Yesterday brought a sudden and violent eruption of Mt. Mary next door. She'd been dormant for months, or so we thought. But evidently pressure had been building and yesterday she finally blew.
I was in the backyard and I heard her watering. Without warning, from over the fence came...
"SHIT!"
I assumed she must have stepped in... shit. Or something. But the tirade continued and was directed at me.
"QUIT SMOKING ALREADY, I CAN'T HANDLE IT ANYMORE, ENOUGH!!!!!"
Now, I'll be the first to admit that smoking is a dirty, nasty habit. Both the boyfriend and I rue the day we ever started, and we've made countless attempts to quit over the years. We were, in fact, just about to give it another go before the unfortunate layoff last week. So normally I'd actually have a lot of sympathy for Mary's distress.
Except I wasn't smoking.
I was taking out the trash.
We abandoned the backyard months ago and there isn't so much as an ash tray back there anymore. We'd occasionally let the dogs out to cavort on our stamp-sized back lawn, but the summer heat killed that off leaving nothing but a patch of dirt, so we don't even do that anymore. But try telling that to Mary. Whenever she hears our back door open she sees clouds of smoke curling over the fence.
"QUIT SMOKING ALREADY, I CAN'T HANDLE IT ANYMORE, ENOUGH!!!!!"
Well, I can't handle it anymore either, bitch.
So I screamed back "I'M NOT SMOKING!!!!"
And then I dropped the bomb.
Not the "F-Bomb". Please. "Fuck"s are a dime a dozen in my vocabulary, a byproduct of my years in Hollywood. I tone it down when we're out in public in deference to the local sensibilities, but it wouldn't be a word I'd choose to shock anyone. No, I chose another word. A word so vile I can't even type it.
The "C word".
Rhymes with "punt".
She slammed her door so hard she shook the house.
I guess that's that. We have to move now.
I can't imagine that didn't light her fuse and it's just a matter of time before she attempts to poison the dogs or slash my tires. I don't think she'd go so far as to burn our house down, seeing as how it's attached to hers. But she isn't really dealing from a full deck so I don't think anything is off the table.
I was reminded of an incident that happened over the summer, one I'd evidently blocked out until Mary flipped out.
Shortly after we moved in we had some minor repairs that needed attention. Can't even remember what they were. The property management company sent out a handyman. He was really quite nice and chatty too.
"I did a lot of work on this place. Fixed both doors" he said gesturing to the front door and the French doors that lead to the backyard. It was only then I noticed both door frames looked like they had been badly shattered and glued back together. "Looked like somebody kicked them both in..."
It was the first we'd heard of this place's violent past. Whether it was a domestic dispute or a S.W.A.T. type thing, we didn't want to know.
A few months later we started finding notes stuck in the front door...
"John - call me ASAP. XXX-XXXX. Hector".
We didn't know who "John" was but I'm guessing he was the previous tenant. We tossed the notes.
Eventually Hector got a clue and started leaving notes saying "Please forward to John". OK, sure. Forward them where? Prison? That's where I pictured John right about then. We tossed those notes too.
Then one evening while we were eating dinner there was a knock at the front door. The boyfriend answered and standing there was a sketchy guy clutching a note.
Hector.
He asked for John, we explained we didn't know anything about anything. Hector asked the boyfriend to pass along a note and as the boyfriend tried to explain we didn't know where John was, Hector cut him off and said...
"Not to John. To his mother. She lives next door. HER NAME IS MARY..."
*SCREE*SCREE*SCREE*SCREE*SCREE*SCREE*SCREE*
So yeah, I think we have to move.
