Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Tippy And Miss P.B.

My friends' perpetually surprised, seven months old Golden Retriever.

I'm just back from two weeks house and puppy sitting. Tippy is very good. It was an ordeal though, I'll probably remember fondly and falsely.

Now it's nice to be home.

The dog was always seeing ghosts, as pictured above, and I damn near started to believe him. At the same time I'm reading Henry James "Turn Of The Screw", which seems to be a ghost story (anyway there's a lot of fainting in it).

Upstairs was Miss P.B., a 40 year old woman who has had the same apartment for 17 years and does not suffer neighbors lightly. For months we felt maybe she was right, maybe we were being loud down here, opening and closing kitchen cabinets.

Then she got crazier and she must have a bowling ball up there. That or she jumped from her kitchen table down to her floor when she was mad. *BOOM!!*

She was giving us coronary by-passes almost.

Then came the day she began to noticeably "follow" us around the apartment, listening closely, and then drop her bowling ball on our heads, as it were. *CRASH!* Reverberations.

One evening I was over and the bowling ball fell and my pulse shot up to 160. Split second End Of The World sort of feeling. Or, 'WAS THAT CLOSE!!"

I had enough. I went up and knocked on her door and when she didn't answer I yelled "stop this harassment of your neighbor downstairs or I'll call One Adam Twelve!" Five minutes passed and she dropped it again on the floor over our bathroom. I called the cops.

They couldn't do anything but knock and then leave their card. We stood outside that night discussing the mentally ill, while gazing at her picture window.

Miss P.B. was deeply shocked, and she no longer drops bowling balls.

We found out from the neighbors then that "P.B." stands for "psycho bitch". She'd been in bad favor for seven years, ever since she pounded on a neighbor's wall during a wake.

But why am I sharing about her? I guess maybe she adds spice.

She was gone for a week, once, and we were overjoyed. We thought maybe she was on vacation to Haiti, maybe. Or a business trip more likely (she drives a very fine new car).

Every night when she failed to come home we began to realize how deeply we resented her, as well. One Sunday night around 11 o'clock, she returned and we still held this instinct to tip-toe (even though, as I say, she lives above us). I thought she was in bed when I took the dog out, or else I would have waited, since it's awkward to see her and offer the natural, cheery "HELLO!" "How are you??"

Tippy suddenly, bewilderingly started to growl. Not like a puppy. Not like a house dog. Like a real dog. A wild dog maybe. And there she was, across the parking lot at the dumpster, disposing of some human bones perhaps.

Then, instead of walking past us toward the outside stairs leading up to the back entrance of her apartment, she got into her Saab and drove away.

Tippy relaxed then. And I'm sure he felt he'd not only got his message across, but he'd done it without getting any lip , too. She was gone baby gone.

Come to think of it, I think that's when he started seeing specters.
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It is good to be back at Oxford. These men are ghost-busters and they can tell you all about women too.