Sunday, November 30, 2008

A Shitty Day Continues

I opened the door in a pair of old swim trunks and a stained, white T-shirt. In retrospect, sopping wet and stinking, I mustn't have made a very good impression.
The young couple at the door were very nice. They explained that they were looking for a friend of theirs who hadn't been seen in a while. Apparently, he had lived in my apartment and they thought he still lived there. I could imagine their surprise when the door opened on the scene in the living room, not to mention my condition.
They politely apologized for intruding and disappeared around the corner.
Two hours later, waiting for Earl and charging my telephone battery, I found a cop at my front door.
He handcuffed me, made me kneel, and pushed my face down to the floor.
His safety assured, he proceeded to question me.
"What do you know about Carmen LaTrobe?", he demanded.
"Nothing", I replied.
"So, how long have you lived here?", he asked almost conversationally.
"Two months."
"Who did you rent this apartment from?"
"The apartment people downstairs."
"W H O!!!!?" He yelled so loudly that he spit and his face turned red. From my vantage point I could see that he might even have had an erection.
"I don't know the old lady's name. She should be down there right now", I said as calmly as I could.
"We'll see", he said ominously and stalked out of the apartment.
So there I lay. Hog-tied on my sopping living room floor.
I tried at the cuffs. It hurt to change the rotation of my wrists in the least. I resigned myself to lay there in the toilet water.
The day had started out so pleasantly and now here I was. I couldn't figure out what I had done wrong. Just to be safe, I made a mental note to never wear glasses while shitting.
I managed to crawl like a caterpillar myself over to the couch. I was just about up onto it's heavenly, dry surface when the cop came splashing back in with the old lady.
"Get back on the fucking floor!!", he screamed in his way.
I assumed the butt-fuck position and waited.
He pranced around me like a drill sergeant inspecting the stance of a new recruit at attention.
I remained perfectly still.
The old lady just gaped at the apartment.
"She says she doesn't know who the hell you are and has stated to me that you are not currently a tenant here", he said, pointing at the stooped figure of my landlady in the doorway.
"What do you have to say to that?"
They exchanged a knowing glance and then both stared down at me.
"So, um, am I under arrest?", I stammered.
At this point, the officer kicked me in the side, hard, then he went on a delirious rant about justice and the weak willed being amongst us, or something along those lines. Sweaty and winded after his speech, he picked me up by the cuffs and yanked me along all the way to his squad car.


In the cell I sat talking to a self-professed career mugger. He told me how he made an easy living mugging people. He'd travel all around the country; city to city, state to state. He'd go all around the city mugging people at night. Taking buses and sometimes cabs after particularly good takes. By day he lived the good life playing the tourist wherever he went. He never had to injure anyone, he said, and he always tried to drop the stuff other than money (like lipstick, wallets, etc) near by and therefore, possibly locatable.
He was full of reasons why he wasn't a bad guy. I just sat and smoked and listened to him.