For years I lived in a rooming house where I shared a bathroom with a giant and a mermaid. The mermaid spent a lot of time in the bathtub. The giant had dodgy hygiene, generally poor social skills, and a full head of bright red hair. There was often discussion around the place as to whether or not he dyed his hair. I found this unlikely, given his otherwise clear indifference to appearance.
The giant often lurched around the house in baggy trousers, slippers, a dirty, sleeveless tee-shirt, and fraying Budweiser suspenders. The mermaid took most of her meals in her room; it was apparently difficult for her to get up and down the stairs without the assistance of her handler, a shiftless, gaunt character who was often incapacitated by alcohol and purported bouts of severe depression. This fellow may or may not have been the mermaid’s boyfriend; I was never entirely clear on this point.
The mermaid made a lot of noise in the bathtub, thrashing around and gurgling.
Besides the giant and the mermaid –who were performers in a third-rate circus that was on indefinite hiatus– there was also a fat little man, obscenely hirsute, who delivered newspapers and wasn’t bashful about his enjoyment of pornography. Our landlady was an imposing woman who spoke very little English. Near as I could tell she was Austrian, and pious to the point of misery.
I was living in this place because I was myself a down-on-my-luck Christian who had lost my life savings and my home on an ill-advised business scheme that involved inserting Bible verses in fortune cookies. I’d been roped into this venture by an old Bible college roommate.
We’d had absolutely no idea what we were doing, and had grossly overpaid for a failing and outdated fortune cookie operation in a lousy industrial neighborhood. Things went downhill in a hurry. Further downhill, I should say; there had never actually been anything even remotely resembling an ascent, or even a plateau. No, truth be told, we were plunging from the get-go. Right away we ended up having to spend a good deal of our capital on repairing the machinery, and we never did manage to get the printing press to work. When we finally got around to producing our first batch of cookies we had to type up the fortunes on an electric typewriter, run them off on a copy machine at Kinko’s, and cut them by hand.
Neither of us had the personality for sales, and the Chinese wanted nothing to do with our idea. Even the religious stores and Christian gift shops turned us down cold.
In the midst of this hare-brained disaster my wife filed for divorce and left me for a guy who sold elevators. That’s how it was explained to me, anyway. I suppose somebody has to sell elevators, and I have to imagine they’re expensive as all get out.
My business partner, meanwhile, parted ways with the Lord in spectacular fashion. He started drinking heavily and cracked up his car. He also began to use language I didn’t approve of, stopped showing up at the office, and finally disappeared entirely. I certainly understand that a failing business will try a man’s faith, and wherever he now is, I’m as willing as the Good Lord to forgive my old partner his sins, despite the predicament he left me in.
When I was eventually evicted from my home I realized I didn’t have a penny to my name. I had a yard sale, sold everything I had left with the exception of a small wardrobe, a scrapbook of old photos, and my Bible, which I’d received on my Holy Communion. I found a job at an Auto Mart and moved into the rooming house the same day.
The rooming house was a short walk from my new job, and everyone else I worked with at the place was a foreigner, including the owner. None of them had any interest in being saved, and I learned to keep my mouth shut.
Leave a Reply Cancel reply