BLOG 10 - Gabrielle’s Story (Part Three)

Part 3 of 4

Manny lived in a first floor apartment three blocks from City View Apartments, called Stellar Vista - it was a shit hole. Due to the heavy drug trafficking and prostitution nobody was suppose to receive visitors at Stellar Vista unless they first showed ID at security desk upon arrival. Manny dealt with this by having his clients climb in through a broken window in his bathroom - leading to an occasional awkward moment.

Manny was an old man - he was asleep in his room. Out in his living room various people were scattered about passed out on his furniture. Across one wall, located above the dinning room table, the word “fuck” was written in large thick black magic marker. An occasional cockroach and other unidentified bugs crawled across the sleeping occupants on Manny’s furniture. The windows were blocked up with towels or laundry - a black haze and rotted smell hung over the entire dwelling.

It was about three in the afternoon and Gabrielle came to smoke some crack. She walked into Manny’s room. The room was empty except a borua which was covered in miscellaneous crap - shoelaces, broken wristwatch, bus pass, an empty beer can. A cockroach crawled across the top and then slipped into the top drawer. A picture of the Virgin Marry hung on the wall opposite the borough above his bed. He slept on a grimy twin bed with out any sheets. The mattress stained from the bed bug infestation. He wore a pair of boxers. His bare back covered in bed bug bites. Gabrielle sat down on the edge of the mattress.

“Papa,” she said quietly. “Papa it’s me, Gabby.”

Everybody called Manny Papa. He was old and weak. He allowed the crack dealers to use his place and they kept him in drugs. He rolled over and faced Gabrielle. He had a pale gaunt face with sunken eyes. His hair was shaved close to the scalp and his face unshaven. He was a little over sixty but his appearance said more like eighty.

Gabrielle lied down upon the bed next to him. He wrapped his arm around her and they slept for a while. Eventually, she went down on him but he was unable to come. So she just kept it up until he lost his erection and pulled her off of him and lied back down. This was how it usually went.

“Top drawer,” he said. “I want some too.”

She went to the borough and pulled out his crack pipe, another cockroach scurried out from under it as she picked it up. She went back over to the bed and sat down. She helped Manny sit up and the two of them smoked crack from the pipe. For a short time they both felt good.

They slept some more. The people in the other room began to stir and Gabrielle was awoken by their voices. She gently got herself of the bed, careful not to awaken Manny, and made her way to the living room. Two of the visitors had awaken, one half sat/half reclined on the couch, with a worn out comforter around his shoulders. The other sat in broken recliner, with the back pushed all the way back. They were arguing about breakfast. Gabrielle stood in the doorway, half asleep and weak, watching them until she started a coughing fit which interrupted them. She walked over to the kitchen sink which was filled with dirty dishes and spat into it, unsuccessfully missing the dishes. She cleared her throat and spat up some more.

“You want some breakfast?” The one on the couch asked her.

She ran some water trying to dilute the phlegm which clung to the edge of a dish. The phlegm seemed to be fighting back. “We got anything?”

“Nah,” said the one on the recliner, “just dreaming.”

Gabrielle increased the water from the facet and watched the phlegm detach itself from the dish and make it’s way into the sink and slip underneath a mug; disturbing a cockroach in the process which scurried it’s way out of the sink and under a crack in the counter. She shut the water off and sat in a chair at the table - the one with the word “fuck” written above it on the wall.

Another person slept across from her their head on the table. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a women. Another, a bearded male who appeared to be in his forties, was curled up on the other side of the couch that had comforter man dreaming about breakfast on the other end.

“Sausages…Hmm,” said the man in the recliner to nobody in particular.

“Home fries,” replied comforter man.

Gabrielle asked to the room if anybody had a cigarette. Comforter man tossed her one from his nest on the couch. She lit it, inhaled, and wished she was somewhere else.

Later she sat on the steps of the Public Library and smoked the cigarette Father Michael gave her. She watched the people come and go as they picked up and dropped off their books. She wondered about their lives - senior citizens, students, kids, all from another world then hers. It got dark. She went home.

To be continued…