Guest Post: Neighbors by Frank Demma
A sequence of hijinks and revenge
Today we have a short story from my friend Frank Demma. We met at a talent show of sorts hosted by my friend Kate, where he read the below story. I think it’s hilarious and I’m excited for you all to read it as well. Enjoy and remember to subscribe :)
He woke to the sound of electronic music, a bass-driven, unappealing sound. This kind of music, with its exaggerated highs and lows and garbled vocalizations, was the kind his neighbor, a part-time D.J. who lived across the street, insisted on gifting the neighborhood on weekend mornings. These were the days he wasn’t off doing his real job: checking utility boxes on the sides of peoples’ houses. The old man didn’t so much look down on utility-box-checkers, only utility-box-checkers cum disc jockeys. He lamented that no one was content doing just one thing anymore.
His dog, who had one eye, was padding around his bed in anticipation of her long, weekend morning walk. The old man got up, joints crackling, and set about finding the leash and compostable doggie bags he would invariably throw in the trash anyway. His old dog would no longer do a full hind-leg squat when pissing. She did a half-squat without ever really ceasing in her forward movement and she’d piss down her legs and paws. She’d piss anywhere, street or sidewalk; she was shameless. Whenever she shat, it was equally without ceremony and required only a slightly more involved plié and modulation in pace.
The D.J. neighbor had a free-standing, wooden sign stuck into that little no-man’s-land between sidewalk and street. His sign said, in all caps, “DON’T LET YOUR DOG SHIT HERE!” which seemed to be in keeping with his musical taste: overbearing and without class.
And of course on this day, the old man’s one-eyed dog stopped–or rather didn’t stop–to poop near the neighbor’s sign. And as luck would have it, the D.J. was sitting in his car parked a few feet away. Why he had music blaring indoors while he was outside in his car was beyond the old man’s understanding. As he bent down, his hand sheathed in green plastic to grab the shit, soft and warm from his pup’s insides, he heard a terse honk. When he stood to full height, he caught the tail-end of his neighbor’s angry pantomime. The old man couldn’t understand this behavior. He had picked up the poop, so the honk was unnecessary and misplaced. The D.J. went back to looking at his phone and didn’t get out of his car. The old man trudged steadfastly down the street, as synthesized music faded into spattered L.A. birdsong.
The next day, the old man forgot his compostable doggie bags. And the dog, unprovoked, shat again a foot or two from the sign. For the rest of the week, the old man forgot. Sometimes he would wait in front of the D.J.’s until his dog felt the urge. And sometimes she didn’t hit the target and another neighbor would be the recipient. But by the end of the week, several piles of dogshit had been disbursed among the rocks and weeds in front of the D.J.’s home. Maybe it would’ve gone on like this until the weeded patch was overcome with animal matter, but on the following Saturday, as his old dog squatted compliantly, the old man saw his neighbor through a window, naked to the waist, and wearing a red bandana. The disc jockey looked like a vengeful, young god, though he wasn’t really that young.
When the dog and the old man returned from their long walk, at the foot of his steep driveway was a two-foot smear of shit. More shit had been rubbed on the back wheel of the old man’s Honda, maybe with a shoe. He imagined that if he looked at the D.J.'s shoe in that moment, the grooves of the outsole would still be brown. It was almost without a thought, then, that the old man found himself on his way to Home Depot, his old dog riding in back with the windows down.
Thankfully, he knew the D.J.’s landlord or he’d never have been able to move forward with his plan. He complained of a streak of errant dog owners letting their animals poop unchecked about the neighborhood. The landlord, a cheery Armenian guy, listened, rapt. The old man wanted to construct a doggie bag dispenser on the spit of grass where the D.J. had his sign. The old man didn’t have the same grassy, curb strip in front of his home, and he reasoned convincingly that putting the dispenser on what was technically municipal property would encourage public use.
“Although your tenant’s signage,” the old man argued, “may have an effect, I believe in offering incentives as opposed to demands. And besides, I’ve seen at minimum five piles of shit in the area around the sign.”
The old man would install the doggie bag dispenser at his own expense. He’d already been to Home Depot for the materials.
“Hmmmm,” said the Armenian.
Soon after, the dispenser on its wooden dais, was cemented in. The D.J. was out checking utility boxes. His “DON’T LET YOUR DOG SHIT HERE” sign was removed and treats and water were laid out.
The following Saturday, the old man made an elaborate show of extracting a doggie bag from the dispenser and allowing his dog to drink deeply from the water bowl–though they were only twenty yards from home. He bent and patted her unwashed coat. A man’s voice pitched up to sound like a girl’s trickled from the D.J.’s house. The old man had started to like the electronic music some: it was transgressive and bold.
The Saturday following, the dispenser had the appearance of having been backed into by a car. The old man told the Armenian over coffees that it had likely been an accident. The city was full of careless drivers, he said.
“You’re so right,” the landlord replied, his few remaining hairs crisped back with gel. The old man wasted no time in his renovations.
Later that week, the old man’s garbage can was overflowing because someone had brought it back up to the house before the garbage truck came. He was not going to be intimidated. The next day, when his adversary was at work, the old man parked his Honda in front of the D.J.’s house, leaving his own driveway empty. Haha, he thought to himself. Parking was difficult in their neighborhood. The other dog-owning neighborhood people had started giving him and his dog a wide walking berth. Later, someone told him there was a rumor going around that his old dog had a contagious skin condition that could be spread to both dogs and humans.
“You gotta forgive me,” the concerned party had said, “you gotta forgive me but it seemed kinda plausible.”
The old man had looked at his dog and remarked sardonically to the woman: “If you wash any contacted areas with Dawn dish soap and scalding water, I think you’ll be okay.”
After coming to an agreement with the landlord, the old man constructed a small community planter box to go with the doggie bag dispenser. When the garden was still just planter soil poured into wooden frames, the old man found a bunch of Doritos laid out in tidy little rows, jutting from the dirt like nacho-flavored dragon’s teeth. He spent the better portion of an hour picking them out, one at a time.
The old man called in a noise complaint one particularly synth-y Saturday. He didn’t like to involve the cops usually, but in this case, it couldn’t be helped. The cops came and the music stopped, but two days later, his neighbor had new sound equipment delivered including some subwoofers that shook the old man’s window casings. The old man had to put in a C.D. of Mahler’s 4th and crank up his stereo to drown out the D.J.’s Saturday morning sets.
The old man had the DJ’s phone number (he had extracted it from the landlord under the guise of community-building) and once, after grazing a parked Mercedes with his Honda, the old man left a scrap of paper with the D.J.’s name and number. And sometimes, the old man would text his adversary asking for political donations. He would end with the line “Text back STOP to Opt-Out.” The D.J. would respond with “STOP,” but the texts would keep coming. The D.J. had a small package of ear plugs delivered to the old man’s door. The old man sent the D.J. some better music (Respighi’s, The Fountains of Rome on CD). At one point, the D.J. came into possession of a chihuahua that made a series of liquid shits around the birds of paradise in the old man’s front yard. After a week, the chihuahua disappeared. On one of the D.J.’s work days, the old man went over and pruned all the bushes and trees in his neighbor’s front yard. On a walk that night, he saw the D.J. standing uncomfortably on the sidewalk, waiting. He was blocking the old man’s path. The old man stopped several feet away, one hand holding the leash, the other in his jacket pocket. They stared.
“Thanks for the trim,” the D.J. said darkly. The old man nodded and walked on.
One night–it was a day like Tuesday or Wednesday–the old man was settling in for an episode of Call the Midwife as his dog watched him casually with her one milky eye. He heard pounding at the door. He opened it and found the D.J. swaying on his front steps.
“How does someone...”—the D.J. had a pause-y way of speaking that was exacerbated by drink—“...in a single lifetime…How does someone rack up five restraining orders??” He directed his speech to the old man’s chest, never making eye contact.
“One or two, I get it, I mean surely I’ve wanted to do the kinds of stuff that would…but five? I mean, man! You must’ve been a hitter! Ever touch the kids? Did you? Maybe you beat that piece-of-shit dog. She fucking looks it.” He paused to take a breath.
“I know you can hear me!”–The old man had closed the door somewhere in the middle of the speech, and was standing quietly in the entryway– “I cannot believe I didn’t look you up until now, you planter-box-making bastard. Had to pay an online service, but I’m glad I did. Fucking asshole. I’m not gonna let you hit another woman. You’ll see.” The D.J.’s footsteps clomped away from his door, then returned.
“And! I know you put my phone number on that Mercedes, you old fuck. Musta thought that was goddamn hilarious.”
The old man heard spit hit the pavement. He took a second to calm down and then unpaused the T.V.
When he met people walking after that, he didn’t know if they’d heard something about him. His neighborhood walks became shorter; he said fewer hello’s. Once there were shards of beer bottle on the sidewalk in front of the D.J.’s. His old dog stepped through them. That night he used tweezers to pick splinters of amber glass out of her paw pads. Sometimes the old man would sit on a lawn chair in his driveway, just staring at the D.J.’s house, wishing violence upon him. The next Saturday he went out walking as normal. There wasn’t music that day. His old dog lapped at the water bowl in front of the D.J.’s house while the old man stared at its Spanish-style edifice. When the dog was finished drinking, the old man spat into the D.J.’s front yard, and walked on.
That night his dog was sick. She turned in frantic circles around the house, then lied down on the floor, panting interminably. The old man thought about the water bowl and his neighbor. That night he carried her heaving body to his bed and she died while they both slept.
He woke up, and with his dog still lying on the mattress, he walked out into the early morning air.
His first throw fell short, the rock bouncing dumbly off the house’s siding, and leaving a dink in the paint work. The second he aimed more carefully and it shattered the D.J.’s kitchen window. A smaller rock hit the living room window, cracked it, then fell into the dirt. He walked back to his house and went to bed.
The vet said it was old age. The dog had been riddled with cancers, and there had been something wrong with her skin.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the skin before?”
“It wasn’t an issue before,” the vet had said. The old man thought about undetectable poisons.
Over coffees the afternoon following, the Armenian told him his house had been vandalized.
“Forty years I’ve owned the property and this has never happened. I believe it was related to my former tenant. I think he owed someone money but he wouldn’t tell me anything. I said, ‘Okay, but I need for you to fix the windows before you go.’ ” The D.J. was moving out.
“He said he couldn’t afford Silver Lake anymore. He hadn’t paid full rent in three months. There came a point….” the landlord trailed off, “And besides, he was dirty.”
The old man watched the moving out process from his window. He didn’t leave his house. He ate canned soup and waited. There was no retaliation, no music.
When the D.J. had fully removed himself, the old man went outside again. It was a warm fall day, and he was greeted by a messy lapdog’s poo in the center of his community planter box. The plants were growing up nicely. The poop was nestled amid big, rough, zucchini leaves. He picked it up with a bag from the dispenser and walked it over to the D.J.’s trash can, as he’d done many times before. Before he tossed in the shit, he peered into the darkened bin and saw it was empty except for a pile of wire hangers and a crumpled birthday card.
Frank Demma is a writer, director and performer living and working in Los Angeles. His writing has appeared in swampspit and The Living Room. In addition, he curates a reading series of the short works of Clarice Lispector. Frank works as a substitute teacher.