I'm a very patient man. My mother was fond of telling me and everyone she ever met that it took more than ten months for me to be born. And then she could never resist mentioning that when I finally did come into the world I nearly killed her because I was a breech baby and backed into it. As a result, backing into things has become a way of life for me.
Take my marriage for example. I was married once – reluctantly. Two times. Both ended badly. The second ended worse. Each one taught me a lesson – the first, that I could survive with less than I ever thought I needed, and the second, that I could get along with nothing at all. But it was the recent break up with my ex-fiancée, Naomi, that taught me the greatest lesson of all: Don't go off on a seven day business trip unless you are prepared to find your girlfriend Naomi sleeping with your landlord Steve when you come back.
I probably could have murdered the both of them and gotten away with it. No jury in the world would have convicted me if I had only reacted instinctively, then and there, and killed them both immediately without premeditation. A crime of passion.
And maybe I should have, but I didn't. Instead I waited for some explanation and listened patiently, impassively to Steve the Landlord, my former friend, when he made his case.
"Hey,” he told me from across the living room of what used to be our, Naomi‘s and my upstairs apartment in Steve’s two-family house, “you have to understand, I’m not the bad guy in all this."
Naomi never said another word to me. I’ve noticed that women tend to be like that – when they are done they are done. And from Naomi’s perspective there was no need to ever talk to me again. She had simply moved on with her life, when she moved everything out of our apartment and into Steve’s place while I was away and taken up residence downstairs. She even got to move her ruby-pearl Nissan Maxima from the street, where, as tenants, Naomi and I parked our cars, to the concrete driveway next to Steve's ebony Trans Am with the blackout windows.
In the nights following my return, it was strange and painful for me to listen to the muffled strains of our album, Paul Simon's Graceland, drifting up into the apartment through the un-vacuumed shag rug, while the ultra bass of Steve’s Bose speakers pounded the beat of "I Know What I Know," and vibrated the pictures on my walls, punctuating the sounds of Naomi's unrestrained passion under me, directly beneath my bed. It was then that I realized her name, Naomi, spelled backwards is I MOAN. But why had I never been aware of that before?
As upsetting as it was for me to go to bed alone each night, I adjusted – eventually. I even stopped crying and trying to use my pillow as a silencer for their lovemaking and as my surrogate life-partner and I began using the sleepless hours to plot my revenge. Of course, I could simply have blown out the pilot lights on the gas stove in the morning before I left the house and simply waited for Chuck the Mailman to ring once on the front doorbell and blow the place to smithereens. But that wasn't very creative, and besides, I liked Chuck. So I considered something slightly less dramatic and less obvious then a dark mushroom cloud of acrid smoke in the sky above a hole in the ground where Steve the Landlord’s house would have been. I needed a more subtle approach. Like Montressor, the Edgar Allen Poe character in “The Cask Of Amontillado,” who waited years for his revenge, burying alive his rival Fortunato behind a brick wall in the wine cellar, I bided my time and looked for my opportunity.
Steve's dearest possession, besides the recently acquired Naomi, of course, was the ebony Trans Am that he parked in his newly poured cement driveway and kept dust-free with a chamois glove applied to its gleaming surface every evening. And in an instant it occurred to me that I might be able to kill two lovebirds, as the saying goes, with one well placed stone. Not that I was planning to drop a cinder block out of the second story window through his windshield. Well, not at that time anyway. Instead, I went to the local Jiffy Lube and asked the mechanic to fill the jar I’d brought with used motor oil.
“Used oil? You want used oil?”
“The dirtier the better,” I said. “I need it to solve a sticky problem,” I explained, slipping him three bucks, which was enough to satisfy his curiosity.
Securing the oily jar in the trunk of my old Ford Probe under rags and behind the spare tire for safekeeping, I carried it back home.
The next morning I left the house earlier than usual, stumbling down the stairs so my departure couldn’t go unnoticed. Then, after I was sure that Naomi and Steve had left for work in their respective cars and were gone for the day, I doubled back to the house. I pulled out the jar, tip-toed up the driveway and dribbled just ten little black drops of oil in a careless pattern on the immaculate concrete, directly below where the Trans Am's oil pan came to rest.
And I waited.
For a while Steve didn't seem to notice, but as the days passed and I kept up my self-appointed routine, adding no more than ten drops each time, the circle widened, and gradually the oil stain grew into a dark Jackson Pollock on the pristine cement that couldn't be ignored. From behind my curtained window I watched Steve scrub down the spots with solvent and a broom and then crawl on the cement, poking his head under the chassis in an attempt to pinpoint his oil leak. He began parking the car in different places along the driveway and he even turned it around to face the street. Making a careful note of his previous nights’ parking spots, I simply left my newest deposits in the appropriate places the following morning when both of them were gone.
On several occasions Steve drove his Trans Am from the polka-dotted driveway back to the dealership, but no matter what they may have done to the car and at what cost, the mysterious oil problem persisted. In fact, it even got worse, when I upped my dribbling to twenty drops. And after another month the Trans Am disappeared completely from the driveway for three days. When it reappeared, after a costly major overhaul that included a new oil pan, the oil drip finally stopped. Unfortunately for Steve, a week after he got that problem under control, the Trans Am started leaving rusty looking deposits of red transmission fluid!
And still, like Montressor, I waited.
Next came the White-Out. Now here’s an interesting fact that I discovered. Not only can a properly placed daub of White-Out change a typographical error back to perfection, but also, when dropped from the second floor onto the top of any car, it looks remarkably like bird poop. However, I also learned, there is one major difference between the two seemingly similar substances. Hardened bird poop can be removed with some soap and water and a thumbnail applied vigorously to the spot; hardened White-Out baked in the sun can not! So soon the tops of both their cars looked like a flock of migrating seagulls had mistaken them for the bombing range on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.
Then it was Naomi's car-door-opening carelessness that began to make an unwanted impression on Steve, and his Trans Am. Little dings and dents and scratches, patches of ruby-pearl paint began to appear, marring the ebony surface of his car, and the damage on his finish corresponded exactly with the flecks of black paint on the door edge of Naomi’s Nissan, which is, for the record, IMOAN’s NASSIN spelled backwards.
In the evenings I listened to them argue from my space above the fray holding the touch-up paint applicators I had recently found at Auto Barn.
"Look what you did to my car!"
"I didn't do it!"
"I suppose I did it myself, to my own car!"
"Look what you did to my car!"
"That wasn't me. Unlike some people, I have respect for other people's property!"
I had to laugh when I heard Steve say that.
"You're an anal retentive asshole!"
"And you're a bitch!"
And so it went. And still I waited.
Of course I paid my rent on time by certified check, the first of every month, slipping it under Steve’s door to avoid any direct contact. And for the most part I was successful. We were like two warships passing in the night with hardly a shot fired. But sometimes our paths did cross.
“What are you doing?” Steve demanded when he yanked his door open and found me crouching close to the floor by the keyhole.
“That time of the month,” I said and handed him the check instead of slipping it in. “How’s it going? You look harried, Steve. You sleeping okay?” I added casually and smiled.
“Up yours!” He grabbed the check and slammed the door.
At night I calculated the growing rift in their relationship by the explosive arguments, the banging doors that had replaced Paul Simon and Naomi's moans, while I, overhead, played "The 1812 Overture" as an accompaniment.
In early June, Steve's prized Kentucky Blue Grass lawn, the one he had sprouted from seed, nurtured with expensive chemicals and tended with devotion for years, had a major set back. At first spots of withered yellow grass began to appear on the emerald lawn, like crude crop circles. And then dark brown patches sprang up wherever the grass died down.
"It might be fertilizer burn,” said the landscaper, a retired Air Force pilot and Vietnam vet who came at Steve’s first call.
I picked up snatches to their conversation from my window.
“Or a fungus, or grubs, or maybe a mole,” he said. “But–” He dropped down for a closer inspection. “–it looks more like some defoliant. Agent Orange. We used a lot of the stuff to kill off the jungles in Nam, so we could see Charlie and napalm his ass when he was out in the open." Then the landscaper scanned the vast brown wasteland that once was Kentucky Blue. He sniffed the ground, pulled a few withered blades of brown grass and tasted them. “Yep. An air-born defoliant most likely. Maybe one of your neighbors was trying to kill weeds and some of it drifted over into your yard."
I snorted and Steve looked up and saw me looking down on him. Our eyes locked just for a second and he flipped me the bird.
Of course none of the lawn guy’s suggested treatments worked, and slowly Steve's pride and joy took on the appearance of Chernobyl after the accident. In the end he paid the man a lot of money to dig out the old and re-sod the new, the entire yard, front and back.
"It's you, you bastard! I know it’s you!" Steve accused me the morning after the waste pipe in his wall burst from some mysterious blockage and the tile floor in his bathroom and kitchen were covered with two inches of gray water. "I want you out of my house!"
"But," I said, “I have a lease. Two more years.” I reminded him by waving a copy in the air. "So I guess you'll just have to wait. Unless, of course, you want to buy me out?"
Next it was the mail that gave them problems. A spate of unsolicited magazine subscriptions began arriving daily, everything from Hustler to Blue Boy, from S & M Swingers to Split Beaver, and a semi-weekly newsletter from NAMBLA - The National Man-Boy Love Association.
"But I didn't subscribe to any of these," Steve complained to Chuck the Mailman, who eyed him with suspicion.
"Until you cancel them I have to deliver them," Chuck said pulling another bundle from the back of his Jeep. Chuck had taken to wearing latex gloves whenever he handled Steve’s mail. "Neither rain nor sleet nor the other stuff. You know what they say, ‘The mail must go through.’ Even crap like this," he said with raised eyebrows before he handed over an issue of Out Of The Closet Pedophiles.
A short time after that, all mail deliveries abruptly stopped. Not mine – Naomi and Steve’s.
"What's happened to my mail? My bank statements? My bills?" Steve asked Chuck after a week with nothing passing through his slot.
"You stopped your mail delivery. I got a copy of the card that you filled out," Chuck said, dropping a bunch of letters into my box. "Since last week everything is being routed to your new address in Tahiti.”
"Tahiti?"
“You sure are a lucky guy. I always wanted to go to Tahiti and paint, but I can’t afford it on a mail carrier's salary. I hope you have a great life there. When do you leave?"
"Tahiti?"
I guess the stress was too much because that night Naomi and Steve had the biggest falling out and loudest fight ever. I had to crank up the “1812 Overture” to thirteen so I couldn’t hear. Shortly after the police cars arrived, Naomi packed up her Nissan with all of her stuff and some of Steve’s, and after making sure to slam her ruby-pearl car door into his ebony fender several times, she drove off in squeal of tires that kicked up pebbles and left a lasting impression on the cement and Steve’s Trans Am.
Some days later, one of the neighbors reported seeing Naomi in Waldbaum’s with some guy from the other side of town, a bartender, a drug dealer or a used car salesman. She had moved in with the guy the very night she moved out of Steve’s. According to the neighbor who knew someone who knew someone who knew the guy, he had been consoling Naomi and sleeping with her behind Steve’s back in her “time of need” while she and Steve were growing apart.
What goes around comes around.
For me life is getting back to normal. Winter is coming. The days are getting shorter, and so is my lease. I was just up to Wolly’s Hardware Store in town where I have my eye on a propane torch. I told Harry, the owner there that I always wanted to learn how to sweat pipes.
“It’s easy,” he assured me. “With a little time and practice you’ll be melting solder like a pro and all those copper pipes on your baseboard heating system will just fall apart.”
I told him I have the time to learn, and I do.
Revenge is a dish best served cold. So I am waiting and I’m working on some other ideas too, for when Steve finally gets his mail problem straightened out and Chuck the Mailman begins deliveries again, somewhere around Christmas, the way I figure it. Meanwhile the information pamphlets I requested from the New York State Department of Health have recently arrived, and through the marvels of technology I was able to scan their official letterhead and reproduce it on my computer for the letter I am contemplating.
"Dear Sir, although the Federal Privacy Act prevents us from naming any individual or individuals involved, we have learned that in all likelihood you have been exposed to one or more sexually transmitted diseases and may be at serious health risk. If you do not already know, STDs are spread by irresponsible, intimate sexual contact with infected individuals or barn animals. Therefore, we strongly urge you to visit your local health clinic or see your primary care physician immediately for a thorough examination and a complete battery of tests. Although we are making no moral judgment about your careless sexual conduct, we must inform you that you are required by law and bound by whatever conscience you may have to notify each and every one of the partners with whom you have had careless, irresponsible and almost criminal sexual contact in the past five years. In turn, they can inform all of their sexual partners and seek diagnosis and treatment, if necessary. In the future, asshole, you can help prevent the spread of most STDs by using a condom for all sexual activities, including self-abuse, and by being more discriminating in your choice of sexual partners. Until you have been diagnosed and properly treated by your health clinic or physician, you must refrain from all sexual activities with everybody, including yourself!"
One just can't be too careful these days. In the long run, I am sure that Steve the Landlord and Naomi will appreciate, and maybe even thank me for the early warning. In a way I will be doing them, and who knows how many others, a favor.
Like I said, I'm a very patient man.
