Living the Chinese Curse

The Chinese have a unique imprecation: "May you live in interesting times." One cannot fully understand the meaning of the curse till one has enjoyed interesting times. When my odd roommate moved back East, I replaced her with a common- or garden-variety male roommate, an Intel engineer of Indian origin, no less and I knew that the vicarious excitement that Allison provided would be only a fond memory. For as I well know, you can search for a week of blue moons without finding anything quite as boring. And in some distant corner of my mind I must have whispered a wish for some excitement. Beware of what you wish for! Over this last week I have moved from near catatonic stupor to something almost resembling life.

I have my sometimes landscaper and full-time hustler to thank. This gentleman, who I shall call Dave (mostly because that's his name and "Dave" is shorter to write than "David") initially showed up on my doorstep about six months ago with an offer to do some yard work. He has a face that does not inspire overwhelming confidence. I don't want to judge a book by its cover, but let me put it this way: if he offered to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge, I would hesitate to hand over more than half his asking price before taking possession of the structure. So naturally, with Allie's encouragement, I agreed to his terms for the yard work sans negotiations. Having a solid stone, or possibly a cash-register in place of a heart, I was not as affected as my sympathetic roommate by his stories about his plans to attend evening college classes and cared even less about his daughter and nasty ex-wife. But I was drawn to the idea of someone else doing the yard work while I lolled productively in front of my TV with a beer.
Dave completed the work in due course, managing to squander Allie's sympathy and finish my beer along the way and withdrew from the scene, leaving the job of proving excitement in my life in Allie's very capable hands. I could elaborate on some of his minor scams and attempted scams, but they were barely worth mention; one might say they were the teasers to the main show In the next few months, Dave reappeared a few times, sometimes to ask after more garden work and once to encourage me to support the Democratic Party. I suppose given his socialist beliefs that my wealth should be shared with him, his political leanings should have been obvious, though with his strong commitment to borderline criminal entrepreneurship, one could also expect him to be a backer of the GOP. But that is beside the point.

Last week, he hove into view with his usual gap-toothed smile and an offer to clean the weeds in my front desert-scape and trim my back lawn. Sloth was heavy upon me, while my yard was more weeds than lawn and I agreed to his offer to make my yard look wonderful in return for $50. In a fit of environmental activism I had bought a reel mower rather than a power mower, so Dave had to bring his own power tools in. My previous roommate Allie had once stayed with a Chinese girl who believed strongly in feng shui. I have never embraced the concept, but now my agnostic certainty is shaken, for no sooner did Dave begin work on my lawn than he was plagued by all manner of problems. First he had cash flow problems, largely because having cash is a prerequisite for flow; the $20 I paid as advance was still too viscous and it took the addition of another $20 to remedy the problem. Alas! When evening rolled around, we discovered that the fading light affected the money adversely – what had appeared adequate in the bright light of day was found wanting in the twilight and must needs be augmented with another $20. Other mishaps occasioned by the evil spirit of my yard included a mysterious breakdown in the edge trimmer (another $20 to propitiate the spirits) and an inexplicable blunting of the mower blades (do I even need to mention, another $20). Till I met Dave I had never quite understood the amazing power of twenty dollar bills. Neither had I realized that to get rid of the weeds, one just has to rip the lawn apart.

But who am I to grudge a man his unearned money, when he assured me solemnly that they were strictly for his daughter who was celebrating her birthday with him that day. I can certainly vouch that he had no intention of instantly spending the money on alcohol – he assured me that I and my neighbor, Robert, would satiate his beer longings. As dusk drew her kind veil across Tempe's rundown and dilapidated houses, Dave took his leave to celebrate his daughter's birthday with promises to be back to finish the work on the morrow. He left his mower and tools behind as guarantee of his return and consequently gave me a restless night, filled with dark forebodings that someone would steal his things and I would have the enviable task of making good the loss.
I did not realize then that I am in fact clairvoyant. This is not to say that I woke up in the morning to find my yard stripped bare. Part of the problem with clairvoyance is the difficulty in understanding the timelines and allegories. In my case, I awoke to a glorious Monday morning to the sounds of Dave already at work on my yard and I left the house with a song in my heart and on the radio (not quite the same song however, which spoiled the harmony) and a feeling that agnostic or not, I could not really deny that God was in Her Heaven and all appeared to be right with the world, barring those places less endearing to God, like Dafur, Iraq and Alabama.

I returned home that evening after my usual four hour nap before and after lunch, and found that Dave had left his tools behind again, having apparently not quite finished as yet. Buoyed by the lack of criminal activity in my yard the night before, I slept soundly that night, and when leaving the next morning, I left the yard gate unlocked for Dave to get in and finish his work. And so I continued the next day, which was a very busy day and left me little time to think about such things as lack of progress on my yard work. It was only when I returned from the bar at midnight after our first loss of the spring soccer season that the Dave question intruded forcefully on my tranquil life. Stuck in my door was a note that read, in part "I have something that I think is yours. Give me a call"
This was worse than all the cheap gangster movies. Had Dave discovered the buried body in the backyard? Or my field of Afghan poppies? Or the intercontinental ballistic missile I was building in my spare time to take on China?

In a sad anti-climax, I got no response the next day at the number on the note. Luckily my suspense was not too long drawn, for Friday morning brought Dave to my door at 7 am, all bright-eyed and hung-over, towing a bicycle behind him. Now like all good couch potatoes, I have never set rump on a cycle, but my new roommate is one of those odd people who will drive 50 miles to then bike a couple of miles before attaching the bike back to their car and driving home. Dave explained that he had been passing by on Monday night when he saw a man come out of my yard wheeling this same bike. Thinking swiftly, Dave followed the blackguard to his lair and confronted him. An altercation ensued that followed a predictable script of accusation and denial, and the villain while claiming that the bicycle as his own, equally steadfastly refused to provide proof of ownership. Sensing the futility of argument and his inability to force a total stranger to produce receipts of sale, Dave in an act of great bravery called the police to the scene. The story is a bit vague at this point, but it appears that Tempe's finest did not see the honesty shining in Dave's eyes and in an act that will live on forever in infamy, ran his name through their computers, and then hauled him off to prison for an unpaid DUI fine. This selfless soul spent the next 48 hours in gaol before his mother bailed him out for the massive amount of $40 – whoever said a man's best friend is his mother must have been in jail with a DUI at some point – and that very night, Dave came by to stick his cryptic note on my door. And somehow through all this, my honest friend Dave had held on to that bike that started the whole matter. Precisely how he got it back from the thief, why the police gave it to him, what happened to the alleged thief and why they never contacted me is one of those mysteries that, like the Stonehenge, we may never totally understand.

The idea of being robbed is not so much scary, since the whole robbery barely disturbed my torpid existence, as highly aggravating. I drive to my office everyday and sleep there for eight hours, sometimes more, week in and week out, to earn the money to squander on wine, women and song. It is an insult that someone should hop over my back fence and help himself to my roommates' bike while I'm hard at sleep on the other side of town. One would hope that he would have just a little bit more respect for the effort I put into finding a roommate with things to rob. And realize that I got this roommate that I might borrow his stuff conveniently, not for the criminal pleasure of the wider public. There is no honor amongst thieves.