Bubbles and the Junkie

My apartment building is old and decrepit, aka vintage, so bathroom wall leaks in odd places. This isn’t new.

Two weeks ago I had a mysterious leak from my medicine cabinet. The landlord eventually came, fixed the leak, and said, “OH MY GOD! Look at the water damage to the paint in your bathroom! We need to fix this!”

Turns out that the paint in the bathroom has had water bubbles and stains since before I moved in a year ago…

After a week of scheduling, the painter arrives. I leave the painter (hoping he doesn’t rob me) and walk the dogs around the Lake of the Isles.
I come back to the building to find Bubbles sitting in the stairwell. Bubbles is a neighborhood woman who is wasted more often than not.

Bubbles is sitting in the middle of the stairwell, leaning against the wall. Her backpack is on the other side of the stairs so there is only a 6-inch gap for me and my two 100-pound dogs to squeeze through.

Bubbles starts babbling and I ignore her while shoving the Rottweiler past her.

The Rottweiler and I pass Bubbles, so of course Harley, my other dog, refuses to come up the stairs. He just stands at the foot of the stairs like “WHO IS THIS WOMAN AND WHY IS SHE BLOCKING THE STAIRWAY?”

So the Rottweiler and I are above the woman on the stairs. Harley is still at the foot of the stairs, and then Bubbles starts screaming and smacking Harley: “COME ON YOU BIG DAWWWG! GO! GO! BATTA BATTA!”

Harley’s leash slips out of my hand, the drunk woman is in hysterics, and then a junkie-looking-guy pokes his head out of a nearby apartment and walks up to Harley:
Nice Junkie: “Here, let me help!”
Bubbles: “AH AH BATTA BATTA!”
Me: “Oh, uh, sorry, uh, uh uh…”
I reach down to grab Harley’s leash from the nice Junkie, but then the Rottweiler says, “Oh it’s time to go down the stairs now? LETS DO THIS!”

So my Rottweiler starts charging back down the stairs, except that Bubbles is still blocking the stairway, so the Rottweiler slips and crashes into her.
Bubbles: “I HAVE DOG ASS IN MY FACE! ARRRRBATTA BATTA!”
This is a disaster.

I eventually get the leash from the nice Junkie and yank both dogs past Bubbles (who was in a rage) and fly into my apartment.

My apartment, of course, was covered in white paint from the “not-so-careful” painter, who was gone…

Later, while doing laundry, I noticed Bubbles lingering in the stairwell. She was there for several hours. Beer cans and coffee cups started collected at the foot of the stairs.

I’m walking down to the laundry room while on the phone with Judd:
Me: “Holy smokes Batman!”
Judd: “What?”
Me: “So I told you about the drunk woman in my stairwell,…”
Judd: “…yeah?”
Me: “Well, now a man is with her and it looks like they are breaking into the apartment under mine!”
Judd: “Oh no!”
Me: “I’m going to go ask the building manager about this. I’ll be at trivia tomorrow if I don’t get shanked.”
I sneak downstairs. Bubbles and the man are now inside of the apartment, screaming and thrashing about. I go down another level and knock on the Super’s door. The Super’s wife answers the door rapped in a blanket, looking tired and unamused:
Super: “Yes?”
Me: “I don’t mean to be the nosy neighbor, and I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m being the nosy neighbor anyway… SO there was this drunken woman in the stairwell for several hours today, there are beer cans everywhere… and the drunk woman and a man looked like they broke into apartment 45….”
Super: “Ugh. Really?”
Me: “Yes. And I haven’t seen the man who lives in that apartment for a while now so…”
Super: “Oh, well, he’s in a hospice now. They moved him out. That apartment was part of a treatment program, and apparently addiction won that battle… But they moved in another person in right after… They didn’t waste any time…”
Me: “Oh, well, uh, the man I saw might be the new tenant…I just didn’t want to turn a blind eye…”
Super: “… and the drunken woman was probably Bubba’s ‘guest’ …yeah. I’ll go and check anyway.”
Bubbles and Bubba scream around for a few more hours.

Then Bubbles is suddenly outside of the building screaming at Bubba’s windows… I eventually fall asleep only to wake up this morning 20 minutes before the start of international tax because in last night’s excitement I forgot to set my alarm!

I wipe my face, grab the dogs, jump over Bubble’s beer cars, get the dog walk in, and waltz into International Tax about 2 minutes late. Luckily the professor didn’t start yet! I just hope the stairwell is cleaned when I come back today…