Ferrerman, the Gilmore Girls and the Case of the Mystery Tenant

I consider all my neighbors beneath me. But that's because I live on the second floor. 

Until recently, a young Hispanic girl had one of the two apartments below me, but she moved. She was very quiet and that's everything you want in an apartment neighbor.  She was so quiet I hadn't even known she moved out. Linda was like 18 years old, a recent high school grad and a nursing student. I never officially met her though, but I did meet her mom and dad. The girl was either terminally shy or tragically aloof. I'll never know. She was a kid. She'd walk by, avoiding any eye contact, but she would say "hello" if you said it first, and that would be it. I got that. She's a teen and I'm an old man and we have nothing in common beyond living in different parts of the same house. A little civility never hurts, but haven't we all avoided eye contact with neighbors in the past, because some days you just can't even with people, and you don't want to start now? 

Before I moved here, I stayed with my brother for a few weeks. He has a daughter back at home after college, one that I've always been quite fond of. Lainie is a very smart, sweet kid- just not in the morning. She's not a morning person, I found out. Fvck- who is? Not me. But I had already been up for three hours when she would drag her gen Z butt out of bed, and it would absolutely kill her if she acknowledged her uncle's "good morning". I think I'm old man enough to say that's rude. All she had to do was mumble good morning and acknowledge that I was a fellow human being, actually in existence. She couldn't do that. Harumph. Kids today!

The Gilmore Girl's in the other apartment here were the ones that told me about Linda moving out. Yes, I had noticed her car was gone, but I figured it was in the shop. What I hadn't noticed was any moving vans or an excess of trash out by the bins, obvious signs of an evacuation. Having grown up on cop and private detective shows, I've been trained to notice things. What I didn't factor in was that 18-year-old girls don't usually have a lot of stuff or money to buy it with, making moves pretty painless. 

From my catbird seat here, I noticed the landlord spending a bit more time on landscaping. This answered my question of, "Does he even know Linda moved out?" Indeed, he had a prospective tenant. I had caught part of a conversation he had with an older gentleman where I heard him say, "Are you Section 8 over there?" On TV that means "crazy" but in the real estate business it means the government is subsidizing someone's housing. That evening, two middle-aged men came to view the apartment. The Gilmore Girl's had told me it was a one bedroom. Were these guys a couple of homos together, I wondered. Then I remembered my brother had taken me down here to see this place and we were certainly not homos together- or apart. It's good to have a second set of eyes when you're looking at anything. One of the men walked away holding an application. Landlord Bill left too. Looked like a done deal. But later, unaccompanied by Bill, two different middle-aged men and a woman came to tour the apartment. The plot was thickening, and so, I thought, was the small parking allotment we have here. Three units, three spaces. Uh oh...

A sixth person arrived yesterday- on foot- and I did not like the looks of him at all. Shaved head and an Amish beard. A biker maybe? No sleeves of tattoos though. I gotta say, creepy looking.

Again- no moving vans. A vehicle had pulled up on the lawn by the front door on Friday and brought something in that looked like a few pieces of lumber. Yesterday was Saturday, a fine day to move in, but no such activity. I went off to Walmart and when I returned, I saw the Gilmore daughter. I waved and she started talking to me as I exited my truck. Now, she's about 30 feet away from me at that point so, whatever she was saying was falling on old ears and would have to be repeated in closer proximity. We exchanged information. I mentioned the bald, bearded guy, my prime suspect. She offered up that he was "mean". This is a small town. She had witnessed him yelling at people at a redneck bar around the corner and at a store down the street. A cousin had warned me about the bar, a gathering place for the maga persuasion. Not my kind of place. Hers either, but she bought lottery tickets there. Another cousin worked at the store down the street though. I would not be happy if someone yelled at my cousin, Marion, who is one of the nicest guys you'd ever hope to meet. No, he had yelled at a girl there. Well, that's still not good.

I'm thinking that the assortment of people was probably church folk, arranging housing for someone in need, the bearded guy. Or, AA sponsors, but that's usually just one. Yet another guy stopped by last night and I heard the bearded guy say he'd see him tomorrow. He didn't yell it, so that's good. There's still an empty parking spot, so perhaps this guy is truckless as I was when I moved in. I'll have to check out if that's a furnished apartment and that's why moving out and in is so easy. Could be. I'll stay on the case.