Winona and The Nameless Bastard. Nameless because I’ve never introduced myself to him and I never will.
It’s reported on daily by the Kitchen Krew Bulletin, which is run by Isabella’s aunt. In the “Around the Neighborhood” section, yesterday’s headline was “All Quiet on the Western Front”. There was a brief blog post about how The Suit hadn’t been seen in several days now.
The war started in earnest the day after I first confronted him – when the crew returned at 6 a.m. And promptly started up their jackhammers. Again.
This time, it woke Isabella up. We conferred briefly, then opened the kitchen window and emptied the contents of our garbage cans onto their heads. I scored a direct hit, drenching Horrible Hottie’s suit in coffee grounds and orange peels and damp teabags. Then I stormed downstairs with my hair wrapped in spiral curlers, wearing vintage Fiorucci pajamas with kittens in sunglasses.
I stomped over to the construction lot and yelled into his furious face, “My neighbor is recovering from heart surgery, you douche-nozzles!” Which was true.
I slammed the door shut before he could say anything back. The jackhammers turned off and stayed off. They didn’t start up again until 8 a.m. But that wasn’t the end of the hostilities. Oh, no. He just couldn’t let it rest.
A lovely bouquet was delivered to my doorstep the next day – addressed to “Miss Winona Jeffers”. Roses, tastefully arranged with boxes of Summer’s Eve. Har de har.
He reappeared a few days later. I stomped up to him and demanded to know how he knew my name and where I lived. He wrinkled his brow in mild concern and asked if I also heard voices.
The next time I saw my nemesis, I was walking five dogs for one of my part-time gigs. The air was thick with dust – the crew had been tearing up the lot for a week straight.
As I strolled by, I called out to ask him when in tarnation they’d be done with all this nonsense. He flicked a look of icy indifference at the dogs, then said sharply, “It’ll be finished when it’s finished.”
I stalked off and circled around the block. On the way back, I rearranged the dog leashes so that Beanie was on the outside. Then I casually strolled by Suit-jerk…and paused. Beanie may look like a standard poodle, but he’s actually a hollowed-out pee robot; whenever I pause, he piddles. He obligingly lifted his leg and decorated the Suit’s pant-leg.
The resulting bellow of outrage is a sound I’ve replayed in my head ever since, whenever I need a quick pick-me-up.
That evening, I came home to find that our apartment stank like sun-ripened roadkill. The source was sitting on the counter – a box of pizza made with Limburger cheese and Surströmming, which is a spectacularly smelly fermented fish. How do you even find a pizza parlor that has those ingredients on hand? Is there a place in Manhattan dedicated entirely to making gag-gift pizzas? And how much did he bribe the landlord to let him into our apartment?
That Burberry-clad barracuda. How do I hate him? Let me count the ways.
One. He’s got a smug smile permanently stamped on his handsome mug.
Two. He’s fifty percent responsible for me sleeping through my job interview at Hudson’s, or at least his construction crew is.
Three. He gets a twisted thrill out of messing with me. He’s more irritating than a G-string made of poison oak.
Well, nothing can ruin my day, not even him, because I got a surprise call from Hudson’s yesterday afternoon. The personal shopper they hired didn’t work out, so the position is open again. Amazingly, even though I stood them up, they’re giving me a second chance. This is thanks entirely to my downstairs neighbor, the one who arranged the job interview for me in the first place.
“I’m glad that donkey in a suit is here,” I inform Xena, my foster dog. “Because I look finer than frog hair today.”
I shouldn’t care what he thinks, but every time I’ve confronted him, I’ve looked like I just climbed out of a dumpster. He’s always crisp and polished from the top of his perfectly coiffed head to the tips of his Italian leather shoes, which puts me at a disadvantage.
Today, though, I’ve spent hours putting myself together. I tore my closet-sized bedroom apart, and the pile of shoes and clothing on my twin-sized bed is taller than I am, but it was worth it.