Miller Time

Lock-Out

UNITED STATES—A couple days after my last day at the census bureau, I witnessed my first lock-out at Mr. Wylie’s house on St. Andrews Place. The victim was a tall bald guy with a greasy moustache. He hadn’t paid his rent for months. The lock-out was early, earlier than I would have gotten up normally. The white guy had...

Combustible

UNITED STATES—In April, when I took over the managerial duties for all the Wylie properties, no sooner had I moved out of Estrella Avenue, and every  thing boiled over. Tenant squabbles, empty rooms, drug dealing. The house didn’t go to pot; it went to crack. It was horrid; it was entertaining. Because I didn’t have to live there any...

Decision

UNITED STATES—That fall and winter at Estrella Avenue I endured penuries that I hoped were behind me for good, such as living on ten dollars a month, and one episode that still provokes a pang of regret. My friends from Nadeau Drive, who I still socialized with even though they had dismissed me from their couch, invited me to hear...

Sea-Change

UNITED STATES—The Jones moved in. They were the picture of happiness. The young couple who had been wed in Las Vegas got Mac’s recently vacated room, the nicest and most spacious in the house. It had a window bay and a huge closet, where Mac had stored all the illicit street signs. If that closet had had its own...

Travelmania

UNITED STATES—There are the two neighbors on either side of my house who suffer travelmania. There is the couple who went to Tokyo on the right side and, on the left, lives the couple who went to Dubai. That was just the last of a necklace of exotic destinations that are all a blur, Paris, Hawaii, Lisbon, Australia, Chile. The...

Keeping Up With The Joneses

UNITED STATES—Mac Murphy got out of the honor camp near Baker, in the high Mojave, and came to take one last look at his upstairs room with the window bay, where he’d imbibed during Christmas, toasted us in the driveway, and cranked up his stereo like he was driving a hundred miles down a Montana highway straight as a...

Oh Well

UNITED STATES—During one of the breaks at the Census Office, I’d go around the corner of Manchester and read the National Enquirer. One week it broke the news that Tony Perkins was dying of AIDS and the story mentioned that he had turned very devout, conspicuously attending church in Beverly Hills with his family. Part of what struck a chord...

Once Upon A Crime

UNITED STATES—It amazes me how much time’s vortex can pack into a single afternoon. At that first meeting of the Spanish cultural club, where we brought our songs, poems, paintings and stories, I found the job I’d been groping for for months, as I scraped by on free room and no board. At the very end a black-haired woman, dressed...

Hard Knocks

UNITED STATES—Samuel Johnson, the British wit and man of letters, said that he never knew a man with a toothache to be a philosopher. Well, this concept I tested now and then during my time at 1980 Estrella Avenue. I suffered periodic molar aches and would just tough it out. They seemed to come and pass like rain clouds....

Heavenly Daze

UNITED STATES—You wake up and you’re in this place where the clouds are all cottony as they glide across an achingly blue sky. Kinda like the over-the-top monumentality of the Paramount logo or the more subdued Warner Bros. Then you come to some Corinthian columns like they had at the Old Spaghetti Factory, before it was turned into a...