Secrets; I Tried To Keep Us Together, You Were Busy Keeping Secrets

The Gnome

I need my rent money before the fifteenth this man says to me. He's my landlord and he lives beneath me in the basement apartment with his wife and dogs. I don't know how many dogs and I don't know what they look like because I've never seen them but I've heard them. I've heard them at three, four, five o'clock in the morning. Howling and moaning. It sounds as if they are conjuring demons. I've told my landlord about the dogs that howl and moan in the middle of the night and my landlord wiggles the toothpick that's plugged into the side of his mouth and looks at me like he doesn't know what I'm talking about, and I look at him like how could you not know what I'm talking about when I hear the dogs howling upstairs in my flat and you live in the same room as them, I guess, unless him and his wife are not home at three, four, five o'clock in the morning. There is no way they could not hear the dogs howling. And I can't think of a reason why they wouldn't be home at that ungodly hour. What could possibly be going on down there?

I've seen my landlord in his ugly light blue van out on the street. It's a beat up old Dodge with a mangled wire coat hanger antenna. I've seen it idling near our apartment and I've looked in the window and seen my landlord in there, just sitting there staring straight ahead as if he's forgotten that he's sitting in a van idling. My landlord's name is Owen Cabot. He looks like a gnome and is squat and has one of them thick mountain man beards and a thick bowl cut brown head of hair like he's out of some Hobbit movie or something. I can't complain to the Hobbit about the dogs right now because my rent is months overdue. He tells me this, he tells me I'm months behind and then he tells me he needs his rent money by the fifteenth and now I have to avoid him and check up and down the block when I enter and exit my apartment building because I don't want to run into him. My brother paid his portion of the rent but he's not trying to put up for me and I don't blame him. My brother put up for me before and this is the way it is, I don't have money. I gotta find a job.

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When my landlord showed us the apartment there were these disturbing paintings in the common stairwell. And when I say disturbing I mean awful garish colors and portions of faces all distorted and snarled looking and thick oil paint that looks slapped on too thick. They look like some demonic nightmare from hell. I purposely look to the ground when I enter and exit my apartment because they aren't what you want to see when you're starting or ending your day. They are the landlord's wife's paintings. I'm shocked that she considers herself a painter. I'm shocked that she has the audacity to put these framed images in the hallway of their apartment building. The only use I can see, and this isn't much of a stretch, is that if I was a thief and I was breaking into this building and I looked up and saw these fucked up paintings I might turn around and leave. My brother has threatened more than a handful of times to take them down. That lady who is married to our landlord runs a florist business and does big high-end corporate jobs and I just don't get it. My brother says he's seen her walking the streets drunk and mumbling to herself and I'm like, where? And he tells me up and down Seventh Avenue and I'm like, shut up, and he shrugs his shoulders as if to show me that he doesn't care if I believe him or not, and so I say, get out of here, and he just flips channels on the television and then I ask him, why?, because I want to keep the conversation afloat and figure out who the hell lives below my room, and he's like, why what? And I can't seem to make sense of these two folks and their demon dogs that howl through the night.

I come home and my landlord's wife is parked on the steps in the common stairwell and she smells like vodka and not like a couple of drinks vodka, she smells like she's been binging for a couple few days because it's coming out her pores and her lips look all glossy and wet and swollen and red like folks who drink vodka for days look. I know she's there because she needs to collect my rent money and now is drunked up and who knows what kind of trouble she's going to start. I'm thinking she must want some cash to get another bottle of vodka. I'm cold busted because she's been there waiting for me to come home and I don't have the money because I can't find a job. I'm trying to think of the best way to tell her this when she tells me she lost her key and can't get into her apartment. I'm relieved but then I'm thinking that I hope she doesn't think she's staying in my place. I'm feeling all put on the spot because it's cold out and she's looking all pathetic like she's homeless and I'm like, do you want to use the phone? I'm trying to sound all accommodating and hospitable because I owe them a whole gang of money and she's like, I want to get into my apartment and she tells me she can get into her place through the back door in our kitchen and I'm like, oh? Then I remember the door in the kitchen, and I remember that it doesn't have a lock on it so my brother had shoved a bunch of crap up against the door so no one could get up into our place. I move all the crap and that lady stumbles down into her apartment and I'm like, see you later, and I catch a glimpse of their apartment that looks all dark and musty. I shut the door and put all the crap back up against the door and I'm wondering why these folks live down in the basement when they own an entire brownstone and I'm thinking what kind of a place is it down there because it sounds as if they have three or four dogs and then the two of them and the place can't be all that big.