Josephine Wins Again (2)

A Story of Love and Death | Part 2

Josephine just wants to drink wine, eat cheese, and enjoy a little romance. Somehow, she always succeeds, despite the scams, evictions, violent attacks, and untimely deaths befalling the people around her.

This story is available in eBook and print here.

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Go to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 |

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September 13

We sit in the backyard and sip bitter coffee out of plastic cups. The neighboring houses loom over us, staring with boarded-up-window eyes. Balconies stick like tongues out of the crumbling brick.

God, this is depressing, I say.

My parents came to see this place when I moved in, Josephine says. They said the area was charming.

You’re very brave. Just to come here like this, to find a room on Craigslist and move in with a bunch of strangers.

Not brave. Just lazy.

It’s amazing. You relax and let things come, and everything works out in the end.

So far, that is true. I don’t know about the future.

I am glad you only have to walk a block to the bus stop. And when the winter comes it’ll be dark by the time you get home from work.

Yes. But in winter, I go back to France.

October 3

Early morning I get a text from McFly:

Hey, FYI. Licenses and Inspections just pulled in front of Josephine’s house with three cop cars.

Attached to the message is a picture of a red and white candy-cane notice posted on the front door.

Then McFly texts the roomie group chat that Josephine added me to: I guess you should have listened to me, and now it’s come to this. Everyone needs to get the hell out of there or be fined.

What the hell, man? I text back, one electronic voice in a chorus of fury.

No answer.

I text Josephine, I think you just got evicted.

I know, thanks, she texts back. I’m here with my roommates. I think I can stay a couple of days, but I have to go soon as possible.

Hey, if you need a place to stay, you can crash with me.

Josephine texts back hours later, Don’t worry. I found a new place close by. It is like three blocks south.

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It’s hard to piece together the story. I contact some of the roommates I’ve met and ask them what they know.

They say the problem began with Mary.

Mary lived in the front room on the second floor of Josephine’s house. I remember this room because it had doors that opened and closed like barn doors, and was secured with a padlock. Mary had a cat, which was against the terms of the lease. One day, the cat escaped and McFly discovered it. He confronted Mary. Mary called the cops and said McFly was harassing her.

When the cops showed up, they were not particularly interested in Mary or her cat. But they were very interested in the state of the conjoined houses. They looked around and noticed that things like doors and staircases had been added and removed without much logic, and that there were no fire alarms. Possibly, they spotted anywhere from several to a thousand different fire hazards.

That day, the house’s doom was written. Someone in the vast, inscrutable black box of the city bureaucracy had taken notice of them. Someone noticed taxes had not been paid, and the house was not zoned for that occupancy, and—did Dave even have a license to be renting out this property?

October 4

It’s so unfair, I say. It’s not like anyone is living in this house because they have a whole lot of options. Where are they supposed to go?

I found a place, Josephine says, with a shrug. They charge the same.

We sit in the kitchen and pick at cheese with crackers. I have found the only clean plate. No one has done the dishes or taken out the trash. Food scraps and tobacco lie scattered across the table. Trash piles on the floor. Vegetables rot in the fridge next to bags of unidentifiable goo—maybe long ago it was cheese?—and sandwiches furry with mold. Fruit flies drift over the sink.

What a paradise for rats you are making, I say. I accidentally knock over my wine glass, which is actually a martini glass. The house has dozens of these for whatever reason, and no other glasses. The wine soaks into the filthy tablecloth.

I’m not cleaning that up, I say.

Josephine smiles. She says, I haven’t cleaned still.

Not even the dishes?

No, I clean my dishes. But nothing else.

We finish the wine. I throw the remaining cheese into the fridge to merge with the other rot and eventually gain sentience. The crackers I leave as an offering to the mice. One of the roommates comes by, John.

The last supper, John says.

Yes, I say. I’m sorry about all this.

It’s fucked up, John says. He lights a cigarette and takes a drag. It’s a fucked-up situation. I just moved all my shit from one shithole to the other. Three days ago. Fucking shit. Now I get to move again.

John exits through the back door, muttering a trail of shits and fucks.

The other remaining roommate, Jess, belts out an exuberant rendition of Hips Don’t Lie from the one working shower.

Her mother came by today, Josephine says. And Jessica asked me to stand in front of the door to hide the sign.

What?

Her mother didn’t know about the eviction, but she was coming by today for her birthday. So she asked me to stand in front of the door to hide the eviction sign and pretend to be smoking. But when her mom came I forgot my cigarettes, so I just stood there.

Wait, so when Jess’s mom came by, you just stood there blocking the front door?

Yes. And Jess took her mother and said, Let’s go in the other way.

I can’t believe that was your plan. I can’t believe it worked.

No, it worked. And a day before the eviction, she has finished setting up her drum set.