It was warm,
sunny and almost summer-like when I went for a jaunt through the Covenant
Woods’ parking lots Friday afternoon. It was an interesting little sojourn.
Down by the duplexes, I met James. He was in the maintenance department’s golf
cart, on his way to install a ceiling fan, but in no hurry to get at it.
James and I frequently talk in the morning
when I stop by while he’s at the dumpster taking care of the garbage. The topic
of those trash talks is almost always sports, with James giving me the rundown
of all he saw on SportsCenter. But now, after lunch, James talked about Randy,
who has been pressed into service as a night security person. Randy is tart of
tongue, loud of voice, quick of wit and bawdy.
“Me and Randy have a lot fun when we work
together,” James said.
Johnny, the maintenance supervisor, doesn’t
seem to be his happy self these days. Someone said his girlfriend broke up with
him. But whatever the reason, he’s not the hale-fellow-well-met he was a month
ago. Steve, the other member of the maintenance crew, never says much. In fact,
until the day he came to unclog my bathtub drain, all he had ever said to me
was, “Hello, sir.” That day he said, looking at the work order, “It’s your
bathtub drain that’s backing up?” And when he was finished, he said, “That
should do it. If it gives you any more problems, let us know.” Since then, all
Steve has said to me is “Hello, sir.”
Not long after I resumed my “walk,” my path
crossed Annie’s. She was a mixture of excitement and dread. She was giddy
because the baby shower she had for her daughter Chelsea was a success. Things
didn’t go exactly according to plan, but there were no disasters, and almost a
week later, Annie was one relieved woman.
I don’t know all the details, but Chelsea
isn’t married and will be going into the military soon. Annie will be more
mother than grandmother for quite some time. Hence the dread.
Annie had to get back to work, and I went on
my way. In the parking lot behind Building C, Anita, the woman who interviewed
Al the week before for Tim Maggart’s Memorial Day show at the Springer, was
putting her equipment into the trunk of her car. She said she had just finished
interviewing Bobby, another Covenant Woods veteran, for the same project. She
asked if Al had said anything about his interview. He wasn’t at all happy with
his performance, I told her.
“Tell him I edited his interview yesterday,
and it’s great stuff. He said a lot of good things.”
Then I headed for the great indoors,
savoring one of the most pleasant hours I’ve had at Covenant Woods.
When I relayed Anita’s message to Al, he
said, “When people see that they’re going to say, ‘That man is crazy as hell.’”
In the spirit of St. Paddy’s Day, which it
happened to be, Mae came into the dining room carrying a green beanie with a
shamrock with the inscription “Kiss me. I’m Irish” dangling from it. She walked
directly to our table, put the beanie on Al’s head and did as the shamrock
instructed. The lipstick on his forehead told a tale on Al. Numerous folks
pointed that out to him, but it didn’t register. Tuesday evening, when the
conversation turned to Mae’s kiss, Al said, “I got up this morning, looked in
the mirror and there were Mae’s lips. Why didn’t someone tell me?”
Richie is acting strangely; strange even by
his already strange standards. One afternoon three weeks ago, he walked into my
apartment without so much as a knock. I was lying down at the time and told him
to leave. He said “they” asked him to check on me. When I asked who “they”
were, he said the front office, but offered no names. Around that time he also
walked into Al’s apartment, Coach’s apartment and one or two others without
bothering to knock.
Then he went somewhere for a week. When he
got back, he stayed drunker than usual. He came through the dining room one
night and thanked me for not getting him in trouble. Whether or not that had
anything to do with him sashaying into my room, I don’t know. A day or two
later, when we passed in the hall, he gushed about how good I looked.
At one-fifteen Tuesday morning I was
awakened by the sound of William and Richie yelling at each other. At eleven
Tuesday night, there was more of the same. Besides being loud, their
tete-ta-tetes are remarkable for their length. They go on and on and on, and
yet it seems that between them they have a vocabulary of three words: one is a
synonym for feces, one is a synonym for anus, and, of course, there is the
ever-popular synonym for intercourse – three words to build a discussion on.
And it got worse. In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, I was awakened by
Johnny Mathis singing “Chances Are.” I was poised to call the desk with a
complaint for the third time in twenty-four hours, but the volume went way down
as soon as Johnny was through. Chances are “Chances Are” has some of Richie’s
memories attached to it.
I saw Randy this morning; he was on his way
home after keeping the place secure through the night. He was full of
complaints about having to work midnights.
“I thought I was through with this shit two
weeks ago,” he said. “They hired a new guy – a CALL-ledge GRAJ-you-ate, no
less. He had two nights of orientation with Warren. Then he worked one night by
himself and quit.
“By the way, how’s your neighbor doing? The
night you called I went down there to talk to him. I could hear his TV all the
way down the hall. He was so drunk he spit every time he said a word. I told
him I didn’t need a shower.”
“He’s been pretty quiet,” I said. “I was
worried last night. I heard him tell somebody he was looking forward to the
UConn-Villanova game, and it didn’t start until nine-thirty. Either he watched
it somewhere else, or he passed out and slept through it.”
“He probably passed out.”
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