Update to the Weekend Update

Tuesday crept by and I spent nearly an hour in traffic trying to get to the grocery after work. When I returned home I found my upstairs neighbor (the one who borrowed $20 and repaid it) waiting for me on the steps. Yes, I’m now using the word neighbor. I’ll explain why later.

I had a feeling our meeting wasn’t by chance and wouldn’t be beneficial to me. Over the years I’ve encountered enough beggars and con artists to be suspicious anytime I am approached. You don’t have to be Reginald Denny or Rodney King to know to stay in your car. I’m not worried about being attacked by looters or the police, but I’ve learned that the moment I exit the car in Atlanta I’ll be beset by bums and rednecks telling me their woes and asking for handouts, booze, and/or a ride. Once I parked in a store lot only to be surrounded by mendicants before I even doused the engine. That time I put the car in reverse and waited for them to make a hole, then backed out and left as they followed and shouted their requests to me. “Sir. Excuse me, sir! I need…” Now I’m beginning to dread leaving the car, walking to the apartment, and in general just being home.

Groceries and beer in hand, I tried to say hello and keep walking, but she concluded her conversation with another tenant hidden in the shadows and told me “I need to make the same arrangement.”

“What?” I asked.

“I need to borrow $20.”

I didn’t have twenty, so I gave her ten. She told me “Even ten would be a blessing” and took the money amidst flurries of exclamations about how she would be starting her new job tomorrow and wouldn’t bother me anymore and how her husband had left her in this rotten situation again but she loved him anyway and how she would return the money before I left for work in the morning. Thinking I wouldn’t see her again that night (if ever), I settled in for a night of housework and Japanese and writing.

Just before eleven PM I heard a soft knock on the door. I recognized that knock from the weekend. I opened the door and surely enough – there she stood with a huge grin on her face, asking me if she could buy a beer. I told her it wasn’t necessary to buy one and invited her in, wondering (as always) if that was a smart thing to do. She thanked me effusively, said I was a good host, and complemented the look and smell of my apartment (Spartan and a scented candle, respectively).

You know those people (read: women) who walk around in a cloud of perfume as if they bathed in the stuff, filling the air around them with such a dense cloud of stink as to make it nearly impossible to breathe? Well, replace “perfume” with “pot fumes” and you’ll get the general idea (glad my money was going to a worthy cause). Not only did I get a light buzz from the brief contact with her, the back of my throat felt burned as if I had just smoked a cigar. I glanced at her to see if I could see actual wisps of smoke rising from her, but I couldn’t tell in the light. I gave her a beer and she babbled some more thanks and, just as she stepped out the door, told me she would probably be back.

Oh, rapture.

Just shy of midnight I heard the familiar knock on my door. She didn’t reek as bad as the last time, but the beer has done nothing to sober her up. Go figure – it always normalizes me. Well, at least it shushes the voices in my head. Anyway, she tells me she needs to buy another beer (not that I charged her the last time); in fact, this time she needs two. She dropped a wad of change on the counter, babbled more incoherently, introduced herself but talked so much I couldn’t tell her my name (which was probably a good thing), took her beers and headed for the door. On the way she informed me that she really wasn’t married to her “husband” but she probably would be some day. She also asked me if I liked big tits, gave me a quick flash (she was now wearing a flowery pink robe over her clothes so she actually just flashed her shirt) and asked me not to tell anybody in the building that she had been there. Lady, it won’t be a problem.

Note – I didn’t make any of that up. I wish I had.

I counted the change this morning and found 98 cents. I don’t know in what economy she lives, but I don’t know where to buy any 50 cent beers (at least not any I’d want to put in my mouth). She didn’t return the ten dollars before I left for work, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing either as long as she evades me for the rest of my life in order to avoid repaying me. If that happens, I’ll consider it a real bargain. Maybe I should just visit all my other neighbors and offer them the money up-front. “Ten bucks, and you never knock on that door down there no matter the emergency.”

Yesterday I avoided calling her my neighbor because, over the years, that word has become a derisive term and implies (to me) that the person is some kind of annoying nut job ala Redneck Neighbor #1 or Redneck Neighbor #2 or (from my last address) Captain Nekkid. So much for her being labeled a building mate. Lady, I dub thee neighbor.

One final note: If any of my non-virtual friends or acquaintances read this, I just know they’re going to give me grief for still attempting to be charitable even at my advanced age. I’ve noticed “friends” are always there to give you a hard time if you try to help someone, but they never have anything negative to say if you tell them a starving child approached you and you spat in his or her face. Most people don’t bother with xtian charity, especially not the ones who claim to be xtians. They seem to live by the credo “Charity begins in the home, which means god wants me to spend all my money on clothes and booze.”