MANNY & JUNIOR

Part Three

Over the years, I had observed that there were certain situations -- when viewed from a distance -- that always meant bad news. Like riding my bike home from school and finding my dad’s car parked in the driveway. Since I never did anything at school but screw off, I could safely assume that one or more of my teachers had finally reached the saturation point and called my parents to schedule a conference. Besides, my dad never got home from work before six, and when his car was there at three-thirty, I knew that it was double-deep shit time. The only time he’d let me down was when my grandmother died. I remember riding my bike around the neighborhood for two hours not wanting to face the music, and then when it got dark and I gave up and went home, I got in big-time trouble for scaring the hell out of my parents. I had been very close to my grandmother, but I was not a little bit relieved to hear that Granny was the problem -- not me. With that one exception, however, the presence of my dad’s car at home unexpectedly sent shivers up and down my spine.

As I sat at the stop sign a half block from the rent house, I felt those shivers again. Huge, body-shuddering shivers -- like I was hooked up by electrical wires to a wall socket. To make things worse, I had that sharp, stabbing pain in the pit of my stomach you get when you go to the post office to pick up a certified letter that you think just might inform you that you’d won the lottery but when they hand it to you it’s from the I.R.S. I was flushed, hyperventilating, and my pulse was headed for two hundred.

Police cars. I couldn’t tell how many, but straight ahead I could see police cars. One in the driveway of the rent house, and at least two parked in the street. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see anyone in there, but they all had their emergency lights on. My first reaction was to get the hell out of there, but I quickly dismissed the thought. Where would I go?

I slid the VW into first, slowly let out the clutch, and eased forward. As I parked behind one of the patrol cars, I was startled by a loud beeping noise. My cellular phone was squawking on the seat next to me.

        "Hello," I said quietly, as I raised up in the seat to take a peek at the front of the house.

        "Loren!"

It was Chris. The tone of her voice said everything. It was amazing how just saying my name -- if given the right inflection -- could be scolding and accusatory. I had no idea how, but there was no question in my mind that my wife -- as they said in the Marine Corps -- was max attentive to the situation.

        "Chris," I answered, much in the same tone I’d say "Mommy" when I was three years old on a cold night when I’d just wet the bed.

        "What in the world is going on?" she asked excitedly.

        "Well, Chris," I replied softly, still peering at the front of the house -- I could see someone moving around inside, "I tried to call you earlier, but you weren’t home."

That’s just great, I thought to myself. The excuse before the explanation. A dead giveaway that I knew I’d screwed up again.

        "Loren, I’ve got the Laguna Beach Police Department on the other line! They’re at our rent house."

        "Yeah, I know Chris -- I am too."

Even though it was literally correct, it came out all wrong, sounding like "Hey, let’s all get together and hit the Sushi bar and have a big time!"

        "Then why are they calling here looking for you -- and what is going on?"

She said those last four words as if each were a separate sentence, biting them off and somehow growling at the same time.

The first question was the easiest to answer, so I thought I’d take a shot at it.

        "They’re inside and I’m outside."

        "Outside where?" She was still growling. None of this was making any sense to her. And why should it? None of this was making any sense to me, and I’m the one who put it all together.

        "I’m sitting in my car," I said meekly, still straining to see through the picture window. I could now clearly make out one of the police officers sitting in one of the leather director’s chairs talking to someone.

        "You stay right there," she instructed me. "I’m putting you on hold and telling the police to come outside to talk to you." And then she added, much to my surprise, "and do not hang up the goddamn phone!"

Chris was a very religious person. Not the kind who stopped people on the street to ask, "Have you given your soul to Jesus?", or went door-to-door in a long dress handing out pamphlets. But she had a deep, abiding faith that was as much a part of her as her blonde hair and freckles. This was only the second time in three decades that I’d ever heard her take the Lord’s name in vain. The only other time I’d ever heard a "goddamn" escape her lips was our first Christmas together. Her mother had given her a miniature cocker spaniel on Christmas morning. Chris named her Lulu, and, I had to admit, she was cute as hell. Later that day, I was leaving to go to the store to get some more egg nog to mix with the V.O. I’d been sloshing down all afternoon. I guess Lulu was a little tired from all of the excitement of Christmas, and she’d decided to take a nap under one of the rear wheels of my VW bus. When I backed over her head, Lulu ended the shortest tenure of any Peterson family pet. Unfortunately, Chris had been in the front yard with her mother and had witnessed the whole thing. A VW bus isn’t that heavy, but the skull of a six week-old miniature cocker offers little resistance, and Lulu had looked like a flounder with tire tracks across it.

The front door opened, and two of Laguna Beach’s finest emerged, looked around the street, saw me in the VW, and headed my way.

I gave them a wave, still holding the phone up to my ear.

        "Loren," Chris said.

        "Yeah, I’m still here," I assured her. I wasn’t about to hang up the goddamn phone.

        "Who are Manny and Junior?" she demanded as I got out of the car and walked toward the approaching officers, one male, one female, both wearing that look that they must practice in the police academy that says, "You’d better have a damn good excuse for this."

        "Mr. Peterson?" the female officer asked.

        "Yes, I’m Loren Peterson," I answered, shaking hands with both officers, still holding the phone on my ear and saying to Chris, "They’re our tenants."

        "You’ve got a little problem inside," the male officer said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the house. I was a little relieved to hear that it was a "little" problem, and that the cops didn’t begin our conversation with, "You’ve got the right to remain silent . . ."

        "They are not our tenants!" Chris yelled over the phone. "Damon and Darren are our tenants!"

        "Seems you’ve leased a house that was already occupied, sir," the female officer informed me with a barely perceptible smile on her face. She was somewhere in her mid-twenties, stocky with closely-cropped red hair, and was wearing rose-tinted aviator sunglasses, despite the fact that the sun had set a half-hour ago and it was damn-near dark.

        "I signed a lease with Manny and Junior yesterday," I told Chris, and then said to the officers, "The big guys are the tenants -- the other two are trespassers."

        "How could you sign a lease with them when Damon and Darren were already living in the house?" Chris asked, as the male officer, a tall, thin guy about my age said, "Looks like the ‘trespassers’ were already living in the house."

        "Look, dammit," I said to the male officer, "those guys became trespassers four months ago when they stopped paying rent."

        "Don’t you swear at me, Loren!" Chris said over the phone.

        "I was swearing at the cops, Chris," I quickly explained, and then the female officer said, "Well don’t swear at us, buddy. You’re the one who created this mess."

        "I’m not swearing at you," I said meekly.

She took a few steps toward me and shouted, "You just told your wife you were swearing at us!"

Chris must have heard her over the phone, as she added, "She’s right, Loren! That’s what you said."

There had been very few times in my life when I could actually say that I’d been out of control. Oh, I had little tantrums from time to time, but they were of short duration, and never really accounted for much. The last time I had really lost it was over a decade ago at Dodger Stadium. The boys had been on Chris and I for weeks to take them to a Dodger game. I came home on Friday night and surprised them with four tickets to the Saturday afternoon game with the much hated Giants. Fernando Valenzuela was pitching and the kids were excited as hell. It’s a forty-five minute drive from our house in Palos Verdes to Chavez Ravine, and the boys fought every minute of the trip. Despite all my shouting, threatening, and cussing, they just had refused to leave one another alone. As I parked the car in the stadium parking lot, they were involved in full-scale warfare in the back seat. I went berserk. I separated them, called them a couple of ingrates, locked them in the car, and dragged their startled mother into the stadium. By the fifth inning, Chris was quietly hysterical, Fernando had been knocked out of the box, and the Giants were having batting practice with the Dodgers relievers. I’d given up at that point and we returned to the car to find the boys sitting in the back seat where we had left them, damn-near dehydrated from crying.

As I stood in the front yard of the rent house, I felt just like I had in the Dodger Stadium parking lot.

I held the cellular phone out to the female officer and told her sarcastically, "Well why don’t you and my wife just talk it over and see if both of you together can straighten this thing out."

The male officer stepped between us, held his hand up and suggested, "Now wait a minute buddy. There’s no reason for that. Put up the phone and let’s go inside."

I hung up the phone without saying goodbye to Chris-- I’d deal with that later-- and as I was told, I walked over to the VW and tossed it in the front seat.

        "Let’s do it," I said to the cops as I walked across the front yard toward the front door.

* * * * * *

The living room looked like a miniature version of Hiroshima after the blast. There was mud tracked everywhere. God knows where that came from since it hadn’t rained in over two months. The glass coffee table was littered with Fritos, ashes, and partially eaten apples, and the fruit platter had a half-smoked cigar crushed in the middle. In the air was an odor that was a mixture of cheap tobacco and sewerage.

Manny was sitting on the couch with two police officers and Junior was perched cross-legged on top of a huge white floor pillow in the middle of the room looking like a Samoan Buddha.

        "Hey, Mr. Loren Peterson!" Manny said with a slight wave and a big grin.

        "Hey, Manny," I answered. No sense in acting like I didn’t know the guy. Maintaining a good relationship seemed like a good idea if we were going to be cellmates.

        "Where are your roommates?" I said innocently.

He pointed across the room in the general direction of the kitchen.

        "They in there with the other officers. I think they upset cause we burned dinner," he said, still grinning.

Junior let out a loud belch that startled me. If we’d been at a Laker game in the Forum, it would have signaled the end of the first quarter.

I headed for the kitchen, hearing loud voices coming from that direction. I’d just swung the door open when Damon shouted, "You!"

He and Darren were sitting at the kitchen table with two more officers. One of the officers was holding what appeared to be the lease I’d signed with Manny and Junior.

    "You did this!" Damon shouted as he pushed back his chair and stood up.

The living room was tidy compared to the kitchen. The countertops were littered with opened cans. There was a huge pot on the stove that was caked on the outside with some greenish-brown substance that had overflowed. It looked as if every can in the pantry had been emptied into the pot and then the burner had been turned all the way up. Chicken bones littered the floor and all of the cabinet doors were wide open.

        "Bite me, Damon," I responded. "Manny and Junior may be a little sloppy, but at least they pay their rent. You guys asked for this."

        "A little sloppy?" Damon asked incredulously with his hands on his hips. "Have you been in the bathroom? They don’t even flush!"

        "Well Damon," I said slowly, "why don’t you just go out there and straighten them out? If the four of you guys are going to live together, you’re going to have to learn to communicate."

        "We will not live with people like that!" Damon shouted, still standing and looking like he was on the verge of tears.

        "Doesn’t look like you’ve got much of a choice," the officer sitting next to Darren observed, as he held up the piece of paper in his hand. "They’ve got the lease."

        "Show them your lease, Damon," I suggested, beginning for the first time to feel a little confident about the situation. "Show them your canceled rent checks -- or anything else you might have that would prove that you guys aren’t just a couple of deadbeats living in someone else’s house."

For a few seconds, no one said anything. The female officer standing next to me finally asked, "Do you have a lease?"

Damon sat down slowly and looked at Darren for help. Darren looked up as if someone had just told him that the Village People Concert had been canceled.

        "Well," she said again, "do you have a lease?"

Darren shook his head slowly, and then said softly, "No".

        "Do you have any canceled rent checks?" she asked.

More shaking of the head and then another barely audible, "No."

From the living room we heard another loud belch from Junior. Darren had an expression on his face like he’d just bit into a lemon.

        "Well then," the officer sitting next to Darren said as he put on his hat and stood up, "it looks like you’ve got a couple of roommates."

 * * * * * *

A lot of men like to visit the little league baseball diamond where they spent their childhood playing endless pick-up games and learning how to run down fly balls and steal bases. Others like to go back to their old high school gym, walk around the court, and smell the odor that seems to be present in all gyms, and stand in the spot where they launched the Big Shot.

I was never much of a baseball player and I hated basketball. Baseball diamonds and gymnasiums are not the places that hold fond memories for me. When I want to be alone, reflect, and wrap myself in a comfortable blanket of nostalgia, I go to Rat Beach.

Rat Beach doesn’t sound like a very attractive or inviting place. Actually it’s both. It doesn’t have rats, or vermin of any kind. Torrance is a small beach community in Los Angeles. When I was growing up, I spent most of my free time at a stretch of beach that we called "Rat" or Right-After-Torrance. When I was ten, my dad helped me make a surfboard carrier that had small wheels on the bottom and attached to the back of my bicycle. During the summer, I’d get up early every morning with my dad, have a bowl of Cheerios, and head out to Rat Beach on my bike, surfboard in tow. I would rarely make it home before my dad got home from work in the evening.

I loved the beach. I loved the constant roar of the surf and the way the soft warm sand felt under my feet. I never considered myself to be any more than an average athlete, but by God I could surf. As I grew into a tall, skinny, blond-headed, deeply tanned kid, my identity was all wrapped up in surfing and being a surfer. The whole country was infatuated with just what I was doing everyday. Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys were singing about surfing, the ocean, and the beach, and Frankie and Annette were making beach movies. The Southern California beach scene became the focus--and the envy--of young people all over America. Kids on the Gulf Coast and the East Coast tried to copy us, but compared to our surf, theirs was minor league stuff. Kids in the Midwest who’d never even seen a beach were cutting and bleaching their hair into "surfer cuts" and zoomed around the neighborhood on a new invention called a sidewalk surfboard. My friends and I were reminded every time we turned on the radio, or the T.V. that we were doing what every kid in America wanted to be doing--surfing in Southern California.

The sun was directly overhead as I strolled barefooted down Rat Beach near the water. Every few minutes the last thrusts of a wave would come up my feet. The cool Pacific water felt good. In one hand I held my old, leather topsiders, and in the other a 12 ounce can of Diet Coke. There was a slight, steady breeze and some pretty good waves were carrying about a dozen young surfers toward the beach. As I stood and watched them, it occurred to me how little things had changed in the last three decades. The hair was longer, the bathing suits were baggier, and the surfboards were lighter and sleeker, but the shouts, the laughs, and the screams of exhilaration were the same.

As I continued my stroll, I thought about just how good things had gotten for me since the Laguna Beach problem had been resolved. Manny and Junior had kept their 100% success rate intact. Damon and Darren called some of their friends and moved out that night while me and the Samoans sat in lawn chairs in the front yard and drank beer. It was just after three in the morning when the last of their stuff was loaded, and my erstwhile tenants had driven off. As I suspected, I never heard from J. Blake Ellington, Esq., again. Two things had to be obvious to that guy: I wasn’t going to pay his clients anything and they weren’t going to pay him anything. I’d given Manny and Junior an extra hundred bucks each and the three of us cleaned up the house, went to breakfast at a little outdoor cafe near the beach, and watched the sun come up together. We walked around until the liquor stores opened at nine o’clock, and I’d bought them each another half-gallon of whiskey--no vodka.

Sandy, Chris, and I decided to get out of the landlord business, and we’d put the house up for sale. It sold in less than a week as we quickly signed the first contract that came along. After all of the expenses we deducted, we netted less than $2,500.00 -- hardly worth all the shit we’d been through. I’d sent Eric Graham a couple of new CDs (the soundtrack from "The Doors" movie, and Janis Joplin’s "Cheap Thrills") and a Jefferson Airplane Poster I’d found in a garage sale, together with a short note thanking him for turning me on to Manny and Junior.

The beeping of the cellular phone in my back pocket jolted me back to reality.

        "Hello," I said as I continued to stroll down the beach.

        "You forget you’ve got a company to run, Pilgrim?" said a familiar voice.

        "Back off, Star. The boss gets to set his own hours."

        "Hey, it’s not my butt in the grease if these checks aren’t signed and the bills don’t get paid."

        "Star, when did you get so damn anal retentive? Did having your uterus cut out last year do that to you?"

        "Watch it, Sergeant," she said threateningly. "I don’t talk about your prostatitis, you don’t talk about my uterus."

        "How’d you know I had prostatitis?"

        "I file all of your health claims. I know more about you than you do about yourself."

I laughed out loud. "Okay, Star, I give up. I’ll be there in twenty minutes."

THE END