Secret Agent Man

In the spring of 2000, my elderly grandfather went to live in a nursing home, and my parents and I moved into his house in Fayetteville, West Virginia. The house actually belonged to an uncle, but he couldn’t sell it while my grandfather was alive because my grandfather had a lifetime dowry. It was a small ranch house, but it was big enough with three bedrooms and two baths. My parents knew how socially withdrawn I was and allowed me to have the room with the private bath. That room became my sanctuary for seven years.

The house was in a nice neighborhood. Solidly middle class. We were beside a church with large stained glass windows, and there were a couple of big, rambling one-hundred-year-old mansions nearby. The county courthouse was down on the corner. I could walk to the town park, the cemetery and to trailheads that led down into the New River Gorge. The trails were maintained by the National Park Service. It was the nicest place I’ve ever lived, and I felt more secure and stable while living there than I ever did before moving in or after I moved out.

My grandfather died in 2003. My mother died in 2004. And finally, my father died in 2007. Then my uncle sold the house two months later.

After a very hasty search on the internet for a new home, I landed in Merced, California. The apartment complex I found was for low income renters, most of whom had a HUD subsidy. It was definitely a big step down.

The elderly woman who lived in the apartment below me turned out to be more than a little nuts. About six months after I moved in, she began making odd complaints about me to the manager. She claimed I had high tech spy equipment which I used to track her movements inside her apartment. She said that if she went into the kitchen, I would go into my kitchen above her, and if she went to her living room, I would go into my living room, etc. Why she thought I would be that interested in her was never explained. She was obviously not right, as they say in the south. She began coming to my door and cussing me out, and when I left the apartment, she would follow me around the parking lot making wild accusations. I was afraid of her because I knew someone that unhinged could be capable of anything.

Eventually, the apartment manager arranged for us to meet in her office where I was asked a lot of nosy questions by this elderly woman and the manager…as if it were up to me to prove that I wasn’t actually a James Bond type agent sent to watch this old woman with a million dollars’ worth of gadgets at my disposal. Then the manager actually asked if she could inspect my apartment. I agreed to this because I didn’t want her to think I had anything to hide, but I felt violated. A couple of weeks later, the old woman called the police on me, and a police officer came to my apartment after midnight and asked to inspect my apartment. Again, I didn’t want anyone to think I had anything to hide, so I let him in.

The woman’s fears were irrational and she had concocted a full-fledged delusion about who I was and what I was up to, so the assurance by the apartment manager and a police officer served no purpose. I knew it wouldn’t and could have told them so.

The woman below me kept pounding on her ceiling with what I presume was a broom or mop handle and screaming obscenities at me. I would be standing in my bathroom brushing my teeth and could hear her screeching from below calling me a mother fucker. After a while, I broke down and called the police because I was terrified this woman was going to lose all restraint and attempt to kill me. A few minutes later a police officer came to my door, and I will never forget how utterly indifferent and dismissive he was. He never let me explain my concerns. Every time I tried to speak, he would interrupt me and insist that the old woman was just afraid and that I should try harder not to disturb her. I wasn’t doing anything but living in the apartment I was renting.

It didn’t take me long to realize that basic circumstances had changed. My station in life was different. I was a poor, disabled middle aged man living alone in a cheap apartment on the wrong side of the tracks. People were generally going to look at me differently, including the police. I was less important to this society, and it was less likely that I would be taken seriously. And if something happened to me, it’s not likely much fuss would be made. That fact was made abundantly clear to me.

About a month after the police and the manager made it clear that I was on my own, a unit became available at the other end of the complex, and I grabbed it while I could. I had to pay the apartment manager’s husband and his friend to move my stuff.