I Like You Just the Way I Am (26 page)

Being a teacher, Veronica’s entire identity and sense of motivation crumbles as soon as it hits June. All she wants to do at the end of a school year is sit in darkness and eat diet pills and premade frosting. It had become tradition for her to fly out to L.A. in her cupcake-printed pajama pants and skulk around our house ambitionless until eventually it was August. Over the years, she’d become a mildly depressed fixture on our couch and a symbol of summer.

For Jason’s going-away dinner, we took Veronica out with my then-pregnant sister, Amanda, and her husband, Larry. Larry had a buddy who’d just opened a new gastropub downtown and insisted we try it. The tasting menu had everything—foie gras lollipops, burrata and uni salads, piles of
Ibérico
ham, and deconstructed mashed potatoes. I couldn’t eat much, because my nerves were already acting up. I knew in my gut I wasn’t going to feel safe with just Veronica in the house. Any murderer worth his salt would take one look at Veronica and realize she already hated her life and that there would be no point in killing her.

“So, you freaking out about Jason going?” Amanda stuffed a handful of ham into her face.

“She’s gonna be fine. Besides, Vern is staying there for at least the first half,” Jason said.

“Wait! What? Only the first half?” This was the first I was hearing that my five-foot-tall guardian who sleeps till 3
P.M
. was in fact planning on abandoning me halfway through Jason’s time away.

“I got a babysitting gig. Gotta go home early this year. This is the best prosciutto I’ve ever had.” Veronica chomped on her ham and shrugged.

“It’s not prosciutto! Prosciutto is Italian. This is from Spain. It’s called
Ibérico
. It’s special because these pigs were raised on only acorns. It gives the meat a distinctly nutty flavor,” Jason explained.

“I … I mean, I’m gonna have to check into a hotel or something.” I was starting to panic.

“We have a security system—and dogs, Jen. You’ll be fine. I want to buy some of this stuff. Don’t you think we should? It’s excellent.”

Larry and Jason took tours of the kitchen after dinner, and both placed orders for their own individual
Ibérico
legs. Amanda, meanwhile, sensing my desperation, warned me that she was turning her guest bedroom into a nursery at the end of the month, so not to get any ideas about crashing with her once Veronica left town.

My house is precariously perched on the side of a mountain. I can’t tell you which mountain, because I wouldn’t want to tempt you into murdering me. But let’s just say that I don’t have many neighbors, and the ones I do have are rarely in town. Originally, the guy next door was an eccentric gay porn star named Xian, who traveled back and forth to Asia for work. He was a collector of exotic birds and large cats, all of which I’m certain were on the endangered species list. One time while we were out of town, our maid called, saying that a baby mountain lion was sitting on our bed, wearing a Goyard collar. (She knows what Goyard is because I bought her a knockoff downtown for her birthday.) The animal turned out to be a Savannah cat named Ingrid, who escaped again months later and committed suicide on Sunset Boulevard. After Ingrid’s untimely death, Xian moved out, leaving the house vacant and on the market for over a year. During that time, I became convinced that a Satanic cult was squatting inside after I swore I heard someone screaming “Let Jesus fuck you!” from the gazebo one night.

Across the shared driveway was the wild child Olympic gold medalist, Tyler Black. When Tyler moved in, I felt old, unattractive, and unaccomplished. At just twenty-five, he’d won three Olympics, had his own video game, his own clothing line, hosted
The View,
did a movie with Scorsese, dated Gisele Bündchen, and drove four different Maseratis. I felt safe having Tyler around because he was too preoccupied with his own life to think about killing me, and because he was a more valuable target for psychopaths than I was. Tyler was a prodigy at the height of his success, and the world was his oyster. I was just the nice older woman next door who helped him compose text messages to whatever Victoria’s Secret model he was currently fucking. We exchanged house keys in case either of us were ever away for too long and our dogs needed to be let out. When Jason was out of town, Tyler always invited me out with his entourage and could never understand when I’d say no. Though it sometimes felt like living in a frat house when I’d come home to a palm tree arbitrarily thrown in my swimming pool or his life-sized Wheaties box mounted on the dining room table, I enjoyed having the company. Unfortunately, Tyler’s training schedule kept him on the road for the majority of the year. And during an Olympic year, his house was all but abandoned (which left room for the Satanic cult to branch out to a second campus). There was just one neighbor left: Mickey Gervich.

Mickey was a small Jewish man of about fifty. He was a successful songwriter from Boston who rarely left his house and was only ever seen walking down the driveway to get his mail in a Bart Simpson shirt that barely covered his ass and a pair of Tevas. Jason and I never had much interaction with Mickey. Nobody did. His meals and groceries were delivered to the front door like he was a part of Project Angel Food. He didn’t know how to drive, so he always used a car service. And he seemed to do most of his work at night (aka “the witching hours”). No matter what time it was, I could always look out my window and see the flickering lights of a television screen shooting through the curtains of his upstairs window. Three years ago, I was in my driveway when a tall Jamaican woman pulled up to his house in a silver Toyota Camry. She’d just moved from Palm Beach and claimed to be Mickey’s fiancée. After several weeks, I never saw her again. Even if the rest of the neighbors were away, I knew Mickey would always be home. But since he was a five-foot-two agoraphobic, I didn’t really know what Mickey was going to be able to do to protect me.

Living with Veronica felt like living with an old lady who needed to go to a retirement home but didn’t have any kids around to force her. Her favorite thing to do was sit in front of the TV with a mug of overly sweetened coffee and think she was solving crime shows. This was the summer of the Casey Anthony trial and coverage of her daughter’s gruesome death was inescapable. In between updates on the young mother’s murder trial, Veronica would tune in to other equally disconcerting programs like
Unsolved Mysteries, Dateline,
and the eleven o’clock news. For a neurotic mess like me, Veronica was possibly the worst houseguest I could have. But despite my desire to tame my inner scaredy-cat, I couldn’t help but want to know every last detail about any and all psychotic events going on in the world. I needed to stay one step ahead of my murderer and know the latest kidnapping and murder trends. And the only way to do that was to study the missteps of others.

After a few weeks of Nancy Grace pointing out how just because someone looks innocent doesn’t mean they are, I started to reevaluate the peripheral characters in my life. My suspicions immediately fell on Mickey.

“My neighbor, Mickey Gervich, was engaged to a Zanida Gonzales,” I said to Veronica one night while peering out the window, deep in thought. “Maybe that wasn’t her name. But I think it was something like that. I only met her once. Then she mysteriously vanished. Do you think he killed her?”

“How do you live in the world?” Unfazed by my paranoia, she continued reading her new favorite book,
A Stolen Life
by Jaycee Dugard.

Between Tyler and Xian, I had never taken the time to focus on Mickey. He kept to himself. And as HLN pointed out, people who keep to themselves usually have crawl spaces filled with skulls. It was all coming together now. I kicked myself for my naïveté. A killer had been right under my nose all the time, just like a shitty episode of
Murder, She Wrote.

“How does one miss a six-foot-tall Jamaican chick? Where did she go? Six-foot-tall Jamaicans don’t just disappear,” I said, inadvertently adopting a slight New England accent à la Jessica Fletcher.

“This was three years ago? They probably broke up.” Engrossed in the case, Veronica gnawed at her cuticles until they started bleeding. “This chick is so guilty.”

“Or she’s in his basement!” I looked over to Nancy Grace, who stared back at me from inside the TV. I could tell she agreed with me.

“Are you still talking about your neighbor? Get off it!” Veronica blotted her hands on the oversized hoodie she’d had on since arriving at our house three weeks ago.

“There’s a great
Dateline
on tonight, but I’m not gonna let you watch it if you’re gonna make me sleep in bed with you again.”

“What’s it about?” I wanted to be uninterested, but I couldn’t help myself.

“A neighbor who kills someone.”

That night, Keith Morrison (who couldn’t possibly look more like a serial killer himself) narrated a story about a married couple who bought a house in Big Sur that landed them in a two-year-long dispute with their elderly neighbor over a shared driveway. The story ended in a 911 phone call, where you could hear the elderly man shoot both the husband and wife in the back after a screaming match outside their home.

“Maybe that wasn’t the best episode to show you,” Veronica said later that night as she turned over in bed to find me and my dogs lying next to her.

As I lay there trying to sleep, all I could think about was Mickey. From the guest bedroom window, I could see the lights in Mickey’s house still on. I wondered if he’d just watched the same program. I wondered if he owned any firearms. And I wondered if he knew that I was on to him.

*   *   *

The next day, my
neighbor Tyler texted to tell me he’d be back in town for the weekend, and I couldn’t have been more relieved. He invited Veronica and me to a vodka party he was hosting at the Chateau Marmont. Veronica wanted to go, but the only outfit she had brought besides her cupcake pajama pants was a black muumuu that made her look like a dirty bar wench from Medieval Times. Desperate to attend the party, Veronica agreed to let Amanda and me take her shopping for more suitable attire.

Amanda arrived at my house around noon, still pregnant. She was in her final month and unable to not look like a giant weather balloon. She floated into the house, fuming.

“It’s so damn hot outside, I can’t feel my feet. And I’m definitely not driving.”

“It’s fine. I’ll drive,” I said, grabbing my keys as a signal to Veronica to stop fucking with her eyeliner and hurry up.

We pulled out of the garage, careful to not hit Amanda’s brand-new SUV, expertly parked like an asshole in the center of our shared driveway.

“Are you sure she can just leave her car like that?” Veronica asked.

“What does that mean?” Amanda’s face started to turn red with hormones and fury.

“Mickey doesn’t drive, and Tyler isn’t back till tomorrow.” I changed the subject before Amanda could sulk and change her mind about coming with us. “Love the new car, by the way.”

“When you’re responsible for new life, an SUV is the only way to go. I don’t think I’d feel safe in anything else.” The baby wasn’t even out of her, and she already sounded smug.

At the store, Veronica tried on several different dresses and eventually settled on one that looked identical to the muumuu she had at home. She claimed it was the only thing she felt sexy in. When we got back to the house, somebody was waiting for us beside Amanda’s car: Mickey Gervich.

“What the fuck?” I said under my breath.

“What is that little man doing touching my car?” Amanda asked, annoyed.

“That’s the guy Jenny thinks is going to kill her,” Veronica said casually, barely looking up from her phone.

“He’s a tiny Jew. Tiny Jews don’t kill. Do they?” Amanda momentarily looked down at her stomach, concerned, then back up at Mickey. “He better not be breaking into my car!”

I parked and approached Mickey slowly.

“Hey, Mickey,” I said in a neighborly “don’t kill me, there are witnesses around” tone.

“This car was blocking the entire driveway, and my gardeners couldn’t get their truck up because of it. I’m having trees pulled today. You weren’t home and I didn’t recognize the vehicle, so I was going to have it towed.” He spoke in a frazzled, pissed-off tone.

Behind me, a tow truck made its way up the hill toward Amanda’s car.

“What! No! I’m her sister! I’ll move the car! It’s brand-new! I’m pregnant!” Amanda opened her car, threw herself in the driver’s seat, and locked the doors.

“Sorry, Mickey. I really didn’t mean to inconvenience you. I just figured since you’re afraid to drive and all, I didn’t think you’d need access—”

He cut me off before I could finish. “I’m ‘afraid’ to drive? That’s quite an assumption. I actually don’t drive because of my vision. But to be frank, it’s really none of your business.”

“You’re absolutely right. Sorry. Anyway, we’ll move the car.”

Before I could say anything to Amanda, she was driving away.

Mickey turned and walked back into his house, and Veronica followed me into mine.

“
Fuuuuck!
This isn’t happening! Last night’s
Dateline
is becoming my real life!” I paced around the house, frantic.

“See, this looks totally different than the other dress.” Veronica pulled her new muumuu over her old muumuu and showed me all the subtle differences. “What do you think?”

“I think I just upset the guy who is tops on my list of potential murderers. I
think
we need to move.” I looked over at Teets asleep on the couch, still not realizing I was home. It was clear he wasn’t going to be of any help if Mickey decided to force his way into the house.

“Okay, yes. He seemed a little pissed, I’m not gonna lie, but he definitely didn’t seem like he was at the point yet where he’d want you dead.”

“Yet?”

“Yeah, not yet.”

“‘Not yet’ implies that he eventually will,” I cried.

“Jenny, get a hold of yourself. Nothing is happening.”

As the sun set over the canyon, Veronica and I sat on the patio drinking tequila, petting my utterly useless guard dogs, and discussing what Jane Velez-Mitchell looked like before her plastic surgeon gave her Michael Jackson’s face. I momentarily forgot about Mickey and enjoyed the summer night like a normal person who doesn’t feel like their neighbor wants to murder them.