In the next couple of weeks, Jerry came with his Mexican helper Roberto to drop off the mattresses, fix the upstairs plumbing, etcetera. These episodes were all by day, and involved a lot of him ordering around Roberto like a nit-picky mother hen.
“Don’t turn it that way, Roberto. To the left. Izquierda!” To which Roberto would give me a sheepish smile and change direction.
But my first true Jerry encounter came when I was alone one night fixing dinner. Bonne had apparently called him about our bipolar heating system without telling me, because I was entirely unprepared for the sudden screech of a motorcycle halting outside our building and Jerry ambling into our apartment, still with his helmet on, a few seconds later.
“Can I help you?” I felt it was appropriate to ask.
“You girls called about your heat. I’m going to fix it up for you. Don’t want you girls to get COLD.” He added further emphasis to the last word with a suggestive wink.
I was already getting disconcerted, and this was before I smelled the whisky.
“Ah…. are you sure? I don’t remember calling.”
“Oh, you called.” He said.
“Well,” I said. “Maybe I did. I can’t remember. Maybe I’m just losing brain cells at a rapid rate.”
He peered up at me owlishly from under the helmet.
“Rapid?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re talking about time, then.”
“Yes….?”
“Well, what do you know about time?”
I pursed my lips together as I pondered my response, while Jerry, wobbling slightly under the weight of his helmet, put a hand out to steady himself on the stair railing.
“Have you ever read,” he asked, “about the space time continuum?”
I was beginning to doubt he had any intention of making repairs.
“No,” I said. “Does it involve quarks?”
“The Space. Time. Continuum,” He went on, ignoring me, “maintains that time is only a fourth dimension, and therefore its passing is but a construct of the mind, and so time cannot be rapid, it can only be now.”
“Fascinating,” I said, not wanting to encourage him any further. “Are you going to fix the heat?”
Grinning, he shuffled over to the thermostat, the heavy smell of liquor trailing in his wake. He punched a few numbers, popped open the vent below, and rose up as quickly as he had squatted.
“Don’t have my tools,” he said, shuffling past me again, “I’ll have to come back tomorrow when I’ve got ‘em.”
“Listen,” he leaned back in the doorway as I prepared to deadbolt the lock, “Have I ever told you about the time I went to find Osama bin Laden?””
I pleaded for somebody, anybody, to return home to the apartment complex at that moment.
“No,” I said, “You sure haven’t.”
“Well, the first time, I looked in every crevice of the desert, and I didn’t find him. But the second time…. well….. I won’t tell you about the second time,” he said, giving me a parting leer as he tightened his helmet strap.
“I wouldn’t want to scare ya,” he said.
And that was my first encounter with Crazy Jerry.
He never came back with his tools, and eventually the heat seemed to work itself out on its own, so I didn’t see him again until about a month later, when our sink was clogged. This time, he proceeded to tell me about all of the children he had fathered.
“I got a few around your age,” he said as he fiddled with the drainpipe.
“You know, you never finished telling me about the space-time continuum,” I said, perched on the kitchen table. I’d had a couple glasses of wine and I was in the mood for entertainment.
“Did I say I was going to tell you about the space time continuum?” He furrowed his brow.
“Yup,” I said. “And Osama bin Laden.”
“Huh,” he said, wrenching something into place. “I must have been wasted.”
“I’m pretty sure you were,” I said.
And so it went.
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