Iron Fist

As some of you might have surmised, I moved into my new apartment recently. I’m still getting settled in, and I haven’t got around to getting DSL set up or anything cool like that yet.

Still, it’s been non-stop adventure from the moment I first got on board. The week before I moved in, I dropped by on a Saturday morning to turn in my application. The rental agent who’d given me that application the day before said she’d be in all day, so I was a little irritated when no one answered the office phone when I showed up. Well, it was about eleven o’clock, so maybe she stepped out for an early lunch.

I went home, puttered around for a bit, and wandered back about a half hour later. Still no dice. Fine, maybe the extended lunch was dragging on for a bit since it was Saturday. At the same time, it was goddamn cold out. So when the opportunity presented itself in the form of a waddling pot-bellied woman exiting the building, I invited myself in to sit on the bench in the lobby. The waddling lady had been holding her speakerphone at waist level as she walked - er, waddled out, apparently not caring that she was subjecting everyone within ten feet to her conversation. I overheard her say, “Yeah, that guy Darryl that used to live here, he got back in last night…”

As I sat down to wait for someone to come back to the management office, I saw that Darryl had indeed gotten back in last night. Assuming, of course, that the man with the red pants who was passed out in one of the lobby chairs and had a leather trenchcoat draped over himself was Darryl.

Great.

Also, for a bit of local color, there was an elderly white lady standing at the counter that ran along the far end of the lobby, gripping a Rite-Aid ad and hovering protectively over a discarded inkjet printer. “Oh, I just wish I knew how to use this thing!” she was saying. “If only I could get some help to use this thing.” As she was saying this, she was peering around the lobby through her thick glasses for someone who might hear her tale of woe and give her some tech-support.

Yeah. Not gonna be me. I sat down on the bench and involved myself in a game of Tetris on my cell phone, since I hadn’t had the foresight to bring a magazine. Then again, I hadn’t expected the rental lady to just not be around for over an hour. Which was close to how long I waited in the lobby.

Eventually the old lady with the inkjet printer put it in the little shopping cart she had with her, and rolled it into the elevator, leaving me alone with Darryl in the lobby. The odd resident wandered in and out, and still no rental agent. I was about to wrap up my game of Tetris and leave, when I heard someone at the front door of the building trying to — well, trying to break down the door, actually. Several someones, since I heard at least two voices. As the banging and the shaking and the rattling from the unknown parties outside trying to rip the door off its hinges increased, I decided that I was going to give invisibility my best attempt and so focused my attention completely on my cell phone screen.

I was starting to think that maybe living here wasn’t such a great idea.

After a minute or two, someone got off the elevator, and apparently heedless of the danger to her life, decided to go out the front door where the maniacs were trying to breech the door. As it turned out, the dudes at the door were actually three Portland Police officers. The rolled in, and immediately moved to wake up my new friend Darryl. “Hey Darryl, how you doin’ Darryl?”

“Time to wake up, Darryl!” They pulled the jacket off, exposing his head. Darryl was just waking up. “What are you doing in here, Darryl?”

Darryl blinked. “Aw, man, did I fall asleep?”

“Looks like you did, Darryl. What are you doing in here?”

“I was waiting for my bus, man, I can see it coming from here. It’s cold outside.”

“I don’t think there’s a bus that comes by here, Darryl.”

“Yeah, man, my bus. I’m waiting for my bus.”

“You don’t have any crack on you, do you Darryl?” Wow, that was a great segue.

“Nope.”

“You don’t mind if we check, do you Darryl? You don’t have any pipes in here or anything?”

“Shit, man, get your foot off of me! I got rights!”

Ooooh, boy. Just keep playing Tetris, dude. Just pretend there’s no one else around, especially not three cops and a crackhead. Nothing but Tetris.

I clearly need to get the fuck out of here. Screw my application.

At about this time, as Darryl is leaving with his friends in uniform, someone comes in to open up the office. It’s not the same lady from yesterday, and she’s clearly pissed off. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was expecting someone to be in the office today. Also, some clueless resident, oblivious to the crackhead being taken out of the building by the cops, has immediately latched on to her to gripe about the heat in his room not working.

She says something along the lines of “okay, I’ll deal with it” to the resident before turning to me. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, I, uh…just want to turn in an application for an apartment.”

“Okay, come on in.” We go into the office, where she slammed doors and banged on the desk and at least once declared she was going to fire her entire staff. When she calmed down a bit and took my application, she told me that it seemed no one had bothered to show up to work today, and the only reason she was here was because she’d stopped by to pick something up from her office.

So I got my application turned in, and was getting ready to leave, when two more resident came down and stuck their heads in the door. “Hey, does that security camera work?” they asked, pointing to the CCTV monitor in the office.

“Why?”

“Someone stole all my stuff, I want to see if I can see who it is on the camera.”

This irritated the building manager some more, and she told them that if they were robbed they needed to call the cops and file a report. As I got ready to leave, she said to me, “You know, I hope this doesn’t give you the wrong idea. Things aren’t usually like this around here.”

“Of course,” I said. “I’m sure they aren’t.”

It’s going to be interesting.