Act 5

The next morning when I awoke, the worst had happened, I received various voice messages from the Mesa PD, my insurance company as well as a few sobbing messages from the front desk clerk form the repair shop my insurance was going through. It turns out my car had not been located by there repair shops truck drivers and apparently had been stolen within the 45 min in which I had left it. Once again, the momentary glimpse of light was once again, shadow by life’s reality, and was getting darker by the hour. I arrived at the old house to see Brian’s mother scrubbing franticly at what appeared to be an imaginary spot on to wall. I went about my business, paying very little attention to anyone else, until that is I could here the obvious crash of metal hitting the ground. I arrived and could see mother and son, in probably the worst scene of pathetic acting seen since the early days of General Hospital if that. They apparently were trying to clean the air filter and managed to completely destroy any logical attempts at it. First his mom tried using a feather duster, then Brian followed my coating it completely in 409, effectively making simply wiping it down pointless. Eventually they gave up and left it looking 3x’s worse than it was and unable to get the screen to stay put. Fed up with this pathetic effort of the apparent family of morons, I stepped in to rectify the situation, at that time Brian left to go get ready for work, and that’s when I called the call. It was the hiring manager from the temp agency that hired us for Effect Net. I told me he was sorry about everything that was going on and that I didn’t need to come in on Monday, in fact that I didn’t need to come back in at all. I was being laid off via the phone, how much worse could things get. I personally didn’t think things could, but of course like many things recently I was wrong.

Brian’s mom apparently had made plans to do all of Brian’s duties as he had caught wind that we were deadly serious about not giving him his security deposit if he didn’t pull his half of the job. So to insure this he conned his mother into doing it. This was not sitting well with me at the moment, with everything falling around me. So as she went on one of her un-productive store runs I simply locked her out for the rest of the day, yes this was intentional. Granted it didn’t make things all better as she was saying all day almost as if it were her own personal mantra, but at least in what I thought was my darkest hour, I had a minor amount of satisfaction. Eventually Brian’s mother tracked down my number and pleaded for me to let her back in so she could “make it all better”, I told her I didn’t have plans to go back to the house any time in the near foreseen future as I was out with heather at the time, she then thought it was very rude for me to leave without notifying her, To this I simply responded to her with “You don’t live at this house, and are not on the lease for this house, if Brian or Sean are not at the house, it is my responsibility to insure it is secured, besides you never told me you were coming back, and I come and go as I please, your’re Brian’s mom not mine, he needs to handle this on his own.”. Yes I know this was quite rude and probably slightly uncalled for, but she was inhibiting my process of cleaning the house, and had no type of constructive purpose for being at the house other than to say “I’m going to make it all better”, and “you all should be ashamed at this filth”. I so wanted to tell her that her little angel was the leading cause of the filth in the very kitchen she was attempting to clean, and was being quite unsuccessful in doing so. Of course this didn’t stop her for looking for an even easier and better solution versus simply putting some real effort into it, she simply went shopping and replaced everything she could, of which of course Brian’s tried to have recouped back to him, as cleaning cost.

Fortunately Sean and I saw eye to eye on this one, we didn’t asked for her to do anything, she had no right doing anything, thus whatever she bought she didn’t out of her own consent and was not needed. I went that back to the house later that evening to finish off the carpet. Brian of course had finally had the majority of his room cleans except for the carpet, and the walk through was for the next morning. I knew this would happen and I could already hear his excuse “well you took the steam cleaner home with you, so what was I supposed to use”. So I spent the next 4 hrs vacuuming the main rooms again and steaming them again because the devil child and mother had left tracks throughout the house again and left a trail of leaves and general debris. At about 4 am, decided to give Brian one more chance to come do his share. At 4:45 he still hadn’t shown up, and I ended up vacuuming his room and steaming it, puke stains and all. Finally at 5:30 I went out side and watched the sunrise, did a final walkthrough of my own and drove to my new apt, I’d have to be back in a few hours anyway.

The drive home seemed longer than normal, maybe It was because I was so worn out from moving and dealing with the police, but in all actuality I think it had more to do with the fact that I began thinking about how I felt for Heather, and the fact that it had been about 3 months since we even had any remote type of conversation in regards to, how each other felt for the other. It had turned out from my perspective to be a time game, almost like checking in on the status of something, a few weeks go by one of mentions something about wanting to be more than friends we’d agree, in some sort of round about way and it was almost a type of check to see if we were both on the same page. I was definitely falling for her, without a doubt. That wasn’t the problem, the problem was I had no idea how I was going to deal with everything that I was feeling for her, and even though it appeared we were on the same page after the amount of time we had kicked it, oddly enough it didn’t feel that way at times, even though the words were said that assured it in a sense. It had been some time since I allowed those feelings to emerge, and for the most part I had buried them far away for this very reason. Falling for someone and having them not fell the same way for you is worse than having mutual feeling and then not having things work out. At least then you know you had a relationship of some sort even if it did fail, I was dreading things were heading down that very road. Then again maybe I was thinking too much about the entire thing and should just let it go, I fell asleep that night with all of the above running crazed through my mind.

The next morning I arrived at the house to see Brian’s act like he’s cleaning up something as he’s mumbling incoherently, I was about to me bother with such trivial attempts at this point. There was nothing in the house for him to clean with and I had already removed all the trash the evening before. The Daniel’s showed up next, and almost immediately sought me out after only exchanging quite mild pleasantries with Brian. Odel, offered her condolences about the loss of the job, and more so the loss of my car 2x’s in one day. She then took me aside and I explained the Brian’s situation, and I could see it was making her visibly ill. She told me if she could have it her way, she’d simply not even acknowledge Brian’s existence as this meeting of sort and simply cut Sean and I our respective checks. Of course she couldn’t do this so she put it in our hands, Sean was a little hesitant and basically kept saying whatever I felt needed to be done, to do it. So I told Brian he didn’t deserve his deposit, for not doing his share of the work and that the little he did perform did not constitute cleaning. Brian then replied that he had been at the house since 4 am and that he had to go over the entire kitchen area and had to go behind both Sean and I and re-clean the house. He also stated he sprayed down the outside of the house as well. This of course was impossible, as I had removed the water hose from house the day before.

He also stated he had to patch some holes that mysteriously appeared in his room. This I had to question since Brian is inept in nothing for the most part especially anything requiring any type of dexterity, So I had Brian show me these holes he so called patched, unfortunately for him he was unable to point exactly where the holes were and point in a such a vague area the entire wall could have been considered. This was apparent when I asked Brian how one of the holes I’d already known about was placed and as he was pointing out to a detailed patched hole, I asked if he was sure that was one he did, and if so where the plaster was at that he used. He stated he had already thrown out the package in the dumpster, even though there were still 2 bags of trash that needed to be taken out which I had left on purpose, yet he didn’t take those out when he walked the single package of plaster out. Furthermore, while he examined the hole as a doctor would examine a stitch; I asked Cliff, Odel’s husband how the hole, Brian was pointing at, was put there. He then explained, how he had gotten frustrated a few years back trying to put his son’s bike together for Christmas and kicked the handlebar into the wall leave and dent which Odel, made him patched before he was allowed to have Christmas breakfast. I so wanted to turn and see Brian’s face as Cliff explained it but there was no need, the gasp for air and then silence was enough.

I walked back into the garage where Brian still fluttered around like he had some sort of mission to accomplish; I think he just wanted to look as if he had some general concern about the cleanliness, but it was a little too late for such antics. Odel informed Cliff Sean of what had transpired earlier in the week, and then Cliff informed Odel of what had just happened as well. Unfortunately Sean still felt compassionate for Brian and allowed him to retain some of his deposit. Sean could visibly see how annoyed I was, but still persisted that Brian did do at least something no matter how much out of the way, inconvenienced, and half assed it was. Brian didn’t get back his full amount, and I felt no way justified by what I received for the time and effort I put in, so I took my check gave Sean props and began to head to car to leave after signing off the lease. Sean yelled to me telling me to call him later, and Brian tried to say something witty, but I cut him off and just left. Granted I was now driving a fairly decent rental car, I so wanted to be able to pull away in my Neon, squealing tires and all, I just wanted to close this chapter of my life as quickly as possible, and move on.

Act 6