The Move Toward Freedom Westward AKA The Continuing Story Of My Life>Act 3

Then I started my own investigation online to see if I could contact her. From what little information I could gather from her friends, her mother might have been sick and she went home to take care of her in Kansas. So I started doing cross-referencing online and came up with very little, almost nothing.

And then the phone calls started coming in, asking for her. I said I didn’t know where she was and that I was the new occupant of the apartment and that this was her old phone number. I wished them well and called the phone company to get the line disconnected.

After that, things began to settle down and apartment living was alright. It was easy to go to and from work in only seven minutes everyday. Then in April, 2002 my first incident occurred with my landlady when one of her dogs bit me when I came up the stairs to pay my rent check to her. She stood up for her dog, claiming that “she” (it) was only trying to protect her (the landlady).

In the midst of summer mildew and mold began growing on the floors and a number of my books and pieces of furniture were ruined. One night while I was making myself dinner I heard screaming above. I knew what was going on; it was the landlady again, fighting with her boyfriend whom I met early on; a construction worker from Argentina she had befriended at her job one day, one year ago to whom she proposed to help with his English-speaking skills. The friendship blossomed into romance and although it didn’t sound like much of romance that night, it was. Supposedly.

The screaming turned into screeching followed by loud sobbing and the breaking of dishes and glass. I had to not laugh and found a good pair of strong earplugs and placed them inside my ears. Dinner was at last peaceful for me.

Then one night the floor beneath the countertop began to leak after a routine night of washing the dishes. I looked beneath the sink, looked at the while plastic pipes and then discovered to my horror; several of my pots below the pipes were filled with putrid water. Why? Leaky pipes!

The summer of 2003 had been an unusually cool, yet the floor kind of sticky as I noticed books of mine crumbling. Then one morning I woke up to a wet floor and wet walls.

It had apparently rained the night before and I didn’t know it. This time I formally complained about it and the landlady came downstairs and took a look at it, but didn’t really offer any suggestions, other than telling me I should try drying out my crumbling books and rather sticky and scummy-looking leather briefcases. I ended up losing about $60 worth of personal belongings, but she didn’t care. ..