ain’t leaving.”
He steps back and lifts his arms and shoulders into a shrug.
“Guess
“You, um, bought the AF Building, Ron?” I ask.
“Yes sir,” he spits. “It’s just gonna take a few days for the money transfer to go through.” Then he turns and plods off to the bathroom.
I look at Mamta and Ewan, utterly speechless.
“Look!” Mamta says, pointing to the television in the corner of the room. “He didn’t break the TV!” Bless her, she’s grasping.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It’s beginning to look like I’ve traveled all the way around the world to the safest country on earth only to be drawn and quartered by an unhinged Phil-adelphian. Monday night seems so very far away.
“Listen,” Mamta whispers, “why don’t you and Ewan just bring some of your important stuff down to my place. You know, just to be safe.”
We agree this is probably a good idea, since there’s no telling when the Beast will decide to start throwing things over the balcony railing again. So I pick up my laptop and a stack of CDs. Ewan collects all his books.
We go downstairs and drop off our stuff. Ewan stays with Mamta, and I go up to Julia’s to see if I can stay the night if things become life-threatening. As I’m filling her in on the recent developments in the saga, the doorbell rings. Julia answers and it’s Mike, who lives in the apartment between Julia’s and mine.
“Hey, do you know what’s going on in Tim’s flat?” I hear him ask.
I run out of the apartment and look towards mine. The door is wide open, the police alarm from the kitchen is sounding, and Ron is inside screaming. I go down to Mamta’s and get Ewan. We decide to go up and get everything of importance out of the place, in case Ron has started a fire or something. I grab the rest of my CDs, and some work clothes and shoes. Ewan gets more books. Mamta offers to help, and Ewan quickly makes use of her, handing over his encyclopedia of arthropods and his giant collection of historical maps of the world.
But our mass exodus is halted when we can’t get the front door open. The handle won’t turn. Ron is on the other side, blocking us in. We can hear him outside shouting at Mamta’s roommates, who had come to make sure we were alright.
“Oh my God, we’re trapped!” I say, clearly kind of starting to enjoy the drama. I look at Mamta and Ewan with their arms full of useless books, and we all laugh. Then we look worriedly toward the door, because we really are trapped.
I could force the door open, but I am really afraid to do anything that will result in Ron being thrown off balance, for there’s a second balcony and he’s standing directly between it and the door. So we put everything down, go into my room, open the window, and watch as Ron wields a fire extinguisher to keep at bay the group of MOBA teachers from nearby apartments who have gathered around him, some people looking scared, others covering their laughing mouths.
We wait at the window until he finally moves away from the door. We quickly gather up everything and make a run for it. As we bust through the door, Ron is busy threatening the others congregated outside-the entire floor of tenants at this point, including a few mystified Japanese people who have never seen a real American crazy before.
“What’s your name?” he demands of Mike.
“I’m not telling you,” Mike says.
“What’s your name?” He points to Julia.
“Thaddeus,” she says.
“What’s your name?” Holly, Mamta’s roommate, this time.
“I don’t have a name.”
“Well,” Ron growls, “I’m going to remember your names and I’m going to find you and you’re going to be sorry!” Then he burps and kind of sneezes.
We sneak behind him and spirit our stuff down to Mamta’s. From above someone yells down that two police officers have arrived, yay!
I run up the stairs ready to tongue-kiss both of them at the same time and, with a wink and a lick of my lips, invite them over to Julia’s later. Turns out the two officers are the same ones who had brought Ron home earlier, after the bridge incident.
The party has moved back inside my apartment, so I open the door and see the two cops standing over Ron, who’s sitting in a chair in the middle of the darkened hallway, his arms folded, his expression defiant, his face beet- red and shiny.
Erica, one of Mamta’s friends who’s half Japanese, serves as interpreter.
“I own this place! This whole place!”
Erica translates directly with a wink wink, nudge nudge.
The officers look at each other, confused. After a long, winding conversation that takes in all of Ron’s hijinks as well as Erica’s attempt at explaining that not all English teachers behave like this, the officers tell us they can’t do anything because it isn’t illegal to be publicly drunk in Japan, and anyway, he hasn’t hurt anyone. (But what about what he’s done to my
The door closes behind them, and we all silently turn our heads to look at our tormenter.
The good thing about a drunk like Ron is that, though he can ingest award-winning amounts of booze, he will reach his stopping point, and suddenly. Leaning back further in his chair and struggling to keep his eyelids raised, he reaches that stopping point. Down, down, down he goes, backwards toward the floor, the chair giving way under his greasy girth. He roars and spits all the way down to the floor, a trip that happens in slow motion. Then thud. Binge over. Yay, gravity.
Folks gathered outside begin to scatter now that the show’s main performer appears to have passed out in epic fashion. “Goodbye, y’all,” I say. “Thanks for coming. Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow. G’night. Be safe.”
I step over Ron and walk to the kitchen, where Ewan sits looking tired, confused, and desperate to take up smoking. “It’s over, Ewan,” I say, patting him on the shoulder. “Let’s go to bed.”
The next day, I receive a call from the MOBA head office at work. He is out. They’ve moved him somewhere else; I don’t ask where. I get home that evening and find that all of his stuff is gone. I walk back to the kitchen and see a final parting gift from Ron on the tile floor: a big brown turd. I turn around and walk to his room. It is completely empty, except for one item on the floor: a small paperback book that had presumably fallen from his bag on the way out. The title:
Also, my
A few days later, gossip swirls that Ron has gone missing from his new digs and still hasn’t shown up for work. All of us gasp at the idea that Ron is freely walking the streets of Fujisawa carrying all of his belongings and throwing empty beer cans at old grandmas on the street. What if he decides to pay us tenants at the AF Building a visit? He is our landlord, after all.
Finally, after two weeks have passed, Ron calls the MOBA head office and says, no doubt slurring every syllable, “I’m ready for work!” But at this point MOBA has written him off and decided to do something unprecedented in their history: pay for a teacher’s flight back home before he’s even started work. It’s the right decision-for the security of the nation.
That night, Mamta sees a particularly interesting item on CNN. A flight from Japan’s Narita Airport bound for New York’s JFK had to make an emergency landing in the Midwest because an unruly American guy had attacked a stewardess.
I’d bet my very soul that this guy had been drinking Jack Daniels. And reading my
