Mr. Mustachio

We live in a third floor condo. It is in a nice complex with a charming lily pad lake and a very nice pool. Most of the people we've seen here seem to be pleasant. There are a fair amount of children and quite a few dogs.

Our building contains an assortment of people. On the ground floor lives a cheerful, trim, middle-aged woman with short silver hair and a ready smile. She likes to smoke on her patio next to her red-blossomed hibiscus tree and chat with passing neighbors. She works full time, lives alone, and backs her silver hatchback Toyota into her parking spot...easier to get out in the mornings, I suppose. She always has a smile and a kind word to say. I like her a lot.

There is a quirky young couple living on the second floor who have an interesting menagerie of friends. The look-dirty-and-need-a-shampoo style is popular with them. They are quiet and keep to themselves. The young lady is the only person I have ever seen wearing a turban (the kind that Lucille Ball wore with her house dress) at the swimming pool. With the pool turban our young lady wore Audrey Hepburn sunglasses, an odd combination with her blue streaked hair and her boyfriend's dreads. Each to their own. Their comings and goings provide entertainment.

As far as I know, only three of the condos on our floor are inhabited. A dark-haired man in his thirties lives across from us and the condo adjoining his seems to be empty. Pretty quiet on that front. Our side is not so fortunate. Late at night, shortly after moving in, I noticed an incessant bass thudding through our bedroom wall. I assumed it was just a couple of dudes playing video games or blaring their sub woofers. They would have to go to sleep eventually. At 2 AM it was still thudding. Night after sleepless night it started to irritate me. Some nights it was so bad I had to go sleep on the couch. The constant pounding made my head throb. I even contemplated pounding back on the wall to make it stop. I didn't. It didn't either.

I never saw anyone come or go from the apartment. There was a constant supply of trash in the wooden bin outside the door. Pizza boxes and beer, I figured. I knew from the nocturnal thump, thump, thudding that someone lived there and they loved the night life. One day, in the middle of the day, I saw a short, brown-haired man wearing slacks and a collared shirt going into the condo. He was on the upper end of middle-age and wore heavy glasses. He had a thick mustache and wore his belt rather tight, giving him a cinched appearance. Respectable enough, though rather heavy-spirited and serious. Must be the party animals' father, I thought. I didn't see anyone come or go for quite awhile. The late night sub woofing continued.

My teeth were on edge. Keep in mind I was 5 or 6 weeks pregnant when we arrived and the first month I battled 24 hour nausea. That incessant pounding was almost more than I could bear and made me want to pound something. I started manufacturing stories of what was going on in that apartment. None of them were very good. I kept seeing Mr. Mustachio come and go and finally realized that he was the ONLY one who lived there. There were no rabble-rousing dudes, no pizza scarfing gang to go along with the noise. Imagine the stories my sleep-deprived brain concocted then. I liked Mustachio less and less.

Though I didn't care for his nighttime habits and how they impacted mine, I began to observe Mr. M more. I noticed that the old white Mercedes sitting in covered parking was his. Occasionally, he would be cleaning it out in the middle of the day, while his Toto dog sat leashed to the door handle. Next to the Mercedes sat a white Corvette under a car cover...in covered parking. I thought it was some young guy's who thought he was something special. Wrong again. It belonged to Mustachio. Weird. What does a middle-aged man who doesn't appear to go to work or go anywhere do with two expensive cars? I had no idea and didn't want to find out. I began to avoid him and always kept McKenzie close to me when we passed.

Then one evening the social barrier was completely shattered. Josh and McKenzie and I were going to Bible study. Mr. Mustachio was once again cleaning out the Mercedes with a red duffel that he always had with him. Josh was putting McKenzie in her seat and I was getting in mine. Mustachio started coming around towards the passenger side of the car. I had no desire to talk to him. I closed my door, got in my seat and buckled up, firmly believing that he would take the hint and talk to Josh, who was standing there with the door open buckling McKenzie. Did Mustachio get the hint...?

No. He started talking to ME through the closed window telling me that he thought my little boy dropped something, holding up a Mitchelin Tire Man bobble head in plastic. No thank you, I mouthed, shaking my head. It's not ours. Then he turned to Josh and before I knew it, Josh was taking it and smiling and thanking him.

Josh got in the car and said that the man was trying to say that he had something for our little boy, not that we dropped something. Either way, McKenzie is NOT a little boy, and I really didn't care what he said and didn't want the Michelin bobble head. Josh said I needed to be more polite to the neighbors, that he was just trying to be friendly. Maybe so, but I had never even spoken to the man before and what made him think that we wanted the junk he cleaned out of his car. Guess who has the larger dose of Christian charity: me or Josh?

I felt slightly remorseful until the nighttime pounding started again, then I didn't feel remorseful at all. Mustachio was not the kind of individual I wanted Michelin Tire bobble heads from. I avoided him more. That wasn't at all difficult as he rarely emerged from his house. He had to sleep sometime I guess. Plus, I figured I had been sufficiently rude the first time around for him to get the hint.

Think again. One morning after running with McKenzie in her jogging stroller to the grocery store, we encountered Mustachio once more. I had two bags of groceries in one hand, was carrying my jogging stroller in the other and trying to herd McKenzie up the three flights of stairs. Guess what he was doing...exactly...cleaning the Mercedes.

"I have something your little boy might want," he said from 10 or so feet away.

"Oh, no thank you," I said, trying my best to be coldly polite and impervious to his glaring lack of social skills.

"Why don't you just take a look at it?" Was this man serious?

"What is it?" I said standing stock still.

He rummaged under the seat for a minute and pulled out a toy semi-truck in it's original box, bits of wrapping paper still stuck to it. "This was a Christmas gift from a few years ago I never had a chance to give and I thought your little boy would like to play with it." Good grief!

"Oh...how thoughtful. Thanks for thinking of us, but SHE likes playing with dolls a little bit more than trucks."

"Oh...is that a girl? I thought it was a boy."

"No problem," I said, turning to go up the stairs. "Thanks though."

It's amazing how fast a pregnant woman carrying groceries and a jogging stroller with a three year old in tow can get up three flights of stairs when she wants to. Our door was locked and padlocked as soon as we stepped across the threshold.

I have seen Mr. Mustachio a few times since, but I just rummage around in my car until he leaves or is far enough away that I don't have to talk to him. He was chatting with our cheerful patio neighbor the other day, so maybe he's not too bad. We exchanged hellos, but Josh was with me then. My six-foot-three, muscular husband is a huge confidence boost for me. Mustachio didn't dare offer any cast-off Christmas presents for our little boy.

We will only be in our apartment for one more week, so I doubt we will have to worry about it too much longer. After that, the hotel will be home. That will be another story.