Chapter 14: Operation Keep PT Down: My Mother has a Talk With Steve and For Some Reason, I Could Not Find an Apartment to Rent

My mother had a talk with Steve before she left. One of those I wish I were a fly on the wall talks that make people sit up and forward in their seat and say “Please, do tell,” with a gleam in their smile.

As my mother succinctly put, “Steve has a good heart, but he’s unstable.” If only his life could be so aptly summarized.

My mother basically told Steve to go get a full time job, i.e., Go away, you need to go away. The “understood” part was “from my daughter.”

Initially, around day three after we met, when Steve told me he had an offer with Locomotors and potentially Honda, that it would take him three years to learn all he needed to know to start his own car company, I told him that it would be best if we met again in three years. I was just starting my own career and had too much to do than get involved. Steve respected that and said that if I had an identical twin, she would be his ideal woman. I admit, that got me.

So a little over a month later, I introduced Steve to my mother and she told Steve to go away somewhere and get a full-time job. It wasn’t a coincidence that almost six months later, Steve’s mentor Taylor Geckle, auto designer extraordinairre told Steve the same thing.  Everyone knew what was good for Steve except Steve. When he finally caught up, it was too late to do what was good for him, because something kept stopping him from doing the things that would finally advance his life and stabilize him.

If there were a way of succinctly summarizing Steve’s life in terms of what was externally wrong with it, one could safely say that there was always something stopping him from achieving his dreams once he set his mind to it. Usually, it was a friend who felt depressed, so down they felt suicidal, a damsel in distress, that usually got Steve’s macho heart. He was a chump for a sob story, and the Universe--I mean the world--was full of them.

So, Steve said yeah, he’d stay away from me, because my mother told him that I had been through too many years of taking care of other people and not myself so that I had not been able to achieve anything in my own life. Things had gotten so bad that my health was wrecked and my mother told Steve that this was my last chance to get somewhere with the education that I had worked so hard for otherwise it would be a loss. Potential lost. Like Paradise Lost.

So Steve understood and with all his mind, but not his heart, intended to get a job with Loco Motors in Arizona. Except that Steve had some intense pains that required medical marijuana. He wouldn’t say what but you could in his face that his life was an opera of pain from act one through intermission until the final curtain call. His blood shot eyes, his laughed tinged with bitterness, the bags that had bags under his eyes. Those were the worst. Not even his gaunt, sunken cheeks could compare to the bags under his eyes. They seemed filled with every trauma that had beset Steve and had nestled into the bags under his eyes until they bulged like obscene trophies of how the Universe--I mean the world--had triumphed over Steve…and his will.

With this caution to Steve, to go away, my mother left town. Actually, she would have stayed longer, for she did not trust Steve to leave. But she had another trip to the East Coast to my sisters soon. What happened after my mother left—well, she often shook her head because my sisters were settled. Indeed, it was one sister on the East Coast that I had spend so much of my time helping that wrecked my health, so my mother really did not need to go there, had she known what was about to happen to me, but who could really know? Except, perhaps, the Universe. I mean, the world.

With an observation that I was “solid,” I drove my mother to LAX, returned to the hotel where she and I had been staying, and followed up on the many apartment leads my mother had found for me.

None of them returned my call.

So I continued searching. Several more said they would be happy to have me. I told the apartment managers about my lack of credit and prior to that my less than stellar history but that I had started work as an attorney. Most of them were touched by my story and said that my credit history would not be a bar from renting. When I had filled out the application for some places, I called to make an appointment to submit the application but never received a return phone call. Odd, the apartment managers were so enthusiastic about me.

I could not stay in the Extended Stay forever so I decided to pursue the informal roommate option. You know, roommates who already were renting and did not have to go through the formal credit application. Again, I had a couple of places who wanted me immediately, for instance, a few who wanted me to replace a roommate who was moving out, all legit of course. One lady was about to rent to me when her brother unexpectedly found a job in the area and wanted to stay with her.

The one case that stuck out was a place in Long Beach in the Alamitos area that had several African American males. I had emailed them and had not received a reply so went directly to the address listed. The ad had expressed a preference for a male roommate, less drama supposedly. However, the three male roommates were open to a female roommate.

When I arrived, two girls were there. None of my potential male roommates were home. The girls admitted that they were always around and contributed to utilities. They told me that one of my potential roommates, Al, had a son. I was cool with that, seven or eight people in a four bedroom apartment. My room would be the smallest. The girlfriends always hanging around and yet the place was so unkempt. That didn’t bother me either. They were all hardworking, honest, decent folk, and I knew I would be safe. They said their neighborhood was safe as well.

Mike came home first. I spoke to him, asked him questions. He didn’t really interview me, seemed to think I was fine for a roommate on sight, and said if I could wait a bit, his two other roommates would be home from work. Al came home next. He was a handsome, no nonsense man, and his three-year old son who said, “Shu be-bu-bul.” What?

“Yes, she’s beautiful,” Al translated for me. I laughed. It had been a long time since I could even think about my looks. We talked, I asked about the safety and parking in the neighborhood, Al said it was safe, no problems since he had been here for four years.

Both Mike and Al were happy to have me as their roommate. Their roommate, Damion, would be home soon. He approved of me as well. I went out to my car, excited, texting Steve: looks like I got a place! Three guys in a Long Beach neighborhood. They’re ready to take me without a credit application and told me the room could be ready for me by the weekend.

My texts often run long.

Steve texted back: Great!

That’s when the first two police cruisers came. They parked down the street from where I was parked. Then two more came. A fire truck, an ambulance, followed by a few more police cars. I snapped some pics and texted Steve.

This sign was in front of one of the hoses on the street where this major incident occurred.

Steve: Wow.

Then I walked towards the emergency. A pale, white Caucasian male with matching washed out hair was carried out on a gurney. No blood, just a distressingly pale face. And body. I recall that was odd because the sheet was not pulled up.

I asked an onlooker what was happening.

“I dunno,” he said, “looks like someone almost got murdered.”

I asked another neighbor. “I have no idea, nothing like this has ever happened here before,” She was evidently amazed at what was happening. I looked around the neighborhood. Every onlooker appeared amazed. It was a strictly middle-middle class neighborhood in Long Beach, not rich but everyone there worked hard and appeared to keep their nose clean.

I approached a Hispanic man in his late forties, curly brunette. “I’m thinking about moving in down the block and was wondering if it’s safe. Has anything like this every happened before?”

He looked at me. “See that house behind me? I was born in that house. I still live in it. Nothing has ever happened on this block since I’ve been alive.” For some reason, I believed him. Before I left, I counted no less than a total of ten police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks.

The next day, I decided to put a deposit down on the apartment. I called Al and left a message. Never heard back. I did think it was weird but at the time never thought anything about it. I was steadily getting more work and was able to stay at my hotel for a while yet. And Steve said I could always stay with him. Little did I suspect that the Universe--I mean the world--was closing in on me, especially my choice of rentals.

If you want to skip ahead, read on. A few months later, I checked the police blotter for that part of town for the day that half the police force was called out to that part of Long Beach. Nothing required two police officers at the scene. So why were a dozen government first responders called to that part of Long Beach without the incident making the police blotter?

More importantly, who on Earth, or rather the Universe, could engineer such a scenario, with no one questioning it?

(Note that I looked this up several times since March. I wonder what you would find if you Googled "Police blotter Long Beach March 19, 20, and 21?")