Chapter 1: Apartment 207

One of the things I'd done when I first finished renovating and reopening the place was get downright greedy. 101 was on the blueprints as a two-bedroom, but when the place had been built it had been designated the office and the interior had been altered to suit. The manager's apartment, 102, was another two-bedroom located, you guessed it, right next door. I was thinking 'With one hundred and twenty apartments, what'll it matter if two more get allocated for my use' and so 201 and 202, directly above and exactly the same size, got added in to the manager's place. Knocked out the wall between the two and did some major remodeling (all of which turned out to be far more of a bitch and way more expensive than I'd thought it'd be), put in a beautiful wrought-iron spiral staircase going up from 102 to 202, had my girlfriend and I three pretty good-sized apartments worth of space, three full and three half baths, a downstairs kitchen (lost both of the upstairs kitchens as having three was truly excessive), big large open area that used to be most of 201 for parties and such, a master bedroom that was huge.

Hey, I was twenty-three, spending money that didn't seem real to me yet and as I've already said, I was a moron. What do you want from me?

Well, the place was big enough that even when Claire was still with me, we bounced around it like peas in a dryer. With her gone it was even worse.

I woke up one Friday morning after we'd been open in the newest incarnation about a month, ran my body through the shower, handled the rest of the morning toilet rituals, and threw on the pair of shorts with our logo on them that was for me the every day uniform. For Nora a just barely adequate sports bra was added to the mix, for Patrick, well, his job sometimes required a lot of clothing and sometimes not so much, so he pretty much played it by ear. Lyle wore, as he put it, 'whatever the situation called for' and that was just fine with all of us. I headed downstairs and through the connecting door into the office.

As I was getting my morning cup of coffee, what would be the first of many, I decided to live dangerously.

"You look lovely this morning, Nora." It was true, she did. She had her hair back in a ponytail and a light bit of makeup on and as always looked beautiful.

"Are you flirting with me, John? That sounded like flirting to me. You know what the rules are about flirting with me..."

"Oh no, Nora, not flirting, merely paying you a compliment and making conversation. As pleasant a person as you are, I'd rather fuck a syphilitic, diarrheic rhino in the ass than get anywhere near you with a sexual thought on my mind. Did you remember to bring donuts this morning?"

She had, she always did. Nora was the only member of the management and maintenance team that didn't live on-site.

As I settled into my chair she called back, "There's a complaint about 223 again. Andrei-the-Asshole from 244 says he saw them fucking in their living room again, curtains wide open."

"And since when the fuck does Mr. Erotic-Dance-With-An-Anal-Vibrator-Visible-Through-His-Open-Window have any room to say shit about that! How close did he come to calling them 'breeders'?"

"Heard the 'br' sound but he caught himself. What do you want me to tell him?"

"Send him the standard "our apartment community's rules and standards are an evolving structure" letter with a handwritten note that if he finds it too unbearable to live with we will gladly release him of his lease commitments... it's not as if there isn't a waiting list."

"Taking bets on what'll happen?"

"No, not yet... who lives directly across from him?"

"That'd be... 207."

"Oh fucking perfect... my favorite bunch of freaks... perfect."

"You're trying to be evil again, John. It's not your forte."

"No Nora, but on occasion I am capable of it... you tape that letter to his door and I'm going to go see about helping to insure that he takes us up on our kind offer. I've had just about enough of that intolerant... person... as I'm going to take."

I'd read the application of the couple who ended up in 207 and based on that alone, I had let Nora handle the interviews. He was co-owner of a funky little bookstore on 33^rd and Crockett, she was a counselor, a teacher of arcane mysteries and a spiritualist.

It was one of the few mistakes I've made that I readily acknowledge to any and all... not that I would have turned them down... far from it. But if I'd handled the interview I would've gotten to know them a few weeks sooner than I did.

As soon as they were moved in, it was like the motherfucking circus came to town and camped out at their place. I didn't inquire how many more people were living in their two-bedroom apartment, I'd had wonderfully pleasant interactions with them and their new roommates any time we'd met... and they'd given me a love gift of some really killer dope... a lot of it. Susan and Dave Lowenstein were good people.

To say that 1969 had never ended for these folks is putting it mildly... even though only one of them had been born at the time. It wasn't so much that they were trying to recreate the Summer of Love so much as it was that's just where their reality kind of ended up. Peace, free love, beads, all natural fibers when they did wear clothes, organic foods, macramé, arts and crafts, poetry readings by the pool, street theater at various locations in the city, no liberal cause unsupported, no protest rally unattended... we'd already lost one tenant because of her allergy to patchouli and sandalwood, the scents of which hung in a palpable fog around all the residents of 207 all the time.

But it was the free love part of their hippie resume that interested me at that moment.

I was barely out the door when Barry stopped me. Barry was a gay pornographic filmmaker, one of two porno producers we had living in the complex, and one of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet.

"John, I've heard that bitch Andrei is on the rag again... how much longer are you going to take her shit?"

"Not too much longer, Barry... going to arrange a little song and a little dance for his benefit tonight... if you'd like, round up some of the more... tolerant tenants and be hanging around to give us some moral support."

"If it'd get Miss Pissy Bitch to move her raggedy ass on down the road I'd bring in the Vienna Boys Choir... and if I could wait till they were all street legal I'd bring them in just for the fun of it."

"Barry, I think you're just the man to handle them."

He walked away, throwing "Oh you know that's right!" back over his shoulder.

And then, as I was heading up the stairs, I met David Lowenstein, one of the two named lessors of 207.

"John... was on my way to work and was going to drop by the office and talk to you. Our... one of our... friends, Rose, she'd really like to meet you and since we're throwing a little party this evening, I thought maybe you could stop by, visit awhile, see if you and she click."

"David, this is a freaky coincidence... I was on my way up to talk to you and Susan... needed your help with a project this evening."

He put his hand on my shoulder and with complete seriousness said, "There is no such thing as coincidence, John, just the Universe telling us where we should be."

"Uh... right... okay... yeah, what time tonight?"

"Well, Susan's pulling the lasagnas out of the oven around seven; feel free to show up for dinner. I think she's going to use about a pound of bud to spice six trays so they ought to be pretty potent... and tasty as well."

"I'll be there... you have a good day at the shop."

"Always do... always do."

I returned to the office.

"That was quick," Nora said, looking up from her paperwork.

"The Universe is conspiring to tell me where I should be," I said, nodding sagely and heading for another cup of coffee.

The day went by quickly; filled with a thousand and one little things that Nora never tired of telling me were mine to deal with. It was her revenge for me delegating the truly vile shit to her, and as such I didn't begrudge her the revenge. As long as the Pitbull dealt with the really unpleasant stuff, I'd do just about anything else.

At 5:30 we locked up the office and I headed home to freshen up a bit. While some of the denizens of 207 were on occasion somewhat hygienically challenged, I wasn't planning on being counted among the odiferous.

God in His infinite wisdom had put a liquor store within easy walking distance of our complex and after sending a brief prayer of thanks winging its way heavenward I put on some clothes and strolled over to pick up some wine for the evening's meal.

I got back to my place, stripped down and headed over to 207. I'm still trying to get used to the whole casual nudity thing, but as the property manager, I feel an obligation to be in step with the majority of our tenants. They didn't rent here to wear shorts so when I'm not 'on the clock', I'm naked. I can almost not blush when I think about it.

The front door was open and the clouds of smoke were already billowing out into the evening air. I wandered through, saying 'hello' to people whose names I'll never remember until I got to the kitchen to drop off the wine and get a hug from Mama Susan.

There are those people who make you believe in terms like 'Earth Mother'... Mama Susan is one of them. Everyone is her 'child' and almost everyone around her refers to her as 'Mama' intermittently. Short, unshaven, unplucked, untucked, pretty, chubby and unselfconscious with long brown hair that hung to the backs of her knees, when she let it down, you look at her and want a hug... and the most glorious thing of all is that she wants to give you one.

"Mama! That lasagna smells divine! Thank you so much for having David invite me. Here, some wine for supper."

And then I was being held in her arms and time ceased to have meaning as I communed with the Divine Female Presence, Mother to Us All.

"John, you're looking thin, I think I can help you with that tonight. And why should David have to invite you? You know you're welcome over here anytime. ROSE! Get in here!"

I turned to the kitchen door, expecting another little hippy chick... and found out just how delightfully wrong I can be.

Rose was tall, a good six inches taller than me, and I stand at 6' even. Long, beautiful hair, over four feet in length... in a narrow strip on her head... tied into a row of ponytails... said hair being brilliant parrot blue. Darkish complexion... tribal tattoos... just a few of them... well, just a few of them on each limb... and her torso. Gorgeous face, heart-shaped, long, sexy eyelashes... blue eyelashes... or maybe it was just the blue eye shadow... strong, muscular arms and legs... and thighs... not bodybuilder freakish, just obviously well-exercised... her pubic hair was trimmed... into the shape of a skull... it was blue... of course... tits and ass... oh my... there should be laws about anything giving me a hard-on that fast... I really did swoon slightly.

And she caught me... effortlessly... and was holding me up... with one arm... while she checked my pulse with her other hand.

"When did I die and become an extra in 'The Road Warrior'?" I murmured and when she laughed, and I realized I'd said it aloud, I blushed down to the soles of my feet.

"My parents would disown me," she said, still chuckling. "I'm just as much a pacifist as they are... I just move in a different society."

"Wherever it is, can I join?" I asked, babbling, not realizing I sounded like even a bigger retard than normal.

"You're right, Mama, I like him," she said and as I gazed up into her blue eyes... surrounded by the blue eye shadow... and I still wasn't sure about the lashes, I realized that it was very important to me that she like me.

After that we talked and she was gracious enough to my poor unworthy ass to not notice the perpetual hard-on that I had no way to hide and no polite way to relieve. I told her everything about the apartment complex and how it had all come about and she told me about her life in an artistic commune that had been mobile until just a week before when there'd been a disagreement, a fissure, in the commune and the couple that had owned the buses had gone on their separate ways. But the performance part of the commune had gotten a contract at a club in town so they weren't worried about 'eating' money for awhile. The performing troupe called themselves the Psychosexual Circus and somewhere in the whole conversation the lasagna had gotten served and she'd brought us back two big bowls of it and there was indeed a lot of pot in the lasagna but just to be sure we smoked some more and there was wine, I remember wine... well, actually I remember a fuck-ton of wine, but I didn't drink that much of it and we were cuddling on the floor, kind of friendly-like, nothing too overtly sexual, except for my perpetual hard-on, that is, and it was nice... it was really nice... and we were getting along fine... and I was really stoned.