finally

Crazy lady L got the heave-ho yesterday. It was everything I expected, and more.

I woke up around 10:30 AM to the sound of the Eviction Sheriff and house manager D taking L's door off its hinges. L wasn't there, so they got out the power drill. I just sat under the covers for a while and listened; by the time I grabbed my shower tote and headed for the bathroom, the door was leaning against the wall in the hallway, the Eviction Sheriff was gone, and D was busy bagging up L's stuff. The door had two eviction notices posted.

I peeked into the room as I flip-flopped past, and D said, "I have never seen someone tear up a room that fast."

Bits of broken glass, plaster, baking flour, cigarette ash, and other unidentifiable bits of detritus littered the floor. The wall shared with the hallway had been punched full of holes, and I'm guessing these were made three nights ago when it sounded like L was attacking the house with a hammer; I could hear the hammer pounding, and after a few swings, the crumbly sound of the drywall giving way beneath the blows drifted down the hallway.

After showering, I heard a commotion as I exited the bathroom.

L was back, and she was throwing a screaming fit in the downstairs hallway:

"I had until 5 PM! Where is my stuff! I want my stuff! Get it now! Now! NOW!!"

D told her she had to leave or he would call 911, and she screamed and pushed him. I was up in the kitchen where several residents had gathered to watch through the windows (including the window L had broken near the back stairs).

"I had a right to be here! Where is my paperwork! I had a right! I want my stuff! Call 911! Now! Call 911! NOW!! CALL IT NOW!!"

She ducked into the room:

"Fuck you! Where's my stuff! FUCK YOU, SCHINDLER!!"

[Note: I've before overheard her screaming at "Schindler" in the wee hours of the morning. I have no idea if this is a real person, one of her hallucinated menagerie of tormenters, or her nickname for the house manager.]

She found some of her possessions near the garbage can in the hallway:

"This is my stuff! My stuff isn't garbage!! Where's my stuff!! I want my stuff now! NOW!!"

I was wearing only a bath towel, and it was several long moments before she swept out into the alleyway and I could sneak down into my room without running into her.

After I changed, I went back up to the kitchen and rejoined the Peanut Gallery watching the proceedings.

The black kid from upstairs was busy heckling L from the rear door. L habitually banged on the door and harassed him whenever he tried to use the downstairs shower, and now he was repaying the courtesy.

"You think this is funny?!!" she shouted.

"I'm laughing my ass off!" he said.

Three cars with grim-faced Seattle cops arrived, and they stood surrounding L while she rifled through the bags of her possessions D brought up from storage. W from across the hall noted the cop who kept his hand in his right rear pocket, close to his gun.

L was running her mouth and gesturing as she sorted her stuff.

"Ah, she knows how to work the cops," said the kid. "She ain't crazy! She knows how to work it!"

Eventually, the cops left and things settled down. D came back in and told us to get him right away if she ever came back; if she entered the house again, it would officially be a charge of "criminal trespassing." By law, they would hold her possessions in storage for 45 days, but she would have to be accompanied by the cops when she eventually came around to pick up her stuff.

A from Texas arrived near the end of the row with bake sale brownies, and we speculated about who the Chocolate Milk Bandit in the house might be. He said he was a bake sale fanatic and couldn't understand people who put store-bought sweets into a bake sale; when he discovered such an offense, he said, he found himself wanting to run through the bake sale, kicking over tables like Jesus in the temple (kicking out the the False Brownie Prophets).

W gave us a quick run-down on tenant law in Seattle; he knew all about it from his previous rental experience. He moved in from another county, and the room he rented sight-unseen had a gas leak beneath the floor, urine-soaked carpets from the previous tenant, sewage leaking through the wall whenever someone flushed the toilet, and other horrors. He eventually documented all of it, sicced the city government on his landlord, and got all of his money back from several months of living in this hellhole.

But, back to L...

Last night, around 1:30 AM, I swear I woke up and heard her screaming "Whore!!" in her inimitable way, probably outside one of the sorority houses a block or two away. It had to be her. Nobody else screams that particular word in quite the same way, with quite the same vehemence.

I saw no sign of her today, but did find myself astounded by the incredible quiet in the house.

The only thing I heard this morning was cancer-stricken S growling "Bastards!" as he entered the basement bathroom. I later understood his anger when I walked past and smelled it. I'm not going in there again until it's clean.

It smelled similar to the bird/fish stink from the Birdman's room, so maybe he's responsible.

W's fuzzy pink slippers were lying outside L's room--marking his territory in triumph, perhaps?