Short Story / Tenants

Over the years people came and went. For a decade and a half the populace within the walls consisted mostly of single women in their fifties, with daughters in their twenties, who were raising kids in their teens. No matter what color the women and her children were- usually light brown, some were white, one family was black- the double matriarchs were usually heavyset, with blotchy skin and baggy eyes.

The longest anybody stayed was about three years, it was usually just a year or two, sometimes less. They’d find somewhere else to go. The daughters would take up with a man, usually a heavyset security guard type with a red nose, and move herself and her kids in with him. The mothers would sometimes die. Some of the kids were on the verge of becoming the next generation of ignorant thugs, and would leave to bounce through corrections. Some kids left the apartment, and the neighborhood, never wanting to live in another place like it again, a few of those kids joined the military, some got into college.

Some of the people that came through knew that the apartment used to be Tracy’s, and had heard stories about what had happened to him. The stories that they’d told about him, to each other, at night, as words of caution before the daughters or the delinquents ventured out, were the only accounts Tracy had ever heard and all he’d had to go on.

*

In the mid- nineties two girls moved in, Christy and Marguerite. Christy had red hair and freckles. Marguerite had dark, cropped hair and blue eyes. Christy and Marguerite painted Tracy’s walls yellow, purple and red, hung up Christmas lights and had boys over, disheveled boys who strummed guitars and did lines of coke on the girls’ glittery aqua blue Formica table.

Great, Tracy thought. Here comes the neighborhood.

One time, Christy actually saw Tracy. It was out of the corner of her eye, after she’d turned the TV on. She’d reached for her beer, saw Tracy at the TV- a trick of light and shadow, that’s all- but when her TV turned to static she turned paler than normal- she was a pale girl, anyway. She turned almost as translucent as Tracy.

For weeks before that she’d talked about the “weird vibe” she got from the place. It didn’t take much to convince her there was something a little off about the apartment.

After the TV incident, the girls hired somebody claiming to do exorcisms. This graying new age woman- a woman who wore a purple warm- up suit and crystals around her neck- came wandering around the apartment humming with her eyes closed, talking some shit about the energy of previous residents coming up from the Earth., and how she was attempting to send all the residual energy “off to the next spiritual plane.”
That just made Tracy laugh and, after the woman left, Tracy knocked an open bag of Chips Ahoy off the kitchen counter just to fuck with the girls. The cookies went everywhere, the girls looked at each other, screamed and ran out of the house. Movers came a week later and hauled all of their things out.

Tracy didn’t mean to bother the people that much. Sometimes he’d fling a pot of boiling water across the kitchen, break the mirror with a hairdryer, something like that. Sometimes, you just want your presence known. Especially in your own home.

Sometimes the tenants would want to watch TV and Tracy would want to watch static. They’d turn the TV on and Tracy would change it to static. They’d change it back to what they were watching and Tracy would change it back to static. This would go back and forth for a while and sometimes, when he got annoyed enough, Tracy would turn the volume of the static up as loud as it would go. These people had to realize they were still in Tracy’s house. Tracy liked the sound of the TV as long as it was pure white noise. The people on the box, though, all those talking heads, were just another set of voices even further removed.

#############

Usually, between people moving out and people moving in, it’s just a general cleanup; the walls are repainted, sometimes the carpet is replaced. This last time walls were knocked out, a galley kitchen was installed, a Wedi shower put in the opposite corner of the enlarged bathroom from the Nordic whirlpool bath and both were fitted with Aquavision TVs.

Then Thad moved in.

One thing that struck Tracy about Thad is that, with all the shit he had done to the place- knocking out walls, putting brick in where none had been around a faux- fireplace, tearing out the admittedly ratty beige carpet and putting in new hardwood and tile floors- he really didn’t move shit in.

Sure, the living room wasn’t completely unfurnished. There were a couple of lamps-white globes the size of honeydews atop skinny black stems. A black leather couch and a glass coffee table were stationed in front of the skinny TV, which was hung on the wall over a small set of wooden shelves for the DVD player and the stereo hookup. Speakers were hung in the corners. A couple of mountain bikes were leaned against the wall.

Stll, Tracy thought, all this space, for things so tiny.

Thad himself looked as though he’d won a fixed genetic lottery and was entitled to feast off of the asses of peasants. The usual toned, tan, and toothy visage of men on the up and up, accented a little with dark curls and horn- rimmed specs.

Granted, it was an insecure world and sometimes Tracy would see Thad telling the mirror that the big office overlooking all of the damned financial district would be his. It was his, the whole package; the office, the ass of the CEO’s secretary and the heads of an army of underlings. He worked, he deserved it, kept his eyes on the prize and did not fuck around. Then he’d drop and do a set of fifty pushups followed by a set of fifty crunches.

He’d also listen as this kid talked on his cell and told people- friends, colleagues, fucking whoever- things like, “look, the ethics are in the profit, okay? We make our money first, then we worry about who we screwed, then we try to make good with them. If they want to make it difficult…they can hold their grudges if they want, but we show them it’d always be better to work with us than…right, it’s always easier to ask forgiveness than permission…well, the world’s just not a nice place, I didn’t make it that way…”

Tracy co-existed, watching as all through the week Thad came home riding a buzz, and stayed only long enough to change into his night gear- a shiny shirt and a gelled head.
Thad would come home some six hours later with a girl who looked like she’d been constructed in a horny teen boy’s laboratory. They’d polish off some wine, blow coke off the glass coffee table and go at it right there on the sofa with Dave Matthews, Counting Crows or the Wallflowers providing the soundtrack. A couple of hours later, Thad’s alarm- the clock radio cranked, Mancow’s voice bellowing from Thad’s room- would cause the girl to moan awake. Thad would push the girl off of him and tell her, “alright, time to motor babe, eagle’s gotta hunt his prey.” He’d share a couple of wake- up lines with his temporary paramour and shove her out of his door as she hastily wrestled her clothes on.

Tracy had heard as Thad insisted- to friends, colleagues, fucking whoever- that the mild sleep deprivation gave him his killer edge. He was always just a little pissed off and, as a result, it was pretty clear he wasn’t about to suffer fools or tolerate bullshit. Besides, he’d always catch up on his sleep during the weekend.

In addition to all this Thad kept his TV static proof. When Thad was home and the TV was on Thad never let go of the remote control and there were no manual controls.
So Tracy had to suffer through the droning of endless games and movies. Tracy used to watch some football and basketball when he was alive, would throw down a few bets, now it seemed pointless and stupid. He never gained anything from it.
Thad’s movies too…come on, the porn was understandable but Mr. and Mrs. Smith? The Wedding Crashers? The Hot Chick? Tracy wasn’t into movies or shit like that but damn if he could see the appeal to sitting through some of the shit Thad put on. It was worse than voices further removed, it was voices further removed talking to you like a child.

It was one night, Thad left for his nightly prowl after his thirteenth viewing of Saving Silverman. That movie was so fucking unfunny it actually pissed Tracy off. As soon as Thad closed his door behind him, Tracy went into Thad’s room, flung his alarm clock at his mirror and thought of all the people that have been through here, somebody like Thad’s in this place now.

That was the rare night that Thad had struck out. He came stumbling in, alone and dejected. He turned on his TV and passed out on the couch. Tracy didn’t turn it to static, he just turned it off.

Thad worked hard, Tracy had decided, and it had to be hard being Thad. Tracy felt that, after a week of staying up all night, fine-tuning his killer edge, the prize Thad really needed was a day off. Maybe, what Thad really wanted, was a day off from being Thad.

Brian, Thad’s supervisor, was as shocked as anyone to hear Thad call in and say, “motherfuck this job, motherfucker! I quit! I’m Brad! This is Brad! I’m Brad and FUCK YOU! I QUIT!”

That day, Tracy felt sun and breeze for the first time in so long it didn’t feel real. It occurred to him it might be due to the fact it wasn’t his skin he felt it on, not really.

Over the course of the day, Tracy saw the source of the Starbucks cups Thad had been littering his fancy kitchen with, the source of some of the company he’d kept on his sofa, the source of more people like Thad.

The last time Tracy had walked down this street was about twenty years ago. As he walked he noticed a black Bronco drive slowly past him. The driver and passenger looked at him like they knew him. Their gaze wasn’t particularly hostile but it wasn’t friendly either, and they themselves didn’t look like harbingers of good news. They both had their hair in cornrows, though one, the heavier of the two, wore a red ball cap that was tilted off to the side. The thinner one wore a sleeveless sweatshirt. They both flexed show muscle and the heavier one had scars cutting through a pitted face with jaundiced red eyes.
They were the type of people Tracy didn’t like around when he was getting himself into shit, let alone now, when he was trying to step around it. People like them made the prettiest nights ugly and turned your best high to shit. They drove past him and skidded around a corner.
Tracy heard them skid back around to where they were behind him.
Before he could turn around he heard a roar and felt something like a hot rock hit his head. He heard a few screams, everything went really cartoon bright for a second, then faded into a yellowish off- white. His whole body went numb and everything dissipated and fell away from him.

The next thing he knew, he was back in his apartment. He tried to head back to work, figuring he must be late as hell, but found he couldn’t leave. When he tried going out through his front door, he ended up walking in through the back. When he tried walking out through the back, he found himself coming in through the front. If he tried crawling out of his window, he ended up crawling back in through another window in another room, sometimes the same room.

Beefy towheaded kids with freckles stood outside of one of the bars on Tracy’s old street with their arms folded. When Tracy walked by, in his Thad- suit, they smiled, motioned him over and patted his back as he walked in. Inside, the bar was dark, with TVs hanging in the corners, blaring four different baseball games, neon Budweiser and Miller signs hanging over the bar and Cubs tapestries hanging between the restrooms. A couple of bartenders, who’d Tracy recognized from Thad’s sofa, grinned at him slyly as he walked in. Tracy, as Thad, grimaced at them in return, causing them to look away confused and a little frightened.

Tracy felt all wrong in the place, uncomfortable in a stranger’s skin. But when he ordered a beer, and drank it, it made him feel so much closer to right he ordered another. It was all over after that.


A couple of weeks after the shooting incident, Tracy watched as the police visited his apartment, followed by varied friends and relatives who cried, talked about old times, and dispensed bits and pieces about what happened and why, giving Tracy conflicting and somewhat discombobulated versions of his demise.

Tracy had heard and listened as some of his friends, some of his good friends and some of his more unsavory acquaintances, said that they were gonna get those guys. They knew who they were, where they lived, where they hung out and who with.

Tracy thought great. Go get those guys, just go right on ahead. Go get them and then somebody’ll get you and this can go on and on forever. That’s fucking real smart, so just go ahead.

It was even more dispiriting to know that some of his smarter friends talking the line, like they were tough guys. He had to wonder if, out of all the people he’d known who had died- friends, family, enemies, families of enemies, some smart, some stupid, some greedy, some generous, some selfish, some loyal, some real good- hearted, some just outright crazy and fucked up or some combination of all of the above- how many of them were in a place like he was, trapped in their walls, watching people come and go and maybe go on with their lives. He wondered how many people passing through, talking about revenge, might end up there.

Eventually, the people stopped passing through. Then the apartment was painted and rented out again.

###############

Thad woke up the next morning more hung over and bloated feeling than he’d felt since he was in college. He had no memory of drinking. In fact, he had no memory of the previous day at all. He tried to call into work but Brian, his supervisor, told him very calmly he was banned from any and all Best Buy outlets and, if seen in one, the police would be called and he would be arrested for trespassing.

Thad got up and turned on his TV. He felt sick and out of it and wanted the company, a bland voice chattering inane dialogues or distant facts into his ear. But when he’d turned his TV on, it didn’t matter what station he’d turned it too, all he’d gotten was static. For some reason, the static kept getting louder and louder.

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