There’s One in Every Neighborhood

I was not pleased at 7:30 this morning when my doorbell rang. First of all, I have a doorbell? Second, I was halfway through an iced coffee watching the morning news in my pajamas. Third, Beau was in the shower still so I couldn’t send him downstairs to answer it.

Since the butler was busy, I trounced down two flights of stairs picking at the wedgie my booty shorts were giving me (I only wear them in the privacy of my own home and that is my prerogative), hoping to God that this wasn’t a religious official trying to convert me when I was still braless and thereby, at my most defensive. Through the glass in the front door, I saw a very shabbily dressed older gentleman. I cracked the door and said, “Can I help you?” in a tone that best conveyed my intended message “Get the fuck off my porch.”

As he opened his bearded face to explain exactly why he was still standing on my landlord’s New York Times, I was overwhelmed with the smell of festering garbage and unwashed human. I ascertained he was homeless and come to beg tuppence of me. I was about to shut the door in his face when he said “Do you own a sports car?”

Don’t nobody threaten my baby’s convertible.

In an unprecedented move, I skipped from the usual Jersey attitude directly to the tone and demeanor of Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny. It was something angry, feral, bestial, JURASSIC even and probably had a lot to do with my Cheerios getting soggy as I stood there talking to a man that appeared to have slept in a dumpster.

I cracked the door farther and barked “Yeah.” He then asked (quite politely considering my general bearing) if I could move said sports car so that they could remove a dumpster from my neighbor-across-the-street’s driveway. The car was in the way of the truck. Apparently he didn’t sleep in a dumpster, he just worked with one.

I rolled my eyes in a way I haven’t done since I was 15-years-old and gave him one last “Yeah” before slamming the door. But since I can’t drive stick, I had to run upstairs and scream to Beau (who was just getting out of the shower) that he needed to move his car because some construction guy told me so. Hell hath no fury like a Beau bothered before 8 am. I immediately started eating my Cheerios in front of the window to see if Beau ran someone over.

When he returned, I described to him the sheer grossness of the construction worker who rang our door bell. “That wasn’t part of the construction crew,” Beau responded, “That was our neighbor.” The same neighbor who left a nasty gram on the car this past winter causing me to call down the fury of coyote poop on his backyard. The same neighbor who actually confronted Beau in person once about our car being parked in front of his house instead of our house (even though at the time there were clearly no spot available on our side of the street). Yes, that neighbor has now asked that we not park in front of our own house either. And also he smells bad.