I live in an “accessory dwelling unit” crammed into a backyard situated in the middle of everybody’s personal shit. There’s a stern matriarch to my left, living with her adult offspring and pets. Surrounded by hardy women, the only son is desperate for guy time. This 55-year-old lumbering carpenter’s attempts to befriend me were as fruitful as mounting a stranger in a bar. He asked if he could live in my garage — I imagined him jerking off in my studio space. No thank you.
My tiny studio cabin sits behind a two-car garage split from the house to my right by a tall wooden fence. In that house, resided adopted children — two girls and a menace: Umberto.. Without a male role-model, he was pure trouble. Initially, I pitied him and he learned my name, which I always regretted. With it, he wielded real power from behind that fence. “DAY-VED”…“DAY-VED”…“DAY-VED” (Fuck.) “What!?”. Umberto would throw things over the fence just to have me play fetch. If I wouldn’t respond, he’d upgrade his assault to throwing huge Meyer lemons. That six-year-old-son-of-a-bitch ruined my fledgling tomatoes, tore window screens, and shattered multiple ceramic works I had made.
My so-called “yard” is a precious three-foot strip of sunlight along the fence, but I’d rather be a pale Smeagol whenever Umberto was trolling outside. It’s no better indoors. Right beside my bedroom is a hoard of hardware hodgepodge. I don’t care to know my neighbors, but his wife shrieks “Raoul” on a daily basis. This proud piece of work does not have an indoor voice. His voice annoys from any part of his house, and he only gets louder when he’s on speakerphone. Often, the weather is nice so he BLASTS Mexican polka on his portable boom tool for the neighborhood to enjoy. He likes to whistle off-key while committing noisier yard work, or he simply disappears for days. To my relief, the batteries slowly die in the evening so I can sleep.
Good news, the annoying children move away, and in moves Maxime. A quiet french guy with a cat and a bad habit. He’d suck handfuls of cigarettes every day, alternating between the back and front stoop. My three-foot strip turned into an Eden where I could delight. Maxime and I never spoke or introduced each other, and it was great! The first garbage day, I rolled his bins out for him and the next day, my bins were put back. This unspoken neighborly act of kindness continued and my rental started feeling more habitable.
Eventually carpenter lone bone out front was joined by an even larger man in another car across the street. He was breeding pit-bulls in his 90’s mustang. It turns out they were cousins. On a hot summer day, I witnessed the man shirtless, undulating as he scrubbed his car down with an impressive tattoo across his belly that read “HARD”. They chatted about “guns and bitches”, liberating me from man-baby-sitting.
My neighbor Maxime was perfect. I appreciated him because he was scarcely seen or heard. Unlike Raoul behind me, who made his existence known to the world. Throughout the week as regular as junk mail, I hear a door open, an empty aluminum can rattle on concrete, the door shut closed. Then every week or two, I hear a stampede of empty beer cans clattering amidst the drone of a gas-powered leaf blower. I marvel at his ingenuity.
One time, Maxime parked his car recklessly far from the curb and the garbage bins were untouched. I thought it a bit odd. I discovered from our mutual landlord that Maxime had wanted to go to Las Vegas. While he was away livin’ it up, I was really enjoying my thriving yard. I’d enjoy my cappuccinos in the sunshine observing swaths of cute little metallic green flies swirling about. Even the matriarch’s cat came by to poop in my two by two-foot vegetable plot. The cat also left a dead mouse somewhere. I never found it, because it was on the other side of the fence, but hosing down the fence seemed to quench the odor. I developed a routine of watering the fence with my coffee in the morning.
One evening, a nephew from the matriarch’s house, Maurice (Not french) knocked on my door. He asked if I knew what was going on with my neighbor Maxime. “I think he’s on vacation,” I told him.
“Well…the police did a welfare check on him last night. They found him collapsed on the living room floor — bloated and melting into the floorboards.”
Bowels on the floor — now that’s a vacation.