The circus on Dorrington Street

My next-door neighbor, a ridiculously short and perpetually dusty 40ish man who expects me to talk to his cat whenever I encounter them, got evicted while I was gone. Evidently he's not been paying his rent, which I kind of figured out by the notes my landlady kept taping to his door: "Stuart! I only have $285 for March! Call me!" and "Stuart! Call me about your rent ASAP!"

I enjoy this sort of drama and am kind of sad that I wasn't around when the eviction notices got taped to everybody's door. Hope for a major scene still exists, though, as Stuart was supposed to move out by 19 May, yet his shoes are still clearly parked outside of his door. I am hoping to see him carrying his undersized bicycle up the stairs this afternoon to confirm my suspicion that he still lives there. I can only hope my landlady or her lawyer will come pound on his door while I'm home, so I can listen. There's got to be some advantage to the thin walls of my apartment building.

To be perfectly frank, my apartment is more than a little...questionable. My place is huge for the amount of rent that I'm paying, but there's no water pressure, a rather upsetting frequency of roach sightings, and the neighbors are, well, interesting, to say the least. The entertainment is like a little bonus for my rent money—like getting the water paid. M3's favorite is the crazy lady in #4, who uses her parking space for everything but a car. Things she's put in it since she moved in: her plants, a fish tank (empty), herself—scantily clad for sunbathing—, a bicycle, paper sacks filled with clothes (I think), various pieces of that annoyingly cute wood knick-knack stuff with hearts and crap carved in it, and a bench. Her door is constantly cracked open, and she watches the comings and goings in the parking lot with a sharp eye. I think she asked M3 for a pot at one point, and M3's been freaked out since. I personally kind of enjoy the lady in #4; it's always interesting to see what she's got in her parking space, or, if her door's open wide enough, to see if she's added any more creepy clown posters to her collection.

Then there's the guy in #2, who has a pair of rather fat twin 19-year-olds visit him frequently. It seriously took me six months to figure out that there were two of them; I thought they were just really antsy and kept leaving and coming back. They watch T.V. and drink beer with the door open but the windows curtained over. The actual tenant smiles and asks how I'm doing, and apologizes profusely when he parks in my parking space. He does not explain why he is in my space when his is clearly empty, but I take it in stride. His visitors give me what M3 calls the Pez—one short upward nod.

My other neighbors are somewhat quieter and less obtrusive. I'm concerned that the girl in #10 may have disappeared entirely; I haven't seen her in several months. The woman in #1 parks like she's on some sort of mind-altering substance, but her parking space is far from mine, so I don't care. The woman in #6 has mardi gras beads on her door. And I have a cat that sits in the window and freaks out whenever somebody walks by. I suppose it balances out.