Kangaroo Rat
Printed in Thieves Jargon
It begins in the shower each morning with the shrill screaming that
seems to flow from the shower head in conjunction with the steam,
followed by the thud-thud-thudding of a morose code just on the
other side of the bathroom wall, where the apartment manager assures
me there are no other apartments, studios, or dwellings of any kind.
In fact, his family and my “family” are the only occupants here on
the mezzanine level of the building, a unique arrangement for which
he is always quick to remind me is a major bargain in the Bay Area
housing market he would only be too willing to charge more for. One
of these days I’m going to reply he should certainly charge more for
the regular occurring screams of a teenage girl who sounds like she’s
being disemboweled.
The apartment manager further assures me that the bizarre screeching
I hear in the shower each morning is because his brother-in-law got
the shower head part as an import from a backward province in China
where all the shower head fixtures make this extreme sound because of
the efficiency with which they push water through the perforations in
a rare metallic compound that originates from the region in which the
part is manufactured.
“Have you heard the sound it makes?” I ask him. I could mention my
roommate replaced the original shower head our first week but this
would simply complicate matters for my good man here, who may feel
compelled to develop an even more technically precise excuse.
“Oh yeah, sure, back when we did the walkthrough and prep with
the owner and contractors.” That is, his brother-in-law again.
I like Ron a lot actually. He’s a balding, pot-bellied, back country
guy, retired Navy, and as a fellow veteran and law-breaker, I feel some
superficial camaraderie with him. Because of this, I also know he is utterly
capable of spewing pure, driven bullshit in copious and well-timed amounts.
“What about the thudding sound?”
“Pro’bly a kangaroo rat.”
“That’s gonna be one huge fuckin’ rat Ron. It would have to be a
possum at the very least to make that racket.” Now I’ve got him.
Is he going to admit that his building is haunted or admit that possums
are invading his brother-in-law’s property? Either way, I’d have a case
for talking down the rent.
“Well yeah, kangaroo rats get to be pretty big. You
should have seen the one I caught last week.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah, they get real big y’know. I’ll get a trap set out,
take care of that problem in no time.”
Now I could tell Ron that I grew up with kangaroo rats running
over my forehead at night and even when the food is plentiful,
they’re really just big mice, at best; certainly not big enough
to sound like they’re plunging the business end of plumber’s wrench
in and out of someone’s rectum. But instead I just say, “OK, thanks man…appreciate it.”
Yeah, I like Ron ‘cause we’re both full of shit, and both of us know
to keep our mouth’s shut when we’ve got a good thing going. He won’t
tell the building’s owner or the police about the pungent stench of
Island Mountain Poison that steamrolls out of our apartment’s third “bedroom”.
Likewise, we don’t inform the building’s owner or the INS about the dozen or
so Indo-Chinese “relatives” rotating through their living room floor every month.
But this still doesn’t solve the problem in the shower. I didn’t even tell
him how the shower steam beads up on the ceiling and looks, for no
discernible reason, like drops of blood. Eventually these beads drip
off the ceiling back down to the tub and go back to just looking like
drops and streams of water. But up on the ceiling…always, always dark red.
Once, after sex with one of my revolving roommates’ ex-girlfriends (who still
dropped by on the sly) she freaked out and jumped out from under the covers of
my otherwise cozy bed.
“Jesus, this place is a shining beacon of martyrdom!”
“Huh?”
“You’ve got entities…” she murmurs, more to herself,
as if she just diagnosed me with a metaphysical STD.
Boobs flopping and all, she bolts from my room and I
follow just as naked out into the foyer area and find her in the
kitchen, which is just on the other side of the shower in the bathroom.
She’s on her knees surrounded by the clutter of dishes, tools and fast
food wrappers littered all over the floor, moving her hands all over
the part of the wall she can reach.
“What did this place used to be?”
“A sweatshop.”
“Before that?”
“I don’t know…some kind of drawing room that was part of the hotel?”
“A ‘gentlemen’s’ club?”
“Maybe.”
“There’s bad energy back here Pablo. Prisoners…slaves…”
Erin was always a little off…no, that’s not right. She was always a
lot off. She went to AA meetings religiously after which she would hook
down more questionable snow than a Yeti; believed herself a grand chess
champion, and I was not the first or last of our clique that she had
messed around with, before and after their breakup. She also claimed
to be an ultra-sensitive psychic whose need to control social issues
was always determined by a series of tarot and astrology readouts.
None of these were reasons to turn down the very hot bumping of our uglies.
But seeing her like that in the kitchen, caressing the wall with a kind of
hypnotized horror, her gorgeous pudenda thrust back so sweetly for anyone
to see who might come crashing through the door, including her ex, caused
a particular feeling to take root inside me. Over the next few days this
blossomed into my explaining to Erin that our relationship was unhealthy
and maybe she shouldn’t come over anymore and we should stop banging. I
couldn’t believe these words were coming out of my mouth, but there was
a kind of urgency about my feelings at that moment. She didn’t exactly
put up an argument against mine. I expected her to be angry or start a
fight, but her tears just kind of welled up as she said, “But I liked
you,” already in the past tense. It’s not like she wasn’t going to be
able to move on.
But whatever Erin heard in my tone, or saw in my face, I’m pretty sure
that’s the same look I’m seeing in Ron’s eyes right now. He knows goddamn
well the building is haunted. And he’ll never admit it.
I know Fidel sees some kind of entity. He watches it from the corners of
the different rooms, his head rapidly tracking invisible tracers across
the walls and ceilings. I know they say kittens are supposed to do that
anyway. All the beautiful, young and wasted ravers, stoners and deadheads
that flop across our pleather-vinyl couch, drawn here by the leverage
inherent in our “third bedroom” and congregation of amateur apothecaries
never fails to mention that all cats, especially kittens, behave just like that.
“Does that mean what he sees isn’t real?” I always ask. That generally
always ends that thread of conversation. At least until the thudding
begins, that is. That’s the thing about druggies: they make poor
witnesses, but they’re better than no witnesses at all.
WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP!
The reaction is generally the same.
“Jesus! What the fuck is that?”
“Kangaroo rat.”
“That’s gotta be one big fuckin’ rat!”
“Yeah, you’d be surprised how big they get.”
Then whatever gaggle of freaks is here look at each other
all meaningfully, as if something is wrong with me.
They might be right.
Usually Carlos, my roommate’s brother, will say (with standard
issue faux Mexican accent) “Oh no, es el espirito!” Everyone
looks at me, or my roommate if he’s there (his broke ass brother
hangs out more than he does) and laughs and says, “I hope you’re
charging that ghost some rent.” I pretend to laugh, like its
really funny … and I guess in our lovely little anarchy of the
doomed it is. I just hope these leeches get a chance to take a
shower here early one morning, but knowing this crew, that isn’t likely.