I stopped in at the old corner grocery store next to where I used to live. Annie and Terry the Armenian ladies who run it were very glad to see me.
They said I got out just in time. My old building has been going down hill. No more single folks living alone in apartments. It’s either families of 4 in a small one bedroom or groups of drugs addicts, rockers and party boys turning singles into crash pads. The police are out there regularly now.
Jose the building manager has been wasting away. He’s lost a lot of weight on this latest tweaking binge, which makes those weird oversized false teeth he got in Mexico look that much larger. His wife has left him. I’m not sure if she took the kid. His beautiful truck that didn’t run is gone, as is his motorcycle.
I’m not sure why the owners keep him on. As he goes, so goes the building. They set up a conference call between them, me and Jose so that he could tell me (in between smacking on his weird false teeth) how I’d stolen the window screens, the closet door, the light fixtures, the carpet, and everything else I guess he stole out of my apartment after I left so he could trade it in for crack…The owners weren’t buying it any more than I was, and after he ran out of things to accuse me of and just started prattling inanely they cut him off, apologized to me, and asked if it was okay if they keep $50 of my deposit just to make him happy. I was cool with that, but when I went to pick up the money, in cash, from Jose, he tried to short me $200.
I wrote about Jose’s new teeth several months ago, before his crack or meth use had gotten out-of-control.
Jose the tweaker manager of my ghetto apartment building has new teeth.
I’m not sure where he got them or why he has them. He’s a relentless scavenger. Maybe a tenant left them behind after moving. Maybe he found them on the street. There seemed nothing wrong with his old teeth. They appeared to be pretty regular, which is to say unnoticeable because the only time you notice teeth is when something is wrong, like they are unnaturally white or they are rotten or they are seriously snaggled or they are really stained or several prominent ones are missing…
Jose’s new teeth are very noticeable.
They were made for a head much bigger than his, and the weird effect is exacerbated because he seems to be shrinking, maybe due to all the speed. Because they don’t really fit, his speech is a little slurred and he can’t seem to get his lips to cover them, so what he does instead is the sort of freakish grimace that I think is meant to be a grin.
Whatever drugs he’s doing, it’s a combo that has him at his most agreeable in the 6 years I’ve lived here. He’s not looking so good, but he’s happier (in a manic way) than he’s ever been…
Daniella was from Fresno. Her boyfriend was a gangster wannabe who managed a Burger King. He’d get drunk or high and beat her. He’d take whatever money she had and spend it on drugs, so she hadn’t been able to afford her hormones.
