director. A week after he moved in, I was in the back alley when I saw his apartment light up with flashes. I thought it was a fire, but he was doing a photo shoot. He paid his rent online, which required exorbitant convenience fees, but he never complained about them. Instead he complained that his refrigerator “sounds like a jet engine about to fucking take off.” When I checked his fridge, there was no food in there, just stacks of 8mm film cans, and we spent hours measuring the decibels of the refrigerator moan.
There were more- Harrison (204, rent $2600 for 1 bedroom) who was recently on a national baking show, Nathan (207, 2400 for junior 1 bedroom), while signing his lease, engaged me in an hour-long philosophical conversation about the warning plaque that “this building contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer.” There was big Sam (307) who had a recurring role on TV as a truck driver. Whenever I saw him in the evenings, he was drunk, trying to pawn off a leftover box of steak from a fancy restaurant, bemoaning, “the craft of acting is lost.” He begged me for the code to the roof alarm, saying that since they installed it six months ago he’s been angry all the time, denied his special place. When he had a leak he texted me, “I expect the whole ceiling to fall through before too long. Though I can be dramatic.”
I devoted myself to the building, or rather, my residents. After full days of ordering ceiling fans, announcing water shut offs, and unclogging bathtubs- my mileage reimbursement would only stretch so far to pay for groceries, but I found comfort in knowing I was surrounded by successful bachelors. If I never made money with my writing, I could marry one of them.
#
Julian lived on the top floor. He fit the qualifications – he paid his rent and supposedly, he was a drummer, but I never saw him going to work. I never saw Laura either, the other name on his lease, so I figured he was single.
Julian gave notice that he was moving out. On the morning of his move out, I went upstairs to his apartment to do an inspection. I did three sets of loud knocks before I turned the key in the lock and nudged the door open, then gagged. In the kitchen, there was a litter box with rotting cat poop and then a line of poop that stretched all the way from the box to the counter. But where was the cat? The cat was long gone. Meanwhile, swaths of fur floated in the humid breeze. I tiptoed around, the floor submerged under piles of plastic bags full of empty soda and beer cans. In the living room, amidst heaps of papers, clothes, and books, I saw two naked legs on top of crumpled brown sheets. Flies swarmed above. The hairy white legs scissored sideways. When he moved, it felt like the contents of the entire room rustled because there was no extra space. I had been holding my breath for so long, and was afraid I’d gasp for breath and give myself away. I quickly closed the door.
The next day, I checked again, and the apartment was in the same state. I called Julian. “Did you move out?” I said. “Yeah,” he said. “The apartment needs to be empty,” I said, “Otherwise they’ll charge you from your security deposit.” “That’s kind of what I was planning on,” he said in a self-pitiful tone, followed by an abrupt laugh. “Well, you can at least save yourself some money by dropping off the keys,” I said. “Thank you, I’ll do it tonight.” The next day, the keys were in the manager’s box. That completed Julian’s move out- and also left me responsible for emptying his apartment.
#
The maintenance man, Manuel stood in the center of the apartment looking like a tiny mole at the base of a mountain. When he couldn’t get into the bathroom, he busted down the door. He discovered quarter-inch hairs covering the sink, as if it were growing a beard. I considered putting on a space suit to get in there and help him, but instead, I used the skills of a Stanford grad. I turned to Craigslist.
I posted in the Free Section: “Free dresser, books, flea-infested futon, art, clothes, basket, kitchenware – must be sterilized (West Hollywood)”
#
Jeff was the first to arrive. He came for the moody art.He took a canvas that depicted a desolate island of trees under a grey sky. He also snagged a book titled, “Adult Children of Alcoholics.”
Then, a woman named Kristina called. She said she wanted the dresser, and begged me for reassurance that no one else would take it while she sat for an hour in heavy traffic across two freeways. When she arrived, she left the car with the engine running, because she didn’t want to put money in the meter, and followed me through the front gate into the courtyard. She wore a baseball cap and yoga pants. She wasn’t wearing make up except for powder that didn’t conceal her pockmarks. Behind her, there was a tiny straw-colored dog with a bandana collar.
As we walked past the fountain in the entryway, she mentioned that her rapper-name was “Sister Tina.” She proceeded to Google herself on her phone and scroll through the random results as if this proved her fame. It seemed like she was giving me her qualifications so that I could give her free stuff.
She’d moved here from New Jersey a few months ago, got married and divorced, and she found a huge house right away for less than $500 a month.
“Where is it?” “Oh, South Central.” “Isn’t that where all the gangs are?” Her dog, the size of my foot, made it up four flights of stairs with us. “Yeah, people have been telling me that. But I’m not moving.” When I opened the door to the apartment, there was that smell again. The tiny creature darted inside.
“Are you sure the dog’s okay up here?” I said. “She’s fine, she goes where I go. Oh Muffin,“ Kristina called out and marched across the littered apartment to get to the dresser. “Come here, Muffin,” I said, trying to guide the dog away from the litter. “She doesn’t have a name yet,” Kristina corrected me, “I’ve only had her a week, but I call her like fifty different things.” As Kristina lifted the dresser, she found a stack of porn DVDs and asked if she could have that, too. “Sure, take whatever you want,” I said.
“I don’t watch porn,” she said. “I’m a Porn Star fashion designer. I want to see what they’re wearing.”
I offered to call Manuel to help her, but Kristina insisted on taking out the dresser herself. Then she stopped, “You’re getting rid of all this stuff? Can I look around?” “Sure, take whatever you want,” I said. She put the dresser down, and wandered into the kitchen. She dug her hand deep into a box, and to my surprise, it resurfaced- holding bras. “For some reason, I’m so curious about these bras,” she said, sifting through them. “But these are for tiny titties.” I closed my eyes. I was getting woozy from the stench as Kristina continued to claw her way through the boxes. “You want this? I can tell you want it,” she said for each item she came upon. There was a theme going on here - horse dolls, equestrian helmets, and polo scene sketches. I assured her, that no, I did not want the horse-head shaped lamp. “Oh what’s this?” she said, opening a tiny container labeled “Louis Vuitton.” She pulled out a tiny leather pouch. “Oh a ring.Can I have it?” “Sure, take whatever you want,” I said, like a chant now. “Really?” she said, sliding her finger through a ring. The band resisted at first, and then finally hopped over the hump of her knuckle. A card with gold embossing fell to the floor, and I picked it up. It read: “Original date of purchase. Weight of gold. Diamond 18K.” I stopped and turned back to her. “Actually-” I started to say. “Look,” she said, stretching out her fingers to show me, “It feels so nice to have a ring again. It makes me feel wanted.” “Actually it’s not really mine to give you-“ “Is this about the money? Do you need money?” she said. “Doesn’t everyone need money?” I said.
Besides, I was looking at a woman who drove across two freeways to get a free dresser. Wasn’t she the desperate one? I was the philanthropist here.
“Because if this is about money,” she continued, “Just tell me how much you need, and I’ll have my man come give it to you next week.”
I imagined a black sedan pulling up to the side of our building and a tinted window sliding down halfway with cigar smoke coming out.
“No, it’s just that I need to find out the price first. If something is over $300, we have to report it,” I said. “You want it.” I started dialing the phone number that was on the bottom of the card. “Louis Vuitton San Francisco,” the voice said. “Hi, I found a ring and I was wondering if you could tell me how much it-” I started to say, when I got distracted with Kristina, flapping her hand toward me. “No, no, no,” she mouthed. “You don’t say that. Hang up now.” “What?” the voice said, as if she was about to alert security. I hung up. Apparently Kristina was an expert at calling Louis Vuitton, and I was doing it wrong. “You want the ring, just tell me how much you want, my man will come give it to you.” That didn’t sound like the professional advice I’d been hoping for. I dialed again. “Louis Vuitton San Francisco,” another voice said. “Hi, my sister gave me her ring, and I’m wondering what the ring is worth,” I said. Kristina flapped her hand at me again. “No, no, no, no,” she mouthed. “That’s not how you do it.Give me the phone.” I acquiesced, handing her the phone. “Hello,” she said, “Yes, my sister found my ring, it’s gold with little balls, and a small diamond,” she said. I cheered her on. She was so good. That was the perfect description. “How much do your rings go for? I mean, if I wanted to buy a ring, what would be the average price? Or give me a range. Three hundred dollars?Two thousand dollars?” She clenched her knuckles around the phone and leaned down to raise her voice into it, “I’m calling you as a customer,” Kristina shouted into the phone, “You work for Louis Vuitton and you can’t even tell me how much your rings cost? It’s a simple question.” I hadn’t detected it before, but her Jersey accent was really coming out as she repeated, “I’m calling you as a customer.” The way she squeezed the phone and shouted “customer” scared me. “She put me on hold,” Kristina said, handing the phone back to me. She resumed digging through boxes. I suddenly got really nervous. I knew there was something I needed to get out of this situation- I wanted the ring, but I wanted her to like me. My fingers trembled as I looked up other Louis Vuitton stores. “I’m going to go look things up. I’ll be right back,” I said. I needed to leave the room, but once I was out the doorway, I realized that she still had the ring on her finger. She could run out with it. “Don’t worry, I know you want it, I won’t go anywhere,” Kristina said, as she continued rummaging. I made the call from the hallway. “Louis Vuitton Los Angeles, this is Terry.” This time I integrated what I’d learned from Kristina’s teachings. Be a customer. You have tons of money, I told myself. You like to buy designer rings. “Hi Terry. My friend has a ring I really like, and I want to buy a ring just like it. I was wondering if you could help me find a similar model and tell me how much it would cost?” “Certainly…”
#
I went back to the apartment and Kristina was gone. I heard clamoring down the stairs, and found her in the lobby, surrounded by the entertainment set and piles of clothes. She stood there, waiting, proving her loyalty to me by still being there.
“It’s worth $2,650 at the least,” I said, in a whisper.
“We’re going to need oil,” she said, and didn’t make any mention of “her man.”
Oil?
I considered the fact that Kristina could disappear before I got down. I told myself I didn’t care, I was the building manager, doing my job, and I wasn’t responsible for it. She’d earned it, in a way, because she’d been brave putting her hands in mystery poop boxes. But what had I earned? After all, she lived in South Central. I lived in West Hollywood.
I could hear Kristina calling her dog. There were elegant stairs in each wing of the building, and there was a corner back door. I could hear her voice travel along the creaky wood bannisters from the stairwell in each wing of the building, and then I heard the door slam downstairs as she went outside walked around the back dumpsters. Her shouts of “Muffin,” got progressively more frantic. I encountered Muffin on the third floor landing in front of my apartment. I grabbed oil from inside my apartment, scooped up warm little Muffin in the other, and ran down the stairs.
Kristina kissed the dog all over, saying, “This dog is my life.” “Here’s the oil…” I said, holding the bottle. “Let’s do this now,” she said, and as soon as she put the dog down, Muffin shot out of sight. Kristina didn’t seem to notice.
She took the bottle from me, doused her finger in the oil and pushed. The finger turned red. She clamped down with her teeth.
“It won’t come off,” she let her hand fall down, defeated. “Maybe just wriggle it back and forth?” I said. “Here,” she stuck her hand out with her fingers stretched flat and looked away, saying, “Pull it off.” “Me?” “Yeah. Pull as hard as you can,” she said. “I don’t want to break your finger.” “Just do it fast,” she pushed the ring as far as it would go on the purple bundles of flesh. She was sacrificing herself for me, and the worst part was, I was going to help her.
I imagined a pawnshop where they do this kind of thing all the time- and in the back-alley a surgeon waits to saw off ladies’ fingers for rings.
I pulled, squeezed, and pulled again, until, with a little pop, the ring came off. It fell on the lobby floor and landed under the mailboxes. When I looked up, Kristina was gone. I was worried that she was leaving all the stuff in the lobby. I picked up the ring. My ring, and went down the path where she was shaking her wrist and squeezing her finger.
“Are you okay? Did your finger break?” I said, exaggerating the concern in my voice. I kept my distance, in case she now hated me. “No I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said. I suddenly felt inordinately indebted to her. I insisted on carrying the dresser down the entryway, past the front fountain. Her small black car was waiting, vibrating with plumes of exhaust. This was the first time I noticed how small her car was, and felt ashamed of my greed yet again. It was a flattened two-door like the 1980s car in “Back to the Future.”
She got in through the trunk, climbed over the subwoofers buried in the pit, and took one half of the back seat down, but the other half would not go down. I called Manuel, who tried to get the rest of the back seat to fold, but it would not budge. Kristina resorted to laying down on her side and karate kicking the back of the seat, the way they teach in self-defense classes to kick at a rapist when you’re on the floor.
“There was a guy who came to take some art this morning – he had a pick-up truck. Do you want me to call him?” I said. “I don’t like asking men for help,” Kristina said, kicking harder. The seat went down.
She now had both a broken finger and a broken backseat. The dresser slid in over the subwoofers and poked between the front and passenger seats. Kristina piled in the other items and surprisingly, everything fit. She kissed Manuel, and proposed that we all go out for margaritas sometime. His face reddened, and his usual stoic expression was replaced by a grin as he said, “I get off work at 5,” but Kristina was already slamming the car door.
“Hey,” Kristina said, holding the remaining porn DVDs in one hand and clasping my wrist in the other. “I’m sorry about the ring,” I said. “No - look me in the eye,” she said.
I looked at her, feeling really badly. But I still didn’t want to give her back the ring. “Thank you for all that you’ve given me,” she said. All the objects in her car were somehow worth more in spirit than the ring I had in my pocket.
In the passenger seat, Muffin maintained her balance on a food processor, as if she were on the edge of a cliff. She didn’t seem fazed by the fact that she’d spent hours with me and hadn’t taken the most valuable object in that room. I didn’t understand, other than maybe she really liked me, or as a minor celebrity herself, saw the potential artistic celebrity in me.
“Bye Kristina, or should I call you Tina or Sister Tina?” I said. “Not Sister Tina,” Kristina said, diving into the driver seat. She put her hand on the gearshift. “We’ll hang out,” she said.With that, she and Muffin, her renegade at the sails, were headed back to the freeways.
#
I went through the remaining boxes. I found: Wedding invitations. An album of photographs labeled “Honeymoon,” of Hawaii landscapes. I found Laura’s diary, so she did exist. She was pretty typical; the type of newlywed that was afraid of Julian cheating, obsessed with losing weight, happy with her new Mercedes Benz, and who gave up on journaling after about 10 pages. An hour later, I was surprised to see that I had a text message from Kristina, who, in my mind, had disappeared forever: “Omg my trunk window shattered.”
#
I was going to offer to help her, but actually, I didn’t want to see Kristina again. She’d witnessed me in a state that I had to hide. No one could ever know that I kept the ring. I imagined losing my apartment, Kristina being called to testify about the manager who didn’t tell the landlord about unclaimed valuables. They would find out that I wasn’t a building manager, at heart, that I was struggling to look as successful as everyone else in the building.
#
I stood in Julian’s apartment with the last two of the Craigslist vultures. The piles were dwindling, and I was determined to get the rest cleared out by the end of the day. One man huffed off declaring, “Why would I want women’s clothes?” “Did I falsely advertise in the free section?” I asked the remaining Craigslister. His name was Darren, and he wore thick rubbery pants. Sweat trickled down his goatee, which was long and tied together in a scraggly ponytail under his chin. He did not respond. He had dishware, a juice compressor, and other clothes in a compact bulk on his dolly. He’d done this before. He was staring at what I had advertised as the “Flea-infested futon.” “This isn’t going to fit in the elevator,” I said. The elevator was built earlier in the 20th century, when people were apparently shorter. It had adobe tile flooring, one long panel that slid open at each floor, and a Charleston-like hop to let you know you’d arrived.
I left to wash my hands for the tenth time that hour and call professional movers. They said they’d charge $500 to haul out a futon from the top floor. When I came back, Darren was gone. 410 was empty.
When I went down to the lobby I found, Tom, the Scottish music video director, walking on an imaginary tightrope, placing one foot in front of the other, along the width of the green flea-infested futon. Then Darren appeared next to him, and they both stood with their backs to the futon as if they were about to sit down.
“No-” I said, but they were already sitting. I winced. “It would be nice to have a futon,” Tom said, extending his arm across the backing. “Name a price, any old price,” Darren said. “I don’t know,” Tom said. “One hundred?” Darren said while Tom scratched his head. Should I have told Tom know that he had just as much right to the futon as Darren did? Or was the futon Darren’s now, since Darren had taken it down four flights of stairs? I left, trusting them to fend for themselves. As I returned to my apartment, my phone alerted with another text message, this time from Sam: “Out front, there’s a guy with a goatee loading a couch onto his pickup truck. Got the license plate.”
#
I posted the ring for sale, but couldn’t sell it. I never heard from Julian, not that night, and not in the months that followed. The monetary value of the ring was minimal compared to the luxury of being able to just leave the keys, close the door, and walk away from all that shit.
Meanwhile, I was told by the landlord that I couldn’t leave my apartment. I was expected to be at home 40 hours per week. At night, I went to the grocery store and tried to make a meal out of the samples, crackers and cheese. I was still hungry.
I saw Dave on the landing between our floors. “Boundaries,” he said. He seemed to think the joke wasn’t old. Then he invited me to come into his apartment for a drink. I accepted. I sat on his stool, and when I salivated over his sandwich, he gave me some. I saw the screenplay pages on his desk and as he talked about his agent, I hoped that Dave would offer me an opportunity. To co-write a screenplay? Bring me along to the next pilot? He didn’t. I didn’t ask. It’s maybe the opposite of entitlement- it seems too cliché to want to be a successful writer, to need money to live, that I was too embarrassed to ask. Too afraid of appearing obvious and desperate. Instead, I followed him to the bedroom, where he showed me the part of his floor where his chair had rubbed out the wood, and asked me if I could get the dent repaired. It was 8PM, and I realized that I was still working, even though I couldn’t pay for my dinner.
That’s when I conceded.
“Yes,” I told myself, like I should have told Kristina, “I do need more.”