crazy jerry (part one)

Bonne never fails to have favorable first impressions of people, and with our landlord it was no different.

“I don’t know why, but he reminds me of Santa Claus!” She said as she escorted my mother and I over to meet him for the first time.

His office was halfway between our apartment and campus, in a building that had always piqued my curiosity. It looked like some dilapidated beachfront motel, with Christmas tree lights strung out front, pink flamingoes, and a faded green canopy jutting over the porch. The sidewalks were lined with furniture that looked to have been dragged out of low-income neighborhoods in the 50’s, and left to gather dust ever since. As we climbed the steps and waited for a response to our knock, I took in the various reading material lying about the porch. “Conspiracies and Cover-ups: What the Government Isn’t Telling You,” “Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness,” “The Supernatural, Paranormal, and the Unexplained.”

This, I thought, was going to be interesting.

The person who answered the door did not, for me, remotely resemble Santa Claus. He was small, thin, and wiry, leathery tan, in cut off jean shorts, sunglasses and t-shirt. He introduced himself as Jerry, but he will hereby be known as “Crazy Jerry” since to call him anything else would be to diminish his personality. As we signed the various hand-scribbled forms and photocopies he thrust at us, he told us all about his budding enterprise; to buy out the entire block of one-level houses, and sublet them as vacation bungalows for visiting friends and family of students.

“Wanna see?” He said. With no choice but to say yes, we followed him through the rest of the building, which he had partitioned into four sections and into each squeezed a bed, a fan, and a mini-fridge. Two had a microwave balanced on top of the fridge, the other two, a television.

Clearly enamored with my mother, Crazy Jerry proposed a discounted rate on one of his dwellings for the week. The one he was offering came furnished with peeling yellow wallpaper and leopard print bedcovers. My mother shuddered.

“I think I’ll keep my hotel reservation,” she said.

Taking us outside, Jerry tried to auction off some of his hideous furniture. The objects that lined the streets were only the tip of the iceberg; chairs, couches, desks, and lamp skeletons filled the nearby alleyways, and he gestured to them proudly as he entreated, “Take anything you’d like!”

Not wanting to offend him, we settled on a chipped corner table and a floor lamp. I also agreed to have him drop off one or two of his extra mattresses for me to sleep on, although Bonne and my mother both wrinkled their noses at the thought.

“What else am I going to do?!” I countered. We had literally nothing by way of furniture and appliances, and Bonne already had dibs on our friend Cat’s extra springbox. I didn’t want my room looking like a prison cell any longer.