Echoes in a Hollow Space

Last night (this morning) about 1:30 a.m. I was reading quietly in my chair in the living room and heard a loud thumping noise from the side yard, just beside the living room/kitchen. It startled me but I dismissed it, thinking the gardener must have forgotten to latch the side yard gate again. It's been pretty windy so I figured that was the noise, and decided I wasn’t going out at 1:30 in the morning to re-latch the gate. A little while later I heard the noise again only this time louder and accompanied by a big dragging sound. The gate doesn’t make that noise no matter how windy it is.

So I turned on the kitchen light and I first thought to open the front door because it provides a view of the gate in question. I turned off the alarm and looked out but didn’t see anything. I closed the front door rather loudly hoping that if somebody was lurking they’d get the message. I was pondering what to do next when I heard another thump and drag. I wasn’t at all sure at this point if it was coming from my side yard or the neighbor’s yard (they have a very high fence I can’t see over). I don’t know if adrenaline kicked in or stupidity or what. But I went to the side door off the kitchen and turned on the side yard light. Then I open the door, looked out, didn’t see anything and decided to go down the stairs and check things out. The gate latch was perfectly secure so I looked behind me but the rest of the yard beyond the light was too dark to make anything out.

That’s when I said to myself, “Woman, if somebody is out here they’re going to hit you on the head and it'll be all over.” So I hurried (as much as my arthritic legs can hurry) back into the house. And I said to myself, “Sometimes you are not very smart.”

But I didn't hear that noise again. Either there was somebody messing over next door or in my yard and I scared them off, or it was critters and I scared them off. Whatever, I had no business going out there at 2:00 in the morning (by that time) on my own. Maybe next time I'll just settle for flicking the lights on and yelling out the back door that I'm going to call the cops.

I have to admit, though, that I am my mother's daughter. Neither one of us ever had enough sense to do the girly thing. We always charged full bore out any existential back door to investigate on our own. It's a wonder either of us survived until old age. My mother was tall (5’9”) and strong and had grown up tough with a house full of brothers and on cattle ranches. She didn’t think twice about taking on anybody at any time. And yet, she always managed to look glamorous while doing it and she liked girlie things. A glamorous Valkyrie.

There was one memorable instance when I was in high school and some teenaged boys decided to break into the tool shed at our old house in Venice. It was a summer Saturday night and the windows were open. Mom (who had been up late reading, as it happened) heard something going on (she had ears like a terrier) and charged out the back door. She was wearing baby doll pajamas and fuzzy slippers. She bore down on those boys in full Valkyrie mode. One of them managed to get away, but she wrestled the other one to the ground and held him there, yelling at me, “Call the cops! Call the cops!”

Imagine, if you will, in those days before 911 when you actually had to call the police desk to get a squad car to your door, and me, a teenaged girl on the line with a cynical police desk sergeant trying to convince him that my mother had actually wrestled a thief to the ground and was sitting on him until the police could arrive. There were no cell phones in those days so I was in the house and my mother was outside so no sounds of commotion reached his cynical ears to help verify my story, even though I left out the detail of the baby doll pajamas. He eventually, grudgingly agreed to send a car (to get me off the phone, I’m sure), but none ever arrived. (It was Saturday night and Venice was a pretty rowdy place in those days. I mean serious crime and all.)

Meanwhile, some of the den of thieves who lived across the street and were related to the boys heard from the one who got away that my mom was holding the other boy prisoner and came to his rescue. Picture this: my mother in her baby doll pajamas and fuzzy slippers wrestling with not one but two teenaged boys. Going at it pretty heavy. One of their older brothers came running up holding his hands out like a peacemaker at this point, but the teenaged boys managed to get the other one free. My mother was so mad at this point she coldcocked the peacemaker on the chin with her fist and knocked him on his ass. He didn’t retaliate, fortunately, and managed (somehow!) to calm my mother enough that she went back in the house. But she insisted I call the cops again.

For some reason, the cynical desk sergeant was even less inclined to believe my story. Even though Mom got on the line this time and did some yelling. She insisted I write a scathing letter to the Times (“You’re good at that sort of thing”), cc’ing the chief of police and our local councilman about the shocking lack of response to a poor frail lady and her teenaged daughter needing assistance with a gang of teenaged thieves and receiving none. The Times declined to print our missive, and we never got a response from the chief of police or the councilman, either (although I’m pretty positive whoever may have read that letter got a really good laugh out of it).

The den of thieves who lived across the street remained the scourge of the neighborhood and surrounding blocks, but none of them ever again tried to rob our house.

I think, however, that in future I will try turning on the lights and yelling out the door if I hear suspicious sounds. If those Valkyrie genes don’t kick in and rob me of all sense of self-preservation.



A glamorous Valkyrie

One of the things I admire about the British is this program they have for paying treasure hunters for the finds they make. That means that wonderful, historic treasures like this one have a chance of staying in the country on public display instead of being melted down or sold off on the black market. British treasure still finds its way onto the blackmarket or private collections, of course, but I think they have a much greater success at keeping the important things that amateurs find.

What do we do in this country? We prosecute if the items are found on public land and the thieves are caught (a big if), or we let the free market have them if not. Either way, they largely escape the public trust. In poorer countries, of course, where people are just scratching to survive, they immediately hit the black market and the history of the world, the story of mankind in all its various phases and struggles—the real treasure—is lost forever because pieces taken out of the context in which they are found have no real story to tell, or not as significant a one. They become rootless objects, prizes for some rich person's collection, rather than the legacy from our ancestors they should be.

Of course, the irony is not lost on me that this hoard probably originated as some rich man or woman's collection, hidden to protect it from the invading hordes who undoubtedly would have melted it down for their own purposes. History is, after all, a give and take. What survives to tell its story is also a give and take, and something of a crap shoot.

(No, not ferrets. They're cool.)


Oh me. Here's the quote from the quote file which I forgot to add to this the first time around:

"Gain not base gains; base gains are the same as losses."

—Hesiod



So late Sunday/early Monday my car got broken into for the second time in two weeks—down in the bowels of our "security" garage. Two weeks ago they broke the lock on the driver's side and got in—but my car is old and crummy and I don't keep anything of value in it. All they got was the garage door opener. Of course, since I only have public liability and property damage on my car, the insurance company will not be reimbursing me for the cost of having the door lock repaired.

Yuri, our post-Soviet manager, reset the garage door code and fixed the "security building" lobby door which wouldn't lock and was, presumably, how the thief got in. How they got into the garage the second time is a matter of some debate, but no guessing as to how they got in my car: through the same driver's side lock. Then they popped the hood release inside and stole my old battery out of my car. I won't be reimbursed for the new battery I bought, either.

1. Perhaps the fellow at the Union 76 who replaced my battery is right and "they" have stolen the old battery because they know I'll have to replace it with a new one and they'll return some day soon and steal the new battery as well.

2. My car and one other that was broken into two weeks ago don't have car alarms. Easy marks. And my car is the first one in the garage leading from the lobby. So maybe it was just a target of opportunity.

3. It's personal—someone inside the building with easy access to the garage directing spite towards me.

You know, I'm trying hard not to be paranoid, but there are some indications that it might be personal. And Yuri likes this idea. He was speculating as much himself yesterday. "Inside job, Pamela." Of course, if it's an inside job and personal spite that lets him and the owner theoretically off the hook as far as liability for lousy security is concerned. That may account for some of his liking, but it also plays in well with Yuri's inherent sense of melodrama.

The only neighbors in the entire 30-apartment complex that I have had problems with live directly upstairs from me and they've recently received an eviction. They have until the end of the month to clear out. She works and holds down a steady job, maintains a discernible pattern—but there is not discernible pattern to Boyfriend's comings and goings. And Yuri told me he caught Boyfriend vandalizing apartment property once already and the Girlfriend broke the lease because, well, Boyfriend wasn't on the lease. He moved in afterwards without clearing it with the manager/owner first. That and the vandalism are a large part of why they're being evicted—but not the whole story. They've been a very noisy pair, often on weeknights late at night. Many have complained and for the last 4 months or so they've been fairly quiet. But I am not one of the people who complained.

However, I was stupid enough to go upstairs a couple of times to have talks with them about noise, thinking we could work this out as adults. But hey, they aren't adults. And Boyfriend often retaliated after these talks with even more noise. Until Yuri put the squeeze on them—which I'm sure Boyfriend felt was my doing. Boyfriend is a spud—an immature little spud who can't take responsibility for his own actions so he's got to strike out at someone. I may be paranoid, but I can't help feeling like something of a target.

On the upside, they'll be gone by the 1st. On the downside, that gives him 2-1/2 more weeks to hit me again if he's so inclined. On the other downside, it may not be him and this may not be personal.

Sigh. This feels like such a morass. I should move out of this apartment complex because it's been sliding slowly downhill, but. . . I'm $200 under market and not likely to get a comparable apartment on the Westside. For the first time in years I've actually been able to do something other than scrape by. This year I actually got to do some fun stuff. Right now the hassle/benefit scale is swinging up and down quite a bit. It's hard to know what to do. But if the problem isn't solved when Girlfriend and Boyfriend move out, the slow attrition rate on my car may tip the scale into negative balance. Only time will tell and I'm relatively helpless here. All I can do is pray—and look into getting a car alarm.

I also wanted to say something about how we tend to romanticize thieves in fiction.

When I pulled today's quote out of the quote file I thought it appropriate to what I'd gone through and had to laugh. Sometimes the synchronicity of my random quote file is just too funny. I illustrate the quotes and put them up on the bulletin board at work every day and folks like it enough that when I'm not here they complain to my office mate that there aren't any new quotes. I enjoy finding images, sometimes ironic juxtapositions, sometimes appropriate to theme. So today I was using google to find images relating to thieves.

I found all kinds of images, all right, many from the fantasy genre, and almost all of them portraying thieves as romantic anti-heroes; slightly bad boys with hidden hearts of gold; or else lovable rapscallions—always up to mischief, but dashing and handsome.

Furthermore, their victims are always portrayed as fat, complacent partridges just waiting to be plucked; or semi-greedy rich folk who deserve what they get. Unless, of course, our thieves are thieves of the heart, and then their marks are beautiful young women fainting longingly into their larcenous arms.

To repeat: thieves are people who get on in this world by victimizing others. Mostly they are venal little creeps—stupid, uneducated people who have only ever found one way of making themselves feel superior than others. By ripping them off, putting one over on the straight folks. I know because my family encompasses one or two of these venal little creeps and trust me, there isn't a damned thing romantic about them. They're bone-lazy and mean spirited and slimy.

There are other levels of thieves who aren't stupid, but not in the "boost a car battery league." They may have started out with petty larceny when they were thirteen or fourteen, but soon graduated to higher levels with a grander scale of victimization. Some of them are con artists. Some of them even have MBAs. But the basic personality type is the same no matter what level of thievery, what level of education, we're talking about. They are all venal little creeps who make themselves feel superior by victimizing others.

And most of those victims are not partridges, not greedy rich folk (who often have much better security systems in place). Mostly, they're just averaging working stiffs living from one pay check to the next, getting their car batteries ripped off, or having their pension plans suddenly disappear because the company big boys decided to use it to build themselves mansions on six continents. Although I will make a slight concession on the fainting young women bit. Some women are stupid enough to buy into the romantic thief archetype and believe that their victimizing, unemployed, bastard Boyfriends are naughty rapscallions, dangerous in an exciting way, but underneath it all have hearts of gold. Even after he causes them to get evicted from their apartment.

If I ever, ever write a romantic thief character in any of my fiction I am hereby authorizing all my writer and non-writer friends to rear up on their haunches and slug me good and hard.

There is nothing romantic about thieves.