Lord of the Apartment Complex
By Matthew Dexter
Horace had broken both legs, shattered a vertebrae a few months earlier, so now he wakes up late, pops OxyContin as he watches pedestrians and vehicles heading towards odd jobs he can no longer perform. Everything flashes by as he sits atop a stack of pillows on the windowsill and rolls his morning marijuana cigarette. His joints ache. The accident left him with nothing but a pharmaceutical addiction and a weight problem. His wife kisses Horace on the cheek as a bus screeches to a halt and opens its squeaky mouth for the less fortunate.
Horace wipes Henrietta’s crimson lipstick from his cheek and picks out the seeds and stems. He can no longer afford the good weed: the hydro he used to puff back when he had his job at the plant. They’ve given him a small severance package and disability helps pay the bills, but Horace isn’t making nearly as much as he was before the forklift accident. Damn machine rolled over his hamstring. It almost crushed the bottle of clean urine he always kept secret in his inside pocket in case the foreman chose him for one of the random drug screenings. It happened every now and then–maybe once every couple years. In the beginning they would pick him “randomly” every few months, but after a couple decades of squirting clean piss into a plastic specimen cup from the Visine bottle in the warehouse laboratory as one of the assistant managers watched his back through the open stall, Horace appeared less suspicious, less susceptible to the company’s no-substance policy.
Sure, Horace’s eyes were often bloodshot after waking and baking and munching ’shrooms in his Chevy in the back corner of the parking lot a few minutes before his nine o’clock shift, but after a while they just assumed he was one of those good-natured African Americans with dilated pupils and broken capillaries. Horace was a hard worker and gradually won the confidence of his fellow employees and their bosses. He was promoted a few times, and even started getting stoned with some of the assistant managers who knew how to bend the system to their own advantage.
Unfortunately, without employment and with his truck sold, Horace has nothing to do but lick that Zig-Zag and tuck it behind his ear. He finishes his Tropicana orange juice, licks his lips, pulls the Bic lighter from the breast pocket of his faded down pajamas, and then brushes the joint against his hair to dry the saliva before placing it between his yellowed teeth and meeting Jesus in the back of his dirty mind.
Getting stoned for the first time of the day is a holy experience for Horace. He holds the smoke in his lungs and releases it out the open window. A police car drives past, sirens wailing. Horace has begun spying on the neighbors, and in the few months since becoming immobilized, he has amassed a substantial wealth of information about their personal lives and intimate affairs, more knowledge even than Eve (the apartment manager) and her maintenance man husband have accumulated through years of observation. This makes Horace the undisputed heavyweight king of Lemon Gardens Apartments. In Horace’s opinion, he is the lord of the apartment complex; the invisible hand that the manager, Eve Smith and her husband, Adam, have begun to revere and fear; often at the same moment.
Eve can see Horace from her office in front of the pool. She knows his affinity for marijuana but lets it slip since he’s been a loyal tenant for the better part of two decades. Besides, Eve and Henrietta play contract bridge together twice a week and their children are in the same homeroom.
Sometimes, Eve gets a whiff of marijuana smoke when she’s leaving the office or Adam smells it as he’s mowing the lawns in the courtyard connecting the apartments, but neither of them complains about it. Lemon Gardens is a low-rent community and surely a few of the younger punks who rent the two-bedroom units must sell some dime bags or some speed, since they rarely leave their apartments, always look emaciated, filthy with unkempt hair, and tweaking; crystal heads if Horace has ever seen any, and often there is steady traffic at random hours leading through their doors: grisly teenagers with eyebrow rings, t-shirts and jeans, and older men who look more beat than Neal Cassidy after a cold, rainy, post-wedding walk adjacent to the railroad tracks outside San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico.
Sometimes Eve wonders why she left Alaska to end up in Tempe, Arizona: the Valley of the Sun. Or “Valley of the Spun” as Adam likes to pun. The meth-heads and the meth houses are pervasive, like saguaros, golf courses, palm trees, and retirees. There is more to central Arizona and Maricopa County than mere meets the eye; beyond the luxurious golf courses there is the struggle and despair of a lost, beat generation of teenagers and adult delinquents addicted to amphetamines. Horace would never touch that stuff. He’s seen the garbage those kids have turned into from his windowsill. Horace gets stoned, stubs out the half-finished joint in the seashell ashtray.
He watches Eve stop in front of the pool just long enough to remove her left sandal, curl her toes, dip them beneath the surface of the water. Her purple nails perfect from yesterday’s pedicure swirl back and forth like five tiny serpents searching for urchins in the bubbles of their inertia. She takes a bite of her green apple and smiles at Adam as he tests the chlorine at the other end of the pool, where the filter is. The brown mole on her cheek glistens in the early morning sun. Horace can’t see those two obstinate hairs that creep above the surface sometimes when she doesn’t tweeze them for a couple days. Adam has seen her yank the coiled strands from her face, but Horace can only imagine how deep the roots grow.
Horace has seen Eve up close in the morning; watched her lips moving, pink tongue protruding as she accepts his rent money; but he is lost in those two hairs twisted into one at the tips. The next morning after one such encounter, back when he could still walk, Horace came across her in the common area beside the pool where the barbecue grill collects rust, and the mole was clean-shaven; no hint of hair, as if it had burrowed itself back beneath the surface and disappeared. (Of course: it always returned; perhaps for air or sunlight?)
The plastic circular lid sits next to the maintenance man, who gazes into the test-tubes like an aspiring mad scientist wired for discovering a cure for cancer. Adam and Eve left Alaska after her breast cancer cost them their home. They cured it, but it cost them everything they owned, forced them to abandon the tundra and make a new life in the lower forty-eight. They packed up Adam’s old Dodge and drove down to the Valley of the Sun after hearing about an opening at an apartment complex: free rent and a solid income just to manage Lemon Gardens. All they had to do was keep things running smoothly–mow the lawns, plant some flowers, collect rent, repair some broken shit. At first it worked wonderfully, but that was before the speed freaks infiltrated the garden like cockroaches. Now it was up to Horace to stump them out. Horace lost his legs, but not his sense of loyalty to Adam and Eve for giving him a second chance when he fell so far behind on monthly rent payments.
Horace slips his knuckles into the frayed neckline of his wife-beater, lifts the final gift his parsimonious father had reluctantly given him the morning before the old man passed. Kissing the gold cross on his neck, he slides himself into his wheelchair. It’s not one of those fancy wheelchairs either; you know: with the remote-control joystick and the chrome rims and the comfortable leather cushions. Horace’s chair is heavy, squeaks like a mouse, and the spokes are rusty. The seat is torn and provides little luxury, especially compared to the cushions and body pillows of the windowsill. But Horace maneuvers through the diminutive living room, squeezes himself through the door as if he was popping a pimple; slowly he oozes himself out and the simple momentum of residual effort squirts his resilient expectoration into the air as Horace wrestles himself free of the obstinate door frame.
Horace is in the open. He has a few majestic moments to appreciate the song of a bluebird and to watch a sapphire hummingbird hover, sucking sugar water from the homemade bird feeder in the lemon tree beside the managers’ apartment–before a meth-head struts past–humungous pair of socks dangling around the topless teen’s purpled neck. Horace watches as the barefoot degenerate from apartment seventy-six heads toward the laundry room; probably washing the only pair of socks he owns.
Horace pushes himself down the path to where the pool is. There’s a slight incline, so he uses gloves to slow down the wheels as he approaches. Sitting in the opposite corner of Adam, beneath the morning sunlight is Melissa, the bikini-clad college student who decided to stop commuting the couple miles to the university months ago. She still wears her Arizona State visor: demented orange sun devil with the yellow pitchfork looming over the latest issue of US Weekly.
Horace gets lost in the young woman’s cleavage for a second, a bead of sweat trickles down his lifted brow, a brief glimpse into himself; Horace pontificates about unseemly things and ponders going back to school to experience a liberal arts education close-up. He loses himself beneath the ethereal ripples of the water as Adam methodically skims the surface of the pool, collecting dead bees, wasps, a suicidal swarm of yellow jackets, a random beetle, tulip buds, and lemon tree leaves in his net. Horace observes a shiny penny at the bottom of the pool, but upon reflection an education is not what he needs or deserves at the present moment. No need to mettle in dreams that will never come true, Horace tells himself, as Adam waves with his free hand and smiles.
In the first place, Horace has no money for tuition (even though he meets all the prerequisites for an in-state discount); secondly, he can’t go more than a few hours without smoking up (Horace just wants to sit in the quad anyway and watch the bronzed asses and fragrant melons head to classes). So Horace settles for honorable mention, reasoning that the greatest education doesn’t take place inside the classroom. Besides, Horace has twin teenaged daughters and a wife to take care of, so his plate’s pretty full already.
“How ya doin’ my man Horace?” says Adam.
Adam’s finished skimming the surface and is scratching his crotch over his blue jeans as the narrow shadow of his pool cleaning instrument expands exponentially with the water dripping from the pole, and especially from the mesh net on the end. Adam picks the denim as if it were cherries from a tall tree. Horace pushes his wheels, gingerly fingering the spokes as if he were playing a harp, maneuvering around the corner of utopia, abruptly coming to a stop a few feet in front of Adam. The maintenance manager holds out his hand and Horace rolls a little closer to perform their personal handshake; which requires as much choreography as a Major League manager giving the steal home signal to the third base coach.
“What’s the haps brother?” Horace says.
“Not much, ya know?” Adam says.
Horace leans down to look into the chlorine testing kit, as if he’s in some fancy chemistry classroom understanding what all those colors and numbers represent.
“How’s the water?” Horace asks.
“Good, my man,” Adam says, nodding his head at the coed and rolling his eyes. “But I’m a little wiped out this morning…if you know what I mean, eh buddy?”
With that Adam makes a fist and gives Horace a friendly shove to his shoulder.
Horace offers Adam a perplexed expression as the maintenance man grabs his crotch again and winks once more at Melissa: who crosses her sweaty angelic ankles oblivious to their conversation, stretches her perfect pink armpits toward the heavens, her purpled nipples like number 2 pencil erasers etching away the errors of an unexpected menstruation, lost in her headphones and the latest pictures of George Clooney and a pregnant Kate Hudson on vacation in Cabo. Her iPod glistens in the sun, and if you listen hard enough you can hear Lady Gaga.
“Why should I give ya kisses in the kitchen if ya can’t give me head in the bed?” Adam asks.
Horace pushes his wheels backwards and rolls a couple feet away from the conversation. Adam laughs and rearranges his balls again, this time shaking them as if they were the chlorine filters in the pool, then he grabs his penis as if it were a cue stick and he was twisting white chalk onto the end, examining his chemistry as if it was a green-felt table of money rather than a body of turquoise blue water.
“I’ll see ya around,” Horace says.
The wheelchair pivots, but before Horace is able to escape Adam grabs the handlebars and yanks his favorite tenant back around.
“Relax buddy,” Adam says. “Ya know was only talking about me and Eve.”
“Well stop scratching your self, man,” says Horace. “There are ladies here.”
Melissa rises and drops her magazine onto the lounge chair, does a swan dive into the pool and disappears beneath the surface before emerging at the other end where the two men watch. She smiles and winks at Horace, and like a mermaid she submerges again, headed in the opposite direction, doing the breaststroke as the gentlemen watch with open mouths. Leaning forward over the edge of the pool, Melissa pulls herself up–bikini bottom edges itself into her masterpiece, water splashes down from her loins in every direction–the most majestic part of any butt-man’s day.
Adam almost grabs himself again, but Horace catches his eyes and Adam opens and closes his fist a few times before finally tucking his purple knuckles into his pockets.
“Saw another car stolen at three-thirty-seven,” Horace says.
Adam looks at the wet deck where the water from the pole soaked the cement and nods his head.
“Yeah?” Adam says.
“Uh-huh,” Horace says, “apartment eighty-six parking spot. The same Pontiac that had the front wheels stolen two weekends ago.”
“Apartment eighty six? That poor college kid,” Adam says.
Horace shakes his head.
“Yeah,” Horace says, “he’s a good kid too, goes to class and even makes Dean’s List. Studying organic chemistry and majoring in economics I believe.”
“Why didn’t you call the cops?” Adam asks.
“He’s smart too, knows about bees and hornets and horny co-eds,” Horace says. “Told me that bees die because they lose their stingers, but wasps keep theirs because they don’t have barbs.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“It was too late. By the time I looked out the kitchen window, the kid’s car was already backing away. Some skinny Mexican with a bunch of tattoos on his arms and neck was behind the wheel with a wife-beater. I could see the tattoos because it was a full moon last night and the poor kid’s parking spot is right below our window.”
“Damn it,” Adam says. “Goddamn it all to Hell.”
Melissa is drying herself with a humongous Arizona State towel. Once she’s satisfied, she repositions the yellow towel from the Main Campus bookstore on the lounge chair and lies down on her stomach. A hummingbird hovers above her dampened buttocks. A breeze blows through the trees and a couple leaves float down into the pool. The door to the manager’s office creaks open and Eve walks out with a stack of mail and rent checks for the bank.
“Hey guys,” she says.
Eve’s face is glowing. That mole is shining in the sun, and as she approaches Horace tries to ascertain if she plucked those hairs last night before she made love to Adam; either in the kitchen or the bedroom; God only knows?
“You have a nice glow about you this morning,” Horace says. “A nice aura at least, did you do something with your hair?”
Eve blushes and tucks the mail under her armpit. Her face turns from pale to pink to crimson in a matter of seconds; her cheeks become a desert sunrise. “Aggh, just some new makeup I’ve been messing with,” Eve says. “Nothing much special or anything,” she adds as an afterthought.
“I think it’s mighty special,” Adam says, grinning.
Eve bites her bottom lip and stares at her husband for a couple seconds before her pupils focus on Melissa.
“She better watch out in this sun, or those buns are gonna get mighty toasty this time of year,” Eve says.
With that Eve smiles at Horace and excuses herself:
“I need to get to the bank before it gets crowded with the lunch hour crowd.”
“Ugh huh, sure,” Adam says, teasing his wife while stroking his obstinate testes.
Horace says, “Goodbye,” and watches Eve shuffle away toward her Dodge Ram (the one with The Club on the steering wheel; the original red one–not one of the cheap yellow imitations).
“Hope that kid has a tracking device, LoJack, isn’t that what they call ’em?” Adam asks.
“He didn’t,” Horace says, “and Daddy’s gonna have a conniption when he learns about it…just bought four new Enkei chrome rims with locks worth almost five hundred bucks across the street at Discount Tire last week.”
“So they took the whole damn car?” Adam asks.
“You betcha,” Horace says. “Came back for the whole damn thing.”
“Bunch of thugs,” Adam says.
Melissa rolls over; Horace licks his lips as if she were a popping shish kebab with a cherry on top: fresh chicken dripping juice into a barbecue.
“Sure would like a piece of that shrimp,” Adam says.
“It’s getting late,” Horace says. “Midmorning spies peek through the blind mist with broken eyeglass.”
Horace wheels into the parking lot, spokes spinning; sun in his bloodshot eyes. Adam watches and begins shaking as the wheelchair rolls into traffic and he can see the disaster a second before it happens–begins morning as the filthy garbage truck approaches and the vociferous orange hummingbird with the spiked hair tap-dances on the surface of the pool and Horace kisses the tangerine crimson pavement for one last brilliant, desperate moment as the chair breaks into two thousand shards of twisted bolts, rusty screws, and barbs; Adam watches all this from the barbecue area, pool rod in hand, Eve behind the wheel of her Dodge, rolling over broken pieces beneath fresh Firestone tires with tiny strands of rubber hairs still smelling of new rubber, hairy mole and unshaved armpits from her tank top pointing toward Satan. Scattering jagged labyrinthine fragments of safety glass, paint, rotting garbage, crusty aluminum, some steel, twisted metal, crystal shadows, somebody’s business, an abundance of oil beneath the purple sky is rising and the stucco walls and coagulated yellow bird droppings around the grill are closing in and an approaching siren wails and Adam embraces the Doppler effect, drops his banana on the soaked pavement as the bulge in his neck explodes inward and darkness engulfs him; the ambulance so close he can almost touch it, walk inside and dance the conga against the faded white-painted walls.