Bunny's new neighbor - June 29, 2006

I am quite taken with the mountain I live under. People chuckle when I tell them this, guffaw even, and then they inform me that it doesn't count as a mountain. These people did not grow up on the Allegheny Plateau, but rather in some wild place with snow capped monsters only fools would climb. To me, and my sensibly low altitudinal standards, I live next to a mountain. After work, I climb it any way I can. Sometimes I take a well-trod path crosswise to the summit. Sometimes I go zig-zaggy through the bushes. Other times I go straight up, but not as often because that way makes my lungs burn too hard in the July heat. I don't consider this to be hiking so much as I consider it play. The mountain is my playfriend.

Today, I didn't have time to hike it. I had to finish a chapter of my book that has been troublesome, which annoyed me as all adult and responsibility driven activities do. I sat on my back steps with note cards and wrote while Max and Murph frolicked with the little Armenian boy who lives next door. I tried my best to write, but pouring one's heart out is not a pleasant activity, ever, and as the time passed, I grew less and less focused on my note cards, and more focused on my friendly neighbors, the little Armenian boy and the mountain. A strange wave of content befell me a few months back, and unlike previous waves during the tumult of my youth, it has not left. Sure there are the ninjas and the PMS, but nothing more. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop like it always does, or rather to drop, hit me in the tit, steal all my money and then call me from Vegas to tell me it never loved me. Where's that shoe?

There was a rattling at the gate to my back yard. Maxie was first to notice it, and jumped deftly over Arnold the Pig's grass patch toward the direction of the noise. Murph was quick to follow, chirping in her puppy bark. At the gate was a tall blonde man. He was young and well-shaped with a tan, a typical Californian I first thought, till he bent over to pet my dogs and drawled, "Well aren't y'all just the purtiest things." He walked over to the steps and held a hand out. He was Malibu Ken. He said, "Hi there. I'm Joe. I just moved into the apartment next to you."

I shook his hand, stunned partly because of his looks, but mostly because I had lived in my apartment for five months and not noticed that there was a vacant one next to mine.

"I'm Erin."
"Pleased to meet ya, Miss."

He bent over to give Murph the attention she so desperately wanted from him. It was obvious to us all. She tried to climb him like mommy climbs the mountain, but with a different intent, for I knew that when she reached the top of him she'd shove her tongue down his throat, the slut. Thankfully he was congenial enough to let her. Maxie circled him a few times while he whispered sweet nothings into Murph's ear. She ceased circling and plopped down in front of him, opened her eyes wide, pleadingly, and rolled onto her back to elicit belly scratches. She got them; she always does.

"When did you move in?"
"Well, I've been here a week or so, I guess. I'm out here workin' at Disney studios in their marketing department, which is just a part time job till I can make it as an actor. Don't you go laughin' at me now."
"No, that's great. Erm...I could see you in movies."
"Thanks. You're a sweetie."

He bent down next to me and smiled. His teeth were like Ionic columns. I've never seen teeth so white, so pillar-like. He seemed to be talking to me, and I suppose he was because the columns kept disappearing under his lips, which were pink, full and wet. His eyes made different shapes to express sentiments, but I wasn't paying much attention. I extrapolated that he was from University of Tennessee. His parents lived in Tampa and were still happily married. His girlfriend was "comin' out for the 4th to stay with me for a bit. I sure miss her. We've been datin' for a year and a half now." He pulled a tattered picture of the girlfriend out of his wallet; as far as I can tell, she is Kate Bosworth with ten extra pounds and no mismatched eyes.

"My landlord sure is a nice guy. He let me move in early and didn't charge me prorated rent or nothin'."
"You mean Rich?"
"Yeah. You have the same landlord?"
"Erm...we live in the same house."
"Oh. Yeah. Well, he's the nicest guy. We bonded because I used to work at the GNC for four years or so, and he worked there too, 'cept he worked at one in northern California a long time ago. We told all kinds of stories about the freaks you meet when you work at the GNC."

He goes on about working at the GNC while I daydream of swallowing him and fake Kate Bosworth whole on a casting couch. Murph takes a running leap at Maxie, knocking her into Joe and toppling the whole pile into Arnold's grass patch.

"Murphy!" I help Joe up and apologize. "I'm sorry. Murph is a little rambunctious."

My dogs have just tipped him into pig shit, but he doesn't care. "It's okay. She's just a pup. She don't know any better. 'Sides, I had to get goin' anyways. Can't stay out here all night flirtin' with the pretty mutts."

He says goodnight, winks a teal Ken eye, and just before heading into the magical dissapearing/reappearing unit next door, says "Maybe you could show me and my girl around next weekend? She'd love you."

Really? Oh goody! I pick up my note cards and collect my dogs. As I do this I wonder how well Bunny meat would taste between two slices of Ken and Barbie. It is now dark, and the mountain is a black trapezoid on a navy sky, flat and lifeless. Where's that other shoe?

Posted by The Bunny at 10:24 AM

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Posted by: DolceBella at June 30, 2006 07:18 AM

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