Suburban Adventures

Not up for writing a blog post this morning so I'll share last night's journal entry with you: 

10 pm: About an hour ago, dark out, doorbell, it was the Roof Guy. (Norm always said he was a Nice Guy -- remember? he and his wife have twin Harleys with bluetooth so they can talk to each other in their helmets?) I didn’t recognize him, I think he’s lost weight .  I hadn't heard from him after I left a phone message some weeks ago about tree damage – so I got another guy to repair it, $750.

Roof Guy said "Are you mad at me?" Asked him in. He took off his boots and left them in the hall, sat down in the living room and started rambling. First I thought he was drunk but no smell of liquor, took me a while to realize there’s also the possibility of being stoned. 

Started telling me about his wife, cops, car chase with the lights off, judge, Henry's (?) moved out, "and me in my shorts the whole time", he always did the cooking, order of protection, $3,000 hidden in the cassette in the car, jail, she's had three husbands, he has a nice room, did I read about it, it was in the paper, bail raised to $10,000, suspects she’s sleeping with the neighbor, the ambulance came.  He stopped every now and then, closed his eyes, then stared at me without saying anything, all very disjointed and I got scared.  When he asked to use the bathroom I ducked out, phoned across the street and asked Rex to come over.

Looking back, I think Roof Guy was just looking for work and apologizing for not returning my call. Evidently he had got out of jail (how?-- or was he even in jail?), gone to look over the job and come to give me an estimate – tho how could he when the job’s been all fixed now? Rex finally told him we had some paperwork to do, RG picked up his notebook, put on his boots and went out in the dark peacefully.  Well, I’ve got the security system on. I was pretty sleepy an hour ago, extremely wide awake now.

So I put on the security system, double-checked the door locks, put out the lights, went into my bedroom and the land line phone on my bedside table was playing the William Tell Overture.

I thought I might be going crazy.